contributing-developer-application

I, Amin Bandali, apply for Ubuntu Contributing Developer.

Name

Amin Bandali

Launchpad Page

https://launchpad.net/~bandali

Wiki Page

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/bandali

I am applying because:

  • I regularly contribute to Ubuntu packages as a Canonical employee.
  • I'd like to make my commitment to Ubuntu and its development more official through becoming an Ubuntu Member.

Who I am

I'm Amin Bandali (or just bandali) and I'm a Software Engineer on the Desktop Team at Canonical, where I work mainly on the maintenance of Ubuntu's Firefox packages.

I'm a free/libre software activist and computing scientist by passion, and a software developer/engineer by profession. I wear a few hats around the GNU Project, including as GNU maintainer of Jami, and I'm also an ex-intern and current volunteer with the Free Software Foundation.

I also recently became a Debian Maintainer, and I'm working towards hopefully becoming a Debian Developer in the not-so-distant future.

My Ubuntu story

I first tried Ubuntu as a teenager in the late 2000s (I believe it was 9.04), and started using it regularly not very long after. Since then I've used Debian, Ubuntu, and many of their derivatives among other distros. I first contributed to Debian in 2020 and more recently took up maintenance of two packages, and I started contributing directly to Ubuntu as well in November 2022 when I started as a Software Engineer on the Desktop Team at Canonical.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Areas of work

As part of the Desktop Team at Canonical, I've worked primarily on/around desktop-related packages. For my work on Firefox, I've collaborated mainly with seb128, ricotz, and osomon, as well as some folks from Mozilla. For my merges/syncs and +1 rotation I've worked primarily with jbicha.

Upstream of Ubuntu, I'm the maintainer of the opendht and jami/ring packages in Debian as a Debian Maintainer.

Things I could do better

When faced with a particular challenge/problem, I'd like to do better at asking for help/hints earlier than I sometimes currently do.

Plans for the future

General

After becoming a contributing developer and doing some more sponsored uploads, I'd like to apply for the ubuntu-desktop set. I'd also like to expand my activities and contributions to other areas of Ubuntu beyond the desktop, working towards one day becoming a core dev.

Upstream of Ubuntu, I'm a Debian Maintainer working towards becoming a Debian Developer maintaining the opendht and jami/ring packages, as well as other packages from gnome-team and emacsen-team in particular.

What I like least in Ubuntu

One thing that somewhat stood out in my experiences as a fairly new Ubuntu contributor/developer was the documentation in some areas being a bit confusing, lacking, or outdated. I believe in the importance of writing and maintaining good documentation, and hope to be able to help improve it.

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.

Jeremy Bicha

General feedback

I strongly support Amin's application for Ubuntu Contributing Developer. I look forward to his future application for Ubuntu developer upload rights.

Specific Experiences of working together

Amin and I have worked on the Canonical Desktop team together since November. Although Amin's primary work is web browser maintenance, he has also merged several Ubuntu packages to incorporate Debian changes. He fixed multiple issues in universe packages during his +1 rotation, and he forwarded his work to Debian.

Sebastien Bacher

Amin has joined the Canonical Desktop Team in November. He became since the main maintainer for Firefox on Ubuntu (snap and deb), working with upstream and the Ubuntu Security team to get new versions rolled out. He's also actively helping the Ubuntu Desktop Team with packaging tasks (merges, updates and did a +1 rotation).

I've sponsored a plymouth merge recently for him and the work was solid, the package was uploaded to Lunar after a minor tweak.

Amin is showing active interest in Ubuntu and I think he contributed enough already to deserve getting the contribution dev status.

Nishit Majithia

Amin has been working with the Canonical Security team as a Firefox maintainer since November 2022. As a security engineer at Canonical, I have had the privilege of working closely with Amin on sponsoring Firefox debs (bionic and focal) for Ubuntu.

Amin's contributions have been instrumental in ensuring that Ubuntu users receive timely security updates and bug fixes. Based on his extensive contributions and outstanding work with the Canonical Security team, I wholeheartedly endorse Amin as an Ubuntu Contributing Developer.

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.''
## Full list of sponsored packages can be generated here:
##  https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi
=== Areas of Improvement ===

CategoryUniverseContributorApplication

bandali/contributing-developer-application (last edited 2023-03-03 13:51:28 by bandali)