This is still a work in progress.

I, Nick Ellery, apply for MOTU.

Who I am

My name is Nick Ellery and I'm a student from Vancouver, Canada. I spend too much of my time on the computer and playing video games, and once in a while I participate in real life.

My Ubuntu story and My involvement

About a year and a half ago, I decided to install Ubuntu. This would be my first Linux distribution, coming from a Windows background. At the time, the latest release was Gutsy, and I was very impressed by the system. From there, I quickly got into the community. I've been contributing to Ubuntu in general for about one year now, and Ubuntu Development for about 9 months. I started off contributing to the Doc team, and quickly moved into bug triaging and QA work. By doing so, I prepared myself well for becoming a developer by getting used to working in the community. Working my way up to a universe-contributor, I contributed many merges, new upstream releases, bug fixes, as well as two new packages.

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

• Contributed a significant amount of merges and sync requests.

  • https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/extremetuxracer/0.4-2ubuntu1

• Packaged two plasmoids

  • https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plasma-widget-stockquote/

  • https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plasma-widget-tvprogramme

• Significant decrease in amount of errors and changes needed for submitted debdiffs
• My knowledge of Ubuntu development in general has increased dramatically since first starting out from scratch

Areas of work

• Merging/Syncing packages. Packages in Universe, with emphasis on many science-related packages.
• New upstream releases
• Maintaining the two plasmoids I've packaged
• Bug fixes for packages in Universe
• Recently started reviewing packages of REVU and plan to do much more with MOTU privaleges

Things I could do better

• Ensuring that there are absolutely no errors in uploads by going out of my way to double and triple check
• Not to be too overconfident that an upload is good as it may blind me from errors
• Read more documentation and expand my knowledge
• Ensuring quality over quantity in my work
• Taking on more challenges while still maintaining confidence in what I am doing

Plans for the future

• Join ubuntu-universe-sponsors and give back some of what I took from all of the sponsorship of my uploads.
• Join MOTU Mentors. My mentor, Nicolas Valcárcel (nxvl) did a huge amount to get me started and on my way. I'd like to have the same effect on another new contributor.
• Upload more new packages
• Increase my overall knowledge of Ubuntu Development

What I like least in Ubuntu

I feel that Ubuntu's contribution back to Debian is lower than I would like. In many cases, I find that changes made in Ubuntu are not forwarded to Debian right away. As somebody who has contributed a lot of merges, I find that I am reporting these changes to Debian as I come across them during a merge. This means that if the package isn't updated in Debian for quite some time, the Ubuntu change isn't in Debian for quite some time. Fixing this could be as simple as the developers forwarding changes to Debian as soon as they are made in Ubuntu. However, in the future I'd like to see more changes in Ubuntu as a whole which are the the benefit of Debian and upstream projects.

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

Nick does great work and improved a lot over time. I sponsored around 15-20 package for him.

Specific Experiences of working together

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/slony1/+bug/244713

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/keepassx/+bug/250299

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mouseemu/+bug/269965

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtk-recordmydesktop/+bug/255791

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/planfacile/+bug/133523

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/glunarclock/+bug/300532

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/modconf/+bug/300547

• https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/jaunty-changes/2008-November/001286.html

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnotime/+bug/304642

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/debian-reference/+bug/309258

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dasher/+bug/305868

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/meta-gnome2/+bug/310334

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/smarty/+bug/310786

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unbound/+bug/310779

Areas of Improvement

Nick could generally still be a bit more careful, but his contributions have improved a lot already and he's generally doing a great job.

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