MOTUApplication

I, Mathieu Trudel, apply for MOTU.

Name

Mathieu Trudel

Launchpad Page

mathieu-tl

Wiki Page

Mtrudel

Who I am

I'm a former sysadmin, now developer employed by Canonical Ltd. to work on NetworkManager and various other aspects of the Ubuntu Desktop. I live in Montreal, Quebec, and I've very active in the local Ubuntu community team as well as general LUGs.

My Ubuntu story

I've been using Ubuntu just about since I around 2005, and was suggested that I contribute to Ubuntu by some of my former coworkers because of my ideas and some of the bugs that I noticed in some systems (like NetworkManager), and patches that I had proposed.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

  • LP #91964 - network-manager-vpnc - No Option To Save Group Password

  • LP #490326 - Please merge fontconfig 2.8.0-2 from Debian testing (main)

  • Maintaining ConnMan on Ubuntu and Debian.

  • Some aesthetic work for plymouth

  • LP #677589 - cnetworkmanager broken with NM > 0.8.1

  • Indicator patch for the NetworkManager applet.

  • I'm also the current Debian maintainer for a couple of packages in Debian:

    • Concordance - Harmony remote configuration tool (CLI)
    • Congruity - graphical utility to configure Logitech Harmony remotes
    • Acct - GNU System and Process accounting utilities
    • Emerillon - GTK+ OSM-based map viewer
    • Ethos - GTK+ Plug-in infrastructure (dependency for emerillon, which I am packaging)

Areas of work

  • NetworkManager (and the ~network-manager team)

  • Evolution
  • various packages maintained by the Ubuntu Desktop team.
  • casper
  • plymouth
  • wpasupplicant
  • rfkill

I especially focus on stuff that is related to the networking stack (with the exception of its kernel aspects), but take pride in helping to make a system that works seemlessly.

Daily tasks

  • I maintain NetworkManager and focus a lot of related bugs on the core, applet, and related aspects (such as wpasupplicant or rfkill)

  • I help fixing Unity bugs where and when possible.
  • I help maintaining Desktop packages in general, especially Evolution.
  • I'm also contributing fixes to various bugs I find in day-to-day use on my own desktop, or to help out friends (or community members in Ubuntu-QC events). Those are mostly desktop related.

I strongly believe in working closely with upstream, and building a good relationship with them. It's key to getting issues fixed promptly and correctly, and also clearly a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the projects that we touch.

Things I could do better

I think I could be quicker at upstreaming patches and generating discussion on such patches. I tend to sit on patches too long even if I know I should champion them upstream as early as possible. On the other hand, in some cases I can also be overenthusiastic about specific fixes, where upstreaming directly (e.g. to Debian), without filing a merge or bug report would be better than risking complex transition issues through Ubuntu-specific patches.

Plans for the future

General

I want to spend more time on other aspects of networking than just NetworkManager, especially some of the lower layers: wpasupplicant probably needs more love than it is currently getting, just like IPv6 may benefit from still some more efforts to make it really rock.

I want to spend as much time as possible helping to keep the sponsorship queue in check.

What I like least in Ubuntu

I think we are not as careful as we could be to uphold the level of packaging quality inherited from Debian. I see some packages that are getting updated without fixing possible lintian issues that arise. I think we can both avoid major deltas against Debian but also uphold an equal or higher level of packaging quality.

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.

Daniel Holbach (dholbach)

General feedback

I haven't sponsored a lot of Mathieu's uploads, but the ones I looked at, I was quite happy with. I met Mathieu at UDS, was involved in various discussions with him and like his thoughtful approach to things and his cooperation with upstreams, Debian, etc.

Keep up the good work, Mathieu.

Specific Experiences of working together

Martin Pitt

General feedback

I have sponsored a number of easy fixes/merges, and also some complex merges and bug fixes for him, which all involved different packages. He demonstrated that he can debug nontrivial bugs in previously untouched software. From my sponsored uploads and from him being a Debian maintainer I am confident enough in his packaging and policy skills to recommend him to become a MOTU.

Thanks Mathieu for your great work!

Specific Experiences of working together

Areas of Improvement

He should watch out his assigned bug list to not pile up too much, but so far he has been doing well.

Didier Roche

General feedback

I've sponsored particularly the evolution stack which was a non trivial update involving a lot of the stack. Particularly remerging with Debian is quite tricky. Mathieu volunteered and tackled it. I only had few requests on some changes and he did it in a timely fashion. He hasn't done the same mistakes against so I think it's been useful and integrated Smile :) Keep up the good work Mathieu!

Specific Experiences of working together

Please add good examples of your work together, but also cases that could have handled better.

Areas of Improvement

Just do more packaging work and handle more complex cases, that will come with time and experience. Smile :)

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

Mtrudel/MOTUApplication (last edited 2011-02-25 10:13:29 by mne69-6-82-231-93-97)