I, David Mohammed - also known by my nick 'fossfreedom', apply for PackageSet rights for Ubuntu Budgie.

Who I am

My name is David Mohammed, living in the UK. I have been involved in FLOSS since Ubuntu 7.04 days. I have a masters degree in Software Engineering and work as a senior systems developer for DXC Technology.

My initial career developer background is primarily C based - my opensource contributions are primarily python based via rhythmbox plugins - https://github.com/fossfreedom.

I am the project lead for the latest official community flavour - Ubuntu Budgie.

My prime responsibility is to maintain the current package set that makes up Ubuntu Budgie.

I have been granted by the DMB with PPU rights for our key packages: budgie-desktop, budgie-desktop-environment, budgie-artwork, budgie-welcome, budgie-wallpapers, arc-theme, moka-icon-theme, faba-icon-theme, rhythmbox-plugin-alternative-toolbar, budgie-indicator-applet, slick-greeter, budgie-extras and ubuntu-budgie-meta.

I am the also Debian Maintainer with official upload rights for budgie-desktop, arc-theme, faba-icon-theme, rhythmbox-plugin-alternative-toolbar, budgie-indicator-applet, slick-greeter. After Buster release and at a suitable upload point I will be requesting upload rights for moka-icon-theme and DesktopFolder, both packages which I maintain via Debian.

I note the recent email to Ubuntu Release with regards to TB concern for no packageset uploaders for US and at the DMB meeting 11th March 2019, UB packageset was also brought up.

As such I am applying for the packageset for UB - the packageset will need to be refreshed by DMB from the current disco seeds so I am (through this application) also requesting that this is done..

My interest is chiefly the packages for Budgie above. I have also helped with fixes & enhancement to GNOME Screensaver, Tilix & GNOME Menus in the past. I note there is an overlap of packages in our packageset with Ubuntu itself. For such packages I am more than content to devolve maintainer-ship to the current more knowledgable Debian & Ubuntu teams. Equally though - as I do now - I will continue to investigate issues and where I can identify possible resolution to those maintainers.

My Ubuntu story

I first dabbled with Ubuntu during the Feisty days and Ubuntu became my primary desktop OS soon after with Gutsy.

My first active contribution to the Ubuntu community was through Ubuntu Forums (Ubuntu Cappuccino Scuro) and later through Ask Ubuntu. Currently I am a community moderator with a not insubstantial score-card (http://askubuntu.com/users/14356/fossfreedom) together with several highly regarded Q&A's

My involvement

I started software packaging through my efforts on Ask Ubuntu. Many people requested software that was not available in debian format - or was not available for the distro release they were using. Several PPA's exist - https://launchpad.net/~fossfreedom

As a result, the software packaged is pretty diverse but I've kept those packages up-to-date as long as there was a need from end-users.

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Specifically I am most proud of my Rhythmbox Plugins PPA (https://launchpad.net/~fossfreedom/+archive/ubuntu/rhythmbox-plugins). I've gathered together 30+ packages over many years, updating when new releases were available - testing, revising, suggesting fixes upstream. I've also coded myself many new plugins to Rhythmbox myself. From the PPA stats, literally hundreds of thousands of downloads over the years has been made!

Areas of work

I am the project lead for Ubuntu Budgie and my prime responsibility is the package maintenance for our distro. I have worked both upstream - Debian - and with Ubuntu devs.

I have been pro-active when receiving bug-reports. Examples - moving fast to resolve a serious issue when the Debian migration of GTK+3.22 to 3.24 did not go smoothly resulting in needing a critical fix to budgie-desktop. Resolving perceived new debian wide security review of the use of dbus-launch - this affected budgie-desktop. Resolving new debian wide cleanup to correctly designate debian/prerm etc files to ensure they correctly start with a shebang.

I have undertaken the SRU process to push updates for budgie-desktop as part of the 17.04, 18.04 & 18.10 cycles.

All packages described above I have maintained to be fully upto-date as upstream release new fixes (https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=fossfreedom%40ubuntu.com)

Things I could do better

Revise my Rhythmbox PPA packages to be of much better package quality using lessons learned from working with Gianfranco, Adam, Jeremy and Daniel.

Plans for the future

My immediate plans revolve around making 19.04 another successful release for Ubuntu Budgie. This includes ensuring all packages are fully up-to-date, cherry-picking stability and critical fixes where necessary.

Upstream, budgie-desktop v10.5 & 10.5.1 is due to be released. Next step will be to continue to work upstream with the Solus project to merge the diff I maintain on behalf of both Debian and Ubuntu.

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.

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:
## http://ubuntu-dev.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi?
=== Areas of Improvement ===

Bhavani Shankar

General feedback

I second all the views below, (personally as someone who has installed budgie on mid-end specs for my family), For me David is Mr. Ubuntu Budgie

Coming to the sponsorship perspective, I have also sponsored several uploads for David, 26 of them to be precise, all were of very high quality and most of them passed without a comment and I strongly recommend him to be given access to Ubuntu budgie package set so that the updates and the quality stuff coming with it would have a shorter turn around time

Gianfranco Costamagna

General feedback

I have mostly the same experience as Adam has, I review a little bit new packages, and then I mostly just sign and upload his work. However I don't have experience with his Ubuntu contributions, this is why I prefer usually to see some work from him and then grant dm permissions (or advocate as PPU). I will appreciate him doing the Debian Maintainer process, grant him dm permissions for his packages, and see him upload them in Ubuntu too. Until that day, I'll continue sponsoring his work, in both Debian and Ubuntu (if any), because I trust him and the quality of his packages

Adam Borowski

General feedback

For the record, here's the full list of uploads to Debian that I and Gianfranco sponsored (with names mangled by #843961 manually fixed):

[~]$ who-uploads -M 10 arc-theme
Uploads for arc-theme:
20161005-1 to unstable: Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org>
20160923-1 to unstable: Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl>
20160605-2 to unstable: Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl>
20160605-1 to unstable: Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl>
[~]$ who-uploads -M 10 budgie-desktop
Uploads for budgie-desktop:
10.2.8-1 to unstable: Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org>
10.2.7-3 to unstable: Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl>
10.2.7-2 to unstable: Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org>
10.2.7-1 to unstable: Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org>
10.2.6-2 to unstable: Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org>
10.2.6-1 to unstable: Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org>
[~]$ who-uploads -M 10 faba-icon-theme
Uploads for faba-icon-theme:
4.1.2-1 to unstable: Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl>
[~]$ who-uploads -M 10 moka-icon-theme
Uploads for moka-icon-theme:
5.3.5-1 to unstable: Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org>
5.3.2-2 to unstable: Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl>
5.3.2-1 to unstable: Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl>
[~]$ who-uploads -M 10 rhythmbox-plugin-alternative-toolbar
Uploads for rhythmbox-plugin-alternative-toolbar:
0.17.3-1 to unstable: Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org>
0.17.2-1 to unstable: Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org>
0.17.1-1 to unstable: Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl>
0.16.3-1 to unstable: Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org>
0.15.0-1 to unstable: Gianfranco Costamagna <locutusofborg@debian.org>

I do closely review only the initial upload, looking mostly at debdiffs and automated tools for subsequent ones; all of your packaging was ok.

Jeremy Bicha

I have sponsored several uploads for David (it looks like 8). I highly recommend that he be granted upload rights for the Budgie set of packages. He has taken the time to personally get the core packages into Debian and maintain them there. I feel he has learned quite a bit about packaging through getting the packages sponsored into Debian and Ubuntu. His packaging is high-quality (compliant with latest Debian policy, uses short dh rules, etc.). David is clearly the developer from Ubuntu or Debian that cares the most about the Budgie desktop.

I feel that the delays of the Ubuntu sponsorship process are hurting Ubuntu Budgie. Some of the uploads took months to be reviewed in Ubuntu. (Part of that is probably due to them being new packages, but it's difficult to make high quality releases on time when you have to wait even a week or two for routine bugfix updates.)

Simon Quigley

General feedback

I've sponsored a few packages for David in the (albeit short) time that I've been a MOTU. The quality of the uploads I have reviewed have always been satisfactory, and require little to no tweaking to get into Ubuntu.

As Jeremy said, I think that his work is excellent; he knows the Budgie packages very well, and the sponsorship process is hindering the development of Ubuntu Budgie. He should already have the ability to upload these packages in my opinion.

Specific Experiences of working together

CategoryPerPackageUploaderApplication