I, Michael Casadevall, apply for Kubuntu upload rights.

Who I am

I've Michael, I'm a MOTU who does heavy working in ARM porting work, as well as doing some general maintenance on general ports architectures. I run Kubuntu and I'm active in doing Kubuntu porting and problem solving on both i386, and armel. In addition, I help maintain some of the core KDE dependencies in Debian, namely python-sip, python-qt3, and python-qt4, and doing work at making sure that patches are merged between Debian and Ubuntu, and upstream; I've also done considerable work at pushing a lot of the "make it build on ARM" patches into KDE upstream, and I help do testing on kubuntu-netbook on ARM as time permits.

My Ubuntu story

I've been active in the Ubuntu community since mid-2007, and active on Kubuntu since early 2008 when I switched from Xubuntu to Kubuntu as my main desktop environment. I ran Debian before Ubuntu, and I believe firmly in the free software philosophy; without it, we would never have software to the same caliber as KDE, GCC and a multitude of other FOSS projects. I got involved in doing a lot of the KDE porting work, making sure it builds on armel, and other architectures as time permits. As both a DD and as an Ubuntu Developer, I work hard at making sure that patches created for Ubuntu make it into Debian, and do NMUs in cases where its necessary.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

• Ported KDE to ARM for Ubuntu, then pushed the patches to Debian and then KDE upstream
• Received KDE committer rights to continue porting KDE and pushing patches as need be
• Helped package KDE release 4.2 and 4.3 for both Debian and Ubuntu,
• Assisted in resolving any and all KDE FTBFS on port architectures in addition to x86
• Helped fix the sip4 ABI issues by co-maintaining python-sip4, working with Mark Shlomme (Debian co-maintainer) on designing dh_sip, and helping work on porting packages to dh_sip such as kdebindings.

Areas of work

Most of my work involves dealing with the odd bugs that occasionally crop up such as dealing with Qt's qreals on ARM, helping collbarate efforts between Debian and Ubuntu, and providing sponsoring services to universe packages, and uploads to Debian when requested.

Things I could do better

I have a tendency to jump from project to project relatively quickly, but I've worked hard to reduce this hoppiness. In addition, I sometimes feel I can be too quick for my own good, but I've made a lot of effort to look over my work before upload or submitted to the sponsors queue and I hope to continue to improve this.

Plans for the future

General

I plan to continue working on keeping KDE and Kubuntu (and Kubuntu Netbook) building and working on ARM, as well as providing whatever spare cycles I have to Kubuntu image testing on ARM. I also plan to help teach others in kubuntu-devel about how to resolve some of the more common ARM FTBFS'es so that they can be resolved when I'm unavailable.

What I like least in Kubuntu

My biggest issue with Kubuntu at the moment is that the networking applet is relatively twitchy compared to NetworkManager on GNOME. Given the opportunity, I'd like to look at doing a straight port of the GNOME code so we can get closer behavior between KDE and GNOME's NetworkManagers.

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 ===

JonathanRiddell

Michael fixes the tricky bits nobody else likes to. He knows his ICEs from his static_casts and how to sort out lots of other issues. His fixes are vital where needed and his packaging is high quality so there's no need to have him pass through others before uploading.

RichardJohnson

I asked Michael to link me to this application on IRC and he didn't even spell his own name correctly in the link. Is this something we can live with? On a more serious note, without him I don't think we would have KDE on ARM. He is by far one of the most intelligent people in the community that I have had the pleasure of meeting in person and working with as well. Right now he is wrangling kdebindings while I write this, so this has a bit to show in considering the stability of his mind Let's get to votin' already!

CategoryKubuntuDevApplication