I, Gianfranco Costamagna, apply for MOTU.

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 would like one day to switch to Debian only (Ubuntu is still the family primary OS), because since the last 2 years I'm almost only contributing there.

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 ~5 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 a few months I'm a full DD (Debian Developer)

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

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Endorsements

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

Sebastien Bacher

I've sponsored several bufixes and SRUs for Gianfranco and he has always been doing good work, the bugs were up to the standards, the changes correct and he worked with Debian/upstream as needed. +1 from me for having him in the MOTU team

Daniel Holbach

100% to what Séb said. I'm super happy with Gianfranco's work and totally recommend him for MOTU. -- dholbach 2015-12-11 16:48:51

Graham Inggs

I have sponsored several uploads for Gianfranco as we often end up working on related packages, in particular, virtualbox. Gianfranco is usually able get the changes needed into Debian and then all that is required is a sync into Ubuntu. When I've had questions about his uploads he has always been quick to respond.

Łukasz 'sil2100' Zemczak

I only sponsored several uploads for Gianfranco in Ubuntu, but we also cooperated on package maintenance in Debian. His knowledge and packaging standards were always satisfactory, therefore I highly recommend him for MOTU.

Seth Arnold (sarnold)

I've sponsored updates from Gianfranco for VirtualBox to fix security issues. He was careful, he worked hard to reduce deltas between Debian, Ubuntu, and Upstream, and he performed significant testing work. As a result of his efforts vbox is far more usable today than it was a year ago, and vbox's users are safer today. I recommend him for MOTU. Thanks.

MartinPitt

I have sponsored twelve packages for Gianfranco to this date. Most of them were merges, some of them quite large (like Samba). I also sponsored a virtualbox update with a patch and a libvncserver build fix. These were all fine and could by and large be uploaded as-is. Based on this experience I trust Gianfranco enough to upload universe packages by himself, and ask if he encounters problems.

Note that I cannot assess his knowledge about release freezes, library transitions, and other distro-wide procedures as I haven't worked with Gianfranco on such issues.

Thanks Gianfranco for your great work!

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