I, Ross Gammon, apply for Contributing Developer.

Who I am

I am Test Team Lead for the Ubuntu Studio flavour, a member of the Ubuntu Studio Development Team, and the Ubuntu Bug Squad. I am also a Debian Maintainer, maintaining a few packages on my own, and within the Debian GIS, Debian Multimedia, and Debian Javascript Teams.

My Ubuntu story

After becoming interested in Linux in 2010, and trying out Sabayon, Debian and Fedora, I eventually settled with Ubuntu on my desktop machine. In 2013 I started to look at how I could contribute back. I joined the Bug Squad in 2013 and learnt how to triage bugs in Launchpad. Due to the maintainer of the Gramps package being inactive, I took over the maintenance of that package in Debian after the steep learning curve of bringing the packaging up to date. Then I learnt the process of merging and syncing packages to Ubuntu, and have also managed a couple of SRUs & done a little backporting. These days I am mostly helping out in the Ubuntu Studio Team, and only a short time ago I became an Ubuntu Member.

My involvement

• Keeping an eye on the packages I maintain in Debian here in Ubuntu, and also seeded packages in Ubuntu Studio (SRUs, backports, syncs, merges & removals)

• Help with the Ubuntu Studio seeds and packages (e.g. ubuntustudio-menu ubuntustudio-wallpapers)

• Helping to create and maintain a small suite of manual test cases for Ubuntu Studio, and keeping an eye on the package tracker.

• Helping out with ISO Testing of the Ubuntu Studio releases for Trusty (point releases) & Xenial, marking them ready for release for the Release Team, and drafting the Release Notes.

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

• Debian Work

• Ubuntu & Debian Uploads

• Ubuntu Branches

• Ubuntu Merges

• Ubuntu Team Memberships

Areas of work

Within the Ubuntu Studio Team, Kaj Ailomaa normally uploads the ubuntustudio-* packages prepared by the Team Members. For other packages, I have had various sponsors:

• Ross's Sponsors

The uploads were mostly comment free. In the rush towards the Xenial release, there was some dialogue with Tim (darkxst) on an imagemagick bug, and Dmitry Shachnev (mitya57) on a Qjackctl bug. Dmitry ended up taking the lead and uploading a new upstream release of Qjackctl, and I need to go back and followup on the Imagemagick one (which should really become an SRU).

Things I could do better

Due to my career in Engineering, and my programming experience being fairly old, I lack a little bit of modern software development experience, and I would like to improve and bring my programming skills up to date by producing some useful tools for the Ubuntu Studio Team. I would like to be better at creating patches in more complicated situations, so that I can contribute them back upstream. I would also like to work on writing unit tests to help improve the quality of some upstream applications.

Plans for the future

• Become a Contributing Developer and continue with sponsorship for uploads
• Obtain per-package upload permission for packages that I have DM upload privileges in Debian
• Obtain per-package upload permission for the ubuntustudio-* packages
• Obtain upload permission for the Ubuntu Studio package set
• Use the Ubuntu Studio Contributors Team to mentor new developers and build up the Ubuntu Studio Developers Team (maybe eventually becoming a delegated team).
• Continue adding manual test cases for Ubuntu Studio

• Make sure all Ubuntu Studio packages have autopkgtests

What I like least in Ubuntu

Bugs reported in a LTS release, that never get triaged, and are eventually expired once the release is no longer supported (without an attempt to confirm if it is still valid in the current release). Or finding out during ISO testing that the same bugs from the last release are still there for the next one. We need more bug triagers and fixers. Building up a team of these within the flavours, where there is a natural interest and knowledge of a specific suite of packages, may help to overcome the uncertainty many newcomers feel when starting out and not having a deep knowledge of the thousands of packages and how they work & hang together.

Comments

If you'd like to comment, but are not the applicant or a sponsor, do it here. Don't forget to sign with @a link to your launchpad page@.

I've sponsored two packages for Ross, and they were solid. However, I've otherwise not followed his work so just putting in this comment instead of a real endorsement. timo-jyrinki

Endorsements

As a sponsor, just copy the template below, fill it out and add it to this section.

<Gianfranco Costamagna>

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

Areas of Improvement

== <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.''
## Full list of sponsored packages can be generated here:
## http://ubuntu-dev.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi?
=== Areas of Improvement ===