I, Evan Broder, apply for Ubuntu Core Developer.

Who I am

I'm Evan Broder. I'm a computer systems nerd, especially when it comes to operating systems and virtualization. I like to build things - mostly in software, though occasionally in hardware - and glue software together in new and interesting ways.

I graduated from college last year and started at a San Francisco-area startup. We're using virtualization to revolutionize how large enterprise IT departments manage their employees' workstations. I'm the lead developer on one of our products, an OS based on the core Ubuntu stack that runs our management software. I focus mostly on integrating our software with the underlying components in the OS.

My Ubuntu story

I don't remember when I started tried Ubuntu - I think it was around Breezy or so. But I've definitely used every version since Dapper, and about 6 months ago I started using Ubuntu on my primary laptop. While I was at MIT I was a heavy contributor to the student computing organization and their VM hosting service and Debian- and Ubuntu-based distribution used on the public computer lab machines.

While at college, I began contributing to Ubuntu through backports and then moved on to fixing bugs that affected the SIPB projects I was involved in (primarily things like Xen, OpenAFS, and krb5 mixed with a little bit of everything).

Since graduating, I've been fortunate enough to attend the last three UDS's (UDS-N, -O, and -P). I found UDS to be incredibly motivating for me - even now, I feel like I'm still riding the high from October. I really appreciated that it's possible for someone to show up and usefully contribute to the development process.

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

SRUs

• plymouth: lucid and maverick SRUs - suppress a harmless warning message that was often conflated with other more serious issues

• update-inetd: lucid and maverick SRUs - correct an install-time hang due to interactions between debconf and inetd (backported fix)

• initramfs-tools: maverick and natty SRUs - allow booting off of USB 3.0 drives (backported fix)

Backports

• backportpackage - A script for automatically generating test backports and test building them

• backport-helper (plus some follow-up patches - [1], [2], [3]) - A new tool for ubuntu-archive-tools that looks for and runs approved backport requests

• New docs for end-users and developers - I re-wrote the documentation to clarify the current backports procedures

• Pre-release backports - I wrote the proposal and advocated it to the TB, who approved it at their November 28th meeting

Lintian

I set-up http://lintian.ubuntuwire.org/ and have been working with Lintian upstream to fix some issues affecting Ubuntu ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5])

NetworkManager

I've developed a couple patchsets for NetworkManager while doing integration work with it:

• 4f38f02a, ca968105 0b8097a2 - fixing a long-standing limitation of 802.1x support

• 1e2984a5

• ef9551bc, 2c484fbc, dc92d125, b08e2b89, 9fc134ee - adding support for non-ASCII passwords in MS-CHAPv2-based 802.1x

Transitions

I've made some small contributions to various transition efforts:

• "perlsectomy" ([1], [2]) - an aborted attempt to drop the perl package (note: not perl-base) from our base install

• dh_python2 ([1], [2]) transition from dh_pysupport and dh_pycentral

• multiarch - I've developed, tested, and submitted multiarch patches for libsigc++-2.0, glibmm2.4, atkmm1.6, cairomm, pangomm, openssl098, and zephyr

Debian

I currently maintain a package in Debian (reptyr)

bzr Merge Proposals

Here are a handful of merge proposals that went directly into Ubuntu but where, for whatever reason, mine wasn't the name closing out the changelog so they're not listed on my list of uploaded packages:

• network-manager/nm-fix-669925: Guard use of update-notifier so network-manager doesn't have to depend on it

• checkbox/multimon-aware-resolution-test-632987: Improve multihead handling for one of checkbox's tests

• virtkey/no-pycentral-i-expect-you-to-die: dh_python2 conversion for python-virtkey

• ubuntu-dev-tools/fix-785854: Correct for deficiencies in the subprocess module within ubuntu-dev-tools

• casper/fix-671786: Add support for a new command-line option to casper

Areas of work

I've mostly given up on trying to qualify specific areas I work on - it tends to be a little bit of anything and everything.

I have a particular interest in backports and SRUs, because I like that they're one of our most direct ways we can improve Ubuntu for our users. I also tend to spend time on packages which are relevant for work - generally early boot and low-level stuff like NetworkManager, initramfs-tools, or libgnome-desktop.

Some numbers - since joining MOTU:

• I've had 19 uploads sponsored - 15 in core, 1 in desktop-core, 1 in ubuntu-server, 2 in ubuntu-desktop
• I've done 58 direct non-backports uploads
• I've sponsored 40 uploads in universe
• I've reviewed and approved 42 backport requests

Things I could do better

I like to help with transition projects such as .la file cleanup, dh_python2, or multiarch, but I find that I tend to execute poorly at that sort of largely-but-not-totally repetitive packaging tasks. I've caught myself after the fact cutting corners. I think I need to be more deliberate working on those sorts of projects, or leave them to others.

I've also been a little concerned lately that I'm spreading myself thin. I don't think I generally fail to meet my commitments, but I worry some about falling down on implied responsibility because I spend a lot of time darting around between different things.

Plans for the future

I'm expecting to spend time this cycle working on implementing the new pre-release backports plan, which will require making changes to things like Launchpad, ubuntu-archive-tools, ubuntu-dev-tools, and probably others.

I also want to continue improving lintian.ubuntuwire.org to make it a more useful resource for Ubuntu developers. In particular, I think there's currently a lot of noise because we show tags which are in some sense Debian's "fault" and not ours, and I think it's important that lintian.uw.o have a view of tags only emitted in Ubuntu and not in Debian so that we can see where our changes and Ubuntu-specific packages are falling short against Policy.

What I like least in Ubuntu

Please describe what you like least in Ubuntu and what thoughts do you have about fixing it.

Comments

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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 ===

CategoryCoreDevApplication