Ubuntu Wiki

About Me

My name is William, and I love Ubuntu. The first version of Ubuntu I used was 14.04 while working on my bachelor's degree. That was when I realized that I loved computers and writing code, and I've been doing it ever since.

After leaving university, I started work at a company called CMI, where I made sure I would be allowed to use Ubuntu before I agreed to work there. While at CMI I realized I wanted to do more OS level development, so I moved to Dallas and got a job at a company called Forcepoint where I was developing Linux operating systems for military use. Also during this time I wrote and maintained some high performance networking software in C. After gaining enough Linux and software development experience there I joined the Ubuntu foundations team in January 2021, where I am currently employed.

I have a passion for SBCs, and specifically Raspberry Pis. During my time so far on the Foundations team I have been very lucky to be able to help contribute to Ubuntu on the Pi. I have also done a fair amount of distro work and re-written the ubuntu-image tool in Go to better improve it's integration with snapd.

I currently live in Dallas, Texas with my wife and three dogs.

Contact Information

Contributions

• My greatest contribution to Ubuntu so far is my work on ubuntu-image. By rewriting it in Go I was able to greatly reduce the amount of code needed to build images by reducing duplication with snapd. I am proud to say this project currently has a 100% go report-card score and 100% test coverage.

• I have contributed to RISC-V development by SRU-ing u-boot and u-boot menu to focal in order to enable booting on the HiFive Unmatched

• I have created a post on my personal blog about installing Ubuntu on the Unmatched, which as of this writing has over 2,000 views.

• I have contributed to Raspberry Pi functionality by working on Bluetooth enablement, and with another blog post

• I have designed open source 3D printable Ubuntu cases for the Raspberry Pi and HiFive Unmatched

• I have done two weeks of +1 maintenance work so far. I find this work enjoyable, as it lets me stay fresh on my skills with a wide variety of programming languages.

• In addition to my previously mentioned SRU experience, I have a fairly long Sponsorship list that includes an MIR of multiple packages

• I have merged multiple packages from Debian, including sudo, procps, and gnutls28

Future Goals

• Finish the ubuntu-image rewrite with continued 100% test coverage
• Continue to contribute to Raspberry Pi and RISC-V development
• Gain more toolchain experience, specifically by working on Go in Ubuntu
• Become an Ubuntu Core Developer

Testimonials

I've been working with William since he started at Canonical and it's been a pleasure. He is genuinely excited about working on Ubuntu and making it better. Additonally, his attention to detail and patience when dealing with some difficult issues (http://launchpad.net/bugs/1902025, http://launchpad.net/bugs/1927078) has been impressive. I look forward to continuing to work with him and see what else he does! -- brian-murray 2021-08-10 21:22:09

William has irrepressible enthusiasm when it comes to hacking on Ubuntu, particularly on more obscure bits of hardware, and I've thoroughly enjoyed working with him on the Ubuntu Pi images (e.g. bug 1921915). He's also done sterling work on RISC-V enablement, particularly around u-boot (bug 1934791 and bug 1923162), and some rather neat extra-curricular projects (HiFive unmatched case). He has no problem diving into new things, and isn't afraid to ask questions when there's something puzzling. I'm looking forward to any and all future collaborations! -- waveform 2021-08-24 23:15:46