I, Gianfranco Costamagna, apply for core-dev.

Who I am

I was born in 1988 in Savigliano, a little town in north-west Italy. I started using Linux with Knoppix (3.4 IIRC), because of the livecd features, playing with it at school and home, and I started loving it at the same time

My first installed OS has been Ubuntu, because of the live cd and the "shipit" feature, and I'm still currently using it. With my M.Sc. Eng. I took the possibility to start seriously working with Linux, and I started sending patches (privately) to developers. My Debian contribution(s) started because I would like to see my effort in bug fixing spread to all the derivative distros (I also send relevant patches upstream).

I started contributing with boinc* packages (thanks to <moeller> who trusted and kindly asked me to join the DM process, helping me in my first steps), after I started looking to docbook2x (for some time it has been broken in unstable), and I moved also to ettercap (becoming upstream developer some years ago). My great challenge has been hedgewars, a "potpourri" of various languages (haskell, c++, qt, pascal, sdl and so on), that improved my skills in packaging and showed me the cmake powers (also gave me the possibility to contribute a little in the ghc packaging). I packaged libsdl2-gfx, my first NEW upload in early 2014, and after it I learnt how libraries work in Debian and gave my little help in some transitions (I also successfully completed some). Some contributions I made were for sdlgfx, for nifti2dicom, tomcat7, virtualbox*, insighttoolkit/insighttoolkit4, vtk, gccxml, filezilla, eject (little patch testing), wapiti (adopted the package), binwalk (adopted the package), poedit, wxwidgets3.0 (I introduced the new webview sub-package, needed for boinc), lucene++ (packaged from the Ubuntu one, needed in new poedit), python-pyqtgraph (I packaged it from scratch, needed for the new binwalk release), flex, qviaggiatreno, sqlmap, cld2, libserial, ... I also packaged casablanca, because needed for the upcoming poedit releases. I also helped in ~10 transitions with patches and uploads (with great help from my sponsors). the list of the packages I mostly contribute can be seen here https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=locutusofborg I would like to continue my learning process, as well as my contributions, to help fixing RC bugs and improve the packages quality on the archive. My current workplace is a startup company with focus on embedded systems for automotive (we ship a custom yocto-based linux distro) I'm also a penetration tester (VA-PT), and collaborator of backbox linux (repository maintainer).

Since one year I'm a full DD (Debian Developer) and a MOTU (I became MOTU few months ago), where I helped in reducing the Ubuntu delta, and sync/sponsoring packages for other people

See also

• https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=locutusofborg

• https://launchpad.net/~costamagnagianfranco/+related-packages

• https://ubuntu-dev.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi?render=html&sponsoree=Gianfranco+Costamagna&sponsoree_search=name

• https://ubuntu-dev.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi?render=html&sponsoree=LocutusOfBorg&sponsoree_search=name

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.

Martin Pitt

I sponsored over 20 packages for Gianfranco. The more recent ones were pretty much good to upload without needing further changes. He has shown a consistent devotion and eagerness to keep Ubuntu in shape, catch up with merges, etc. He learned a lot in the past years, and I now trust him to do such routine tasks by himself.

The main opportunity of improvement that comes to my mind is that you should check a bit more carefully which Ubuntu changes are still necessary and how they can be eliminated (upstreaming changes, or getting rid of technical debt in Ubuntu to make them unnecessary, etc.). But I don't consider this a blocker for becoming a core dev.

Many thanks for your great work!

-- pitti 2016-09-21 09:14:11

Graham Inggs

General feedback

I've sponsored almost 50 uploads for Gianfranco. Several of those have been packages where we share an interest; virtualbox, llvm-toolchain and cmake. Gianfranco tries to reduce the Ubuntu delta when doing merges, and sometimes asks me to sponsor a sync and points me to a merge he has already prepared, in case the sync FTBFS or fails autopkgtests (unfortunately we cannot test everything in a PPA). I trust Gianfranco and believe he should be made a Core Dev now.

Specific Experiences of working together

We have worked together on a couple of Boost and OpenMPI transitions.

Areas of Improvement

I think Gianfranco is sometimes a little too eager to request syncs during feature freeze. ginggs 2016-11-13 19:39:08

Daniel Holbach (dholbach)

I sponsored countless syncs, merges and fixes for Gianfranco and am very happy with his work. He coordinates with Debian and upstreams all the time, knows his stuff and I'm thankful for his work on Ubuntu and elsewhere. In my mind he definitely earned his full upload privileges.

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