I am a system/networks administrator for a moderate-sized internet firm in Montreal. I love Ubuntu, my dream is that one day, we will be able to close Launchpad bug #1

Ubuntu in Quebec

Well, Ubuntu should be for everyone. We can no longer say that only Windows is appropriate for the grandparents, uncle, auntie, or whomever in the family, because Ubuntu should be what we all go forward to as a community. Not just because it's free, but also because, if nothing else, it is built in part by us. If we decide to buy food (and other domestic) products locally out of concern for the community, local producers and all of that, we should do the same for software, and encourage the incredible skill and talent from our community.

On the short term, I hope for my workplace to adopt Ubuntu as a replacement for developer's desktop environments.

On the long term, I hope for our province's government to adopt Ubuntu as a viable alternative to other operating systems. Agreed, this has not happened yet and will take time, but things should at least start with a commitment, especially at the government level, to using open standards. Everyone can, we only need to be shown why it is the sensible choice.

Activities

Not Ubuntu-related

• Working, when time permits, on a joint project with a friend to write a modular point of sales system, with features comparable to those of Maitre D, a commercial PoS software package very common in the province of Quebec.

Current

• I try to stay involved in bug triaging, fixing some bugs, and packaging software.
  • I'm paying a close attention to bugs related to network-manager and its vpn plugins.
• Packaging multiple new or updated software:
  • Concordance - a library and command-line tools for configuring Logitech Harmony remotes.
  • Congruity - GUI program to configure Logitech Harmony remotes.
  • Acct - GNU Process and System Accounting utilities
    • I'm hoping to become the new maintainer for acct. Sent an ITA, as well as an updated package for review.
  • Emerillon - map viewer for GNOME
    • In progress.

  • Network-manager-openconnect - VPN client plugin for NetworkManager, to connect to Cisco AnyConnect VPN systems.

    • Uploaded to Ubuntu, to be uploaded to Debian.

  • Network-manager-netbook - Moblin panel applet for NetworkManager.

    • In progress.
• Working with 'asac' as my mentor on various NM-related tasks.

• Trying to fix LP#284596

  • I'm pretty good at C and C++, but I can still use improvement. I'm looking at this bug when time permits to try and get it fixed myself.
• I'm very active in the Ubuntu-QC team. There are lots of challenges (people geographically dispersed, not always willing to travel...), but also a lot of interest.

  • Organized, with komputes, the Ubuntu Global Jam 2009 in Montreal.

    • Many thanks to ETS (Ecole de Technologie Superieure), as well as Clod Patry and Guillaume Grasset for help and booking the rooms.

Past

• Added a patch to network-manager-vpnc to support saving only the group password to a keyring, was a major headache for work, and it has now been uploaded: LP#91964

  • A rework I did for this patch (then further reworked by Dan Williams) finally made it into NetworkManager upstream. Yay!

• Commented on various bugs, provided answers, etc.

Bug handling I'm particularly proud of

• LP#404616 - Weather forecasts are incomplete/invalid for Montreal, Quebec, Canada

  • A fairly simple and straightforward fix to libgweather in the process of being resolved. The bug was identified by Philippe Gauthier during the 2009 Global Jam, I helped confirm it, and proposed a patch during the Jam.
  • This was also (obviously) sent upstream.

• LP#291853 - Weather service does not add entry if city is selected but "Timezone" field is "Unknown"

  • Philippe Gauthier asked for a couple of hints/pointers on handling bugs and how to deal with the libgweather package. I later confirmed his fix to be working.

• LP#91964

  • As above.

• LP#252246 - [needs-packaging] Congruity

  • New package I was preparing.
  • Particularly interesting because it was uploaded through the help of Vincent Bernat from Debian-Mentors, to be later rejected by Debian FTP masters because of an issue with the license of a file. This is still in progress, but cooperating with upstream to get the file replaced and the package uploaded. It will then be synced to Ubuntu

• LP#441619 - In Ubuntu (Gnome) josm doesn't use its GTK+ theme by default

  • Another bug reported/fixed during the Global Jam 2009.

  • Reported by MagicFab, which I later confirmed, and wrote a patch for (by modifying some Java code).

Future Plans

• (short term) See one of my uploaded new packages to REVU be uploaded to universe.

• (short term) Become more regularly involved in bug fixing, triaging, etc.
• (medium term) Become part of the MOTU team.
• (medium term) Eventually become a Debian Developer.
• (long term) Becoming Ubuntu core-dev.
• (wishlist) Be paid to develop for Ubuntu.

Contact

Launchpad: mathieu-tl

Email: mathieu.tl@gmail.com

IRC: cyphermox on FreeNode or ArsTechnica servers