DesktopApplication

I, Tim Lunn, apply for ubuntu-desktop packageset.

Name

Tim Lunn

Launchpad Page

https://launchpad.net/~darkxst

Wiki Page

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TimLunn

There is a large amount of overlap between the ubuntu-desktop packageset and Ubuntu GNOME, it would help greatly if I had upload rights to these packages. I have worked closely with the desktop team over the years and many of these packages. It goes without saying that I would not upload anything major/transitions/breaking api etc without discussions with the desktop team.

Who I am

I'm a long-time linux enthusiast and gnome-shell fan, that spends my free time, messing around with GNOME. I am the technical Lead for Ubuntu GNOME.

My Ubuntu story

I have been using Ubuntu since way back to the Warty days (before that I used debian for years), for the most part I was content with gnome2, I just took whatever I was given and just existed as a 'user'. Then came gnome-shell, I was somewhat excited by this and saw great potential, however at the time it was really quite broken on Ubuntu. Ultimately this was my trigger to getting involved in GNOME and now Ubuntu.

At the time, I started out messing around with a few gnome-shell extensions, then writing extensions, which led to fixing upstream GNOME bugs. By the time Jeremy announced Ubuntu GNOME remix, I had quite a good understanding of the gnome-shell stack, and needless to say that came in very handy in getting the first Ubuntu GNOME Release together!

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Have been involved with the Ubunhttps://wiki.ubuntu.com/TrustyTahr/Alpha1/UbuntuGNOME?action=edit&editor=texttu GNOME project since the start.

For Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10 (Unoffical), I fixed quite a large number of blocker bugs during our very short dev cycle for this release.

During Saucy cycle I took over Technical Lead for Ubuntu GNOME.

Packaging on gnome3 PPA's.

Have contributed alot of upstream bugfixes to GNOME. Many of these have been related to Ubuntu specific bugs. I have many upstream GNOME contacts which helps!

Ported gjs/gnome-shell to the Spidermonkey engine based of Firefox 17. Then spent a lot of time prodding mozilla people and patching their build system trying to get an official release. Then again for Spidermonkey 24 which has been released and is the default these days.

Written numerous patches to core GNOME components, most of the downstream patches are to satisfy the needs of ubuntu-desktop and unblock upload of these newer components.

GNOME Foundation Member

Areas of work

My main focus at this point is gnome-shell and the rest of the GNOME stack. I tend to work upstream wherever possible, since I really don't want to add to the often insane patch deltas on many of the GNOME packages.

I am essentially the main maintainer for Core GNOME stack in Ubuntu, mainly gdm, gnome-desktop, gnome-settings-daemon, gnome-control-center, mutter and gnome-shell. However quite a number of these packages or there dependencies are owned by ubuntu-desktop.

Things I could do better

I probably need to forward more work onto Debian.

Plans for the future

General

The state of GNOME etc in Ubuntu has improved immensly since the start of Ubuntu GNOME. Our first LTS has proved to be rock solid and 15.04 has again improved on that. So now my main goal at the moment is trying to encourage more contributions to the Ubuntu GNOME project. I have been working with a number of new contributors, trying to get them up to speed on packaging etc.

What I like least in Ubuntu

There are still some pain points caused by the overlap between Ubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME packagesets, although that has improved significantly in recent cycles, the main issue these days seem to be getting gtk updates through in a timely fashion.

At times I find the code quality of patches questionable, I think some patches slip through the cracks without a proper review, since some of the better packagers who are sponsoring things don't have much programming background.

More generally, I think more effort needs to go into supporting new contributors. Without direct contact with a sponsor it can takes weeks for patches to be reviewed etc. Early on I found this very disconcerting, although these days I just bug the relevant people. Although it does seem that the sponsorship queues have been kept more under control so far in the Trusty cycle.


Testimonials

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@.

I have joined Ubuntu GNOME in July, 2013 and had the chance to know Tim. For 3 years now contributing to Ubuntu Communities, I have never seen a better developer like Tim as of today. He has my full help and support (too bad and sad that I am not a developer) and definitely got my huge +1. He deserves the appreciation and I highly recommend him and support his application. amjjawad

Tim is a true natural leader, someone you can rely on for hard work. I have been using Ubuntu GNOME since its very first days and I am also a member of the Ubuntu GNOME Team; the day Tim became the head of the project, everything definitely changed for better. Tim is one of those men whom it is a pleasure to work with. His technical skills do not cease to impress me. aldomann

I recently joined the Ubuntu GNOME community after contributing to other Ubuntu family projects. I specifically did this because Tim, as the lead developer for Ubuntu GNOME, has worked hard to establish a community and atmosphere where all members of the contributing community, technical and non-technical alike, are welcomed, respected, and encouraged to learn and share. In short, Tim has set the Ubuntu GNOME community on a path towards healthy, positive and productive growth now and in the future. He has my respect as a community leader. dbyentzen

Since Tim recruited me to help with gnome packaging, i have learnt a lot from him about gnome. He is very dedicated to the project is a a huge part of it's current level of success. I support his application for MOTU wholeheartedly. Noskcaj


Endorsements

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

Iain Lane (laney)

General feedback

I've worked with Tim quite a bit on desktop packages now. I think that he's improved his appreciation of the distro as a whole and now takes our needs into account. Would be happy for him to get ~ubuntu-desktop membership. It's often the case that Ubuntu GNOME's changes are entangled with the main Ubuntu desktop - please continue to discuss difficult issues with us but it'll be easier if you take ownership of problems and aren't afraid to touch Ubuntu's stuff (with testing of course).

Specific Experiences of working together

Have sponsored a few things, most recent example is the update to g-c-c/g-s-d 3.16 which required some backports to u-s-d. They can't quite be uploaded yet, but look good to me.

Robert Ancell

General feedback

Tim works across a large number of packages in the GNOME stack which overlaps with many of the core Ubuntu packages. He's not afraid to tackle some of the difficult issues where both stacks conflict and works effectively to improve the situation for both Ubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME. I have no doubt that him being able to work directly on these packages will help both teams.

Specific Experiences of working together

I've sponsored a number of packages for Tim, generally without any changes needed. We also discuss on IRC various packaging issues.

Sebastien Bacher

General feedback

Tim has been doing lot of good work on Ubuntu GNOME. He's active on IRC and work with upstream/Debian as needed. He also understands how Ubuntu is working and the impact of his work on other desktops.

Specific Experiences of working together

I've been reviewing/sponsoring GNOME updates for him over the cycles, his work is usually good quality.

Areas of Improvement

Sometime work done in the GNOME ppa isn't submitted/discussed when done but postponed to later (or let to Ubuntu packagers to pick up) which can lead to duplication (other people re-do updates done already there) and confusing bug reports (that might not be specific to Tim though but to other GNOME3 team members)


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 ===


Previous Applications

Ubuntu GNOME Packageset

Contributing Developer

Previous Endorsements

(From Contributing Developer Application)

Jasper St. Pierre

General feedback

From the GNOME side, darkxst is the primary developer for one of the most popular and unique extensions on extensions.gnome.org. As all the code is reviewed for security reasons, I'll say that his code is among the better ones on the site. He's also somehow successfully pressured Mozilla to release a new SpiderMonkey tarball for us on the GNOME side, which I and some coworkers have been unsuccessfully trying to do for around two years. I don't contribute to Ubuntu, so I honestly can't give any feedback about that...

After ten? eleven? of his contributions, I requested that he apply for a GNOME Git account, which was approved.

Specific Experiences of working together

Whenever he has a problem with GNOME/Ubuntu integration, he'll ask me to help debug or take a look at a patch -- it's always been a pretty collaborate experience. I can't think of a single time it hasn't gone smoothly.

The most recent example I can think of is SpiderMonkey 1.8.7 and gjs work. He's been pressuring Mozilla into releasing new tarballs for their JavaScript engine, and he's been contributing various patches and fixes for their build systems when they were uncomfortable with what they had. To speed up acceptance on the GNOME side, he's written a fairly large set of changes to port gjs SpiderMonkey 1.8.7, all of which are ready to land when the new tarball comes out.

Areas of Improvement

Jeremy Bicha

General feedback

I strongly believe Tim is ready for Ubuntu membership as a Contributing Developer. Tim has been an essential member of the Ubuntu GNOME Team for the past 5 months. He also contributes to GNOME directly where he recently gained git commit access.

Specific Experiences of working together

* Because of my work with the Ubuntu GNOME project, I've sponsored most of Tim's work. His contributions have been significant and the quality of his packaging has steadily improved as he's gotten more familiar with Ubuntu and Debian procedures.

* He has identified fixes to make GDM work better on Ubuntu and submitted those patches to GNOME where several of them have been accepted. GDM is a complex package and it's even more challenging that upstream and most GNOME distros use it on systemd which is a different environment than Ubuntu.

* Tim also contributed to casper to fix several issues with the live session when running GNOME Shell and GDM

* He identified the high priority packaging bug in EDS that broke Google integration with GNOME Online Accounts (1049028) which we had to SRU since the rest of us weren't able to figure out the bug until Quantal was nearly released.

* He has prepared several other SRUs: gnome-shell, mutter, gufw, and telepathy-logger.

* He has done quite a bit of packaging for the GNOME3 PPAs, especially with the 3.7.5 update. He is one of only four major contributors to the PPAs.

Areas of Improvement

* I think if you keep on doing good work with packaging, you'll be ready to apply for upload rights to the Ubuntu GNOME packages soon. I need to let other people sponsor more of your work to make the upload rights application easier.

I'm pretty disappointed that there won't be a physical UDS this May as I would have loved to meet Tim in person then.

Robert Ancell

General feedback

Tim has been very active in making GNOME work well in Ubuntu. He has taken on difficult tasks and successfully completed them. He's a strong communicator and has been easy to work with.

Specific Experiences of working together

Tim worked on making LightDM and GNOME Shell work well together (LP: 1064269).

Areas of Improvement

Continue to do more general packaging to show skills there.

CategoryPerPackageUploaderApplication

TimLunn/DesktopApplication (last edited 2015-08-04 18:13:38 by seb128)