ContributorApplication

I, Michael Terry, apply for universe-contributor.

Name

Michael Terry

Launchpad Page

~mterry

Wiki Page

mterry

Who I am

I'm a Linux enthusiast, an open source developer and contributor, and an Ubuntu packager. I am all over the map in term of contributions, but of recent note are my backup application Déjà Dup and my continually increasing work fixing and packaging Ubuntu bugs.

I'm also an employee of Canonical, working in their OEM Services division. I work on helping customize Ubuntu for netbooks.

I live in Boston, MA, USA, am 26 years old, and like long walks on the beach.

My Ubuntu story

I've used Ubuntu ever since it came out (i.e. since 4.10). But I was already an active contributor to GNOME and the like, so I didn't seriously consider contributing downstream ("those MOTUs will package it for me!") until I became a Canonical employee.

I like working on things that present a bad user experience. I hear untold examples of this from our OEM customers. Slowly but surely, Ubuntu is becoming ready for everyone's grandmother.

Too often, however, I simply fix something upstream, and will let the fabulous Ubuntu development team package it for me in the next release ("MOTU is for the impatient"). Well, now I'm impatient and want to help with that work, though it will mean fixing something twice (or thrice for development and stable releases).

My involvement

I have become increasingly involved outside of work. Maintaining the PPA for my Déjà Dup application and subsequently getting it into Jaunty has been instructive. I also do little fixes here and there. I'm trying to do more.

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

I maintain a list of contributions.

Areas of work

I work all over the place, but have spent a lot of time on both the first-boot experience (oem-config) and the general user experience in the form of GNOME packages.

I haven't worked with a particular developer extensively. So far, Daniel Holback has sponsored the plurality of my packages.

Things I could do better

Plans for the future

General

I intend to continue to find ways I can help improve the Ubuntu user experience and community, with an eye towards achieving MOTU.

What I like least in Ubuntu

I work a lot on netbook computers with OEMs. Their small screen size really hurts a lot of standard Ubuntu applications. Most notably Evolution. I'd love to see something like (the super new, untested) Anjul be an alternative offering to Evolution. /me notes to package it for REVU

Also, the Bluetooth and WiFi experiences leave a lot to be desired. They are both very critical, but very confusing applications. Bluetooth is getting better in the form of gnome-bluetooth. I don't know the story for WiFi.

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@.

There are some comments on my not-yet-acted-upon membership application.

Endorsements

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

Daniel Holbach (dholbach)

General feedback

Working with Michael is great. He's quick to reply to requests and questions. His patches are great and his packaging skills have improved greatly too. I sponsored/reviewed like 5 patches. I think Michael is doing a great job.

Specific Experiences of working together

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

Areas of Improvement

I'm sure that Michael will do a better and better job over time. It's just more experience that he needs, but he'll get there without problems.

Loïc Minier (lool)

General feedback

I sponsored a bunch of packages from mterry some months ago, they were nicely prepared and had good debdiffes.

Michael has been producing high quality changes at all levels, not only packaging but also in the upstream code or design changes he implemented.

Albeit I sponsored less work from him recently, we exchanged regularly on various packaging or GNOME-ish questions, and the discussions were to the point and showed his very good understanding of the problems at hand.

Michael learns fast and is gifted for opensource and Ubuntu work.

Areas of Improvement

I wish Michael would build more experience on random weird packages; he needs to face cruel packaging, awful patch systems, and painful upstreams. He probably faced some of them without my company though.

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 ===

CategoryUniverseContributorApplication

mterry/ContributorApplication (last edited 2009-03-20 14:59:55 by serris)