MOTUApplication

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I'm Evan Broder. I'm currently a rising senior at MIT. I do computer systems engineering for fun, and occasionally I still like to pretend that I'm actually an electrical engineer. Within computer systems, I do a lot of work with [[http://invirt.mit.edu|virtualization]]. I'm Evan Broder. I'm currently a senior at MIT. I do computer systems engineering for fun, and occasionally I still like to pretend that I'm actually an electrical engineer. Within computer systems, I do a lot of work with [[http://invirt.mit.edu|virtualization]].
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My nominal interests are in software packages that form the core of projects I'm involved in: krb5, openafs, hesiod, zephyr, remctl, xen, libvirt, etc.

The truth of the matter is that I work on whatever issue I find that happens to be bothering me. I wouldn't quite call it scratching my own itch, because it's frequently scratching my users' itches. However, most of my fixes tend to be related to packaging, as opposed to software, I tend to avoid graphical software, and I have a strong preference for Python.

Since I develop for a large desktop deployment that lags behind current Ubuntu development, I also tend to advocate for a lot of SRUs and backports for older releases.
In general, I tend to focus on problems that either affect me directly or indirectly. Frequently this means dealing with bugs that are reported to us as part of our campus Ubuntu deployment. As a result I tend to look at a lot of different packages, but tend to focus on the packages that form the core of these services, so krb5, openafs, zephyr, xen, and remctl.
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I had an opportunity this summer to learn a lot about how D-Bus. I thought it was really interesting, and I'd like to have a better understanding of how the modern Linux desktop works - X, DeviceKit, PolicyKit, ConsoleKit, Upstart, stuff like that.

I, Evan Broder, apply for MOTU.

Name

Evan Broder

Launchpad Page

https://launchpad.net/~broder

Who I am

I'm Evan Broder. I'm currently a senior at MIT. I do computer systems engineering for fun, and occasionally I still like to pretend that I'm actually an electrical engineer. Within computer systems, I do a lot of work with virtualization.

My Ubuntu story

I've been using Ubuntu on my personal servers for years. I'm pretty sure I started with Breezy, although I don't remember for sure. Since then I've run servers with every version from Dapper to Jaunty. I started contributing to Ubuntu through backports, since many of my servers are still running Hardy (for Xen support). I had a few very good experiences working with members of the backporters team, which encouraged me to spend effort on some Xen-related bugs as well as some bugs that were affecting the Debathena project, a Debian/Ubuntu Policy-compliant packaging of the MIT Athena environment for Debian/Ubuntu.

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Within Ubuntu:

Outside of Ubuntu, I'm also very proud of the work I've done with Debathena. We recently deployed Debathena and Ubuntu to the 300 public community workstations at MIT. Debathena has a continuous release cycle - we make changes to any package at any time across all of our supported distributions. I spearheaded our current release engineering and QA procedures, and I think they've done a good job of keeping the "production" Debathena packages very stable across a lot of changes.

Areas of work

In general, I tend to focus on problems that either affect me directly or indirectly. Frequently this means dealing with bugs that are reported to us as part of our campus Ubuntu deployment. As a result I tend to look at a lot of different packages, but tend to focus on the packages that form the core of these services, so krb5, openafs, zephyr, xen, and remctl.

Things I could do better

I had an opportunity this summer to learn a lot about how D-Bus. I thought it was really interesting, and I'd like to have a better understanding of how the modern Linux desktop works - X, DeviceKit, PolicyKit, ConsoleKit, Upstart, stuff like that.

Plans for the future

Primarily, I plan to just keep fixing bugs that affect me and the deployments I care about. I'm also hoping to get more involved in the sponsorship queues, and maybe try to become a member of the SRU or backports teams.

What I like least in Ubuntu

For me, the most frustrating part of contributing to Ubuntu is the sponsorship process. As somebody lacking the bits to effect changes directly, it's hard to continue contributing patches when patches you've already submitted lay untouched for months at a time.

I think that improving the sponsorship process is key to keeping fringe contributors involved in Ubuntu, and I think the MOTU community needs to collectively buckle down and agree to pressure each other to spend more time on sponsoring other people's patches. To that end, if my MOTU application is approved, I'm making it a personal goal to help massage and upload somebody else's fix for every fix of my own that I upload.


Comments

If you'd like to comment, but are not the applicant or a sponsor, do it here. Don't forget to sign with @SIG@.


Endorsements

As a sponsor, just copy the template below, fill it out and add it to this section.


TEMPLATE

== <SPONSORS NAME> ==
=== General feedback ===
## Please fill us in on your shared experience. (How many packages did you sponsor? How would you judge the quality? How would you describe the improvements? Do you trust the applicant?)

=== Specific Experiences of working together ===
''Please add good examples of your work together, but also cases that could have handled better.''
=== Areas of Improvement ===


CategoryMOTUApplication

EvanBroder/MOTUApplication (last edited 2009-11-13 09:16:18 by pD9EB4591)