I, Rohan Garg, apply for MOTU.

Who I am

I'm a Kubuntu developer, trying to make K/Ubuntu the best distro in the world

My Ubuntu story

Started using K/Ubuntu in late 2008 and found quite some bugs at which point I was invited to fix them in #kubuntu-devel. Got acquainted with packaging over the next couple of months after which most of my work has been with the Kubuntu team with the occasional fix to libraries that support KDE packages.

Applying to MOTU

I'd like to not be restricted to KDE stuff but also have a wider access to other Ubuntu packages in general so that I may be able to fix packages as I encounter them in the ubuntu archive.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Areas of work

General

• Packaging new KDE SC releases:
  • Getting the newest KDE software releases into Kubuntu ASAP together with the rest of the Ninjas and the other kubuntu-devs.
• Orchrestrating ISO builds for Project Neon 5 which provide a easy mechanism to test the upcoming Plasma Workspaces 5 and KDE Frameworks 5

• Getting packages upstreamed ( for eg. kscreen and libkscreen )

• Testing alpha releases:
  • I'm usually using the devel release as my main environment to notice regressions as quickly as possible.

• Co-maintaining Project Neon & Project Neon 5:

  • Making sure current KDE svn trunk / git master builds on kubuntu and notifying upstream developers if something got broken on their side.
• Managing the KDE SC packaging of the ninjas:
  • Informing people what work is to be done, coordinating it and keeping track of what the debian-qt-kde team does so we keep duplicating work to a minimum.

• Full list of my package uploads:

  • What of the work I've done so far ended up in the archive.

Recent

• New Driver Manager module for Kubuntu in 14.04 so we could move to the fancy new ubuntu-drivers backend
• Started merging KDE SC packaging from Debian

• SRU work in Ubuntu

Older

• Updating KDE Telepathy and getting it into the archives
• Mediating between upstream KDE projects and Kubuntu to get features that we required in Kubuntu and/or fixing bugs myself at times
• Successfully resurrecting Project Neon together with Philip and Michal and maintaining it.
• Merging KDE packages from debian.
• Getting upstream copyrights fixed during 4.7 split as most upstream maintainers forgot to fix that during the git move.

• Getting twitter API keys replaced in choqok since they posed a security risk and twitter threatened to ban the keys choqok shipped http://arst.ch/ma1

• Filing MIR's

Things I could do better

Better checking of SRU , sometimes I miss things, just need to check things a bit more thoroughly with those

Plans for the future

General

What I like least in Ubuntu

Currently, the thing I like the least is the Mir situation. Primarily because Unity is moving towards a Mir world and KDE/GNOME/etc have choosen to stick with Wayland. This represents a huge problem for users who are using one DE and want to try out Unity and vice versa. I fear that switching DE's is not going to be a pleasant experience for users, however, we still have some time to switch to Mir/Wayland, so we'll cross this bridge when we come to it, and when we do, I hope we can work out a solution that suits everyone's needs

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.

HaraldSitter

General feedback

Rohan has been working on Kubuntu since forever. Since I was his primary sponsor for the first couple of months I personally probably sponsored (or co-sponsored) a godzillion packages over the years. He's a ~kubuntu-dev and therefore has unrestricted access to the Kubuntu package set and so far didn't break the ISO. He does bug triage/fixing, works tirelessly to create high quality packages, has substantial knowledge of the release process, and is actively engaged in both KDE's and Kubuntu's community. Seeing as I +1'd his ~kubuntu-member membership and later his ~kubuntu-dev membership, I guess I trust him to not break the universe alright

Specific Experiences of working together

The last time we worked together on a package is so kitten long ago I cannot remember. He's become kubuntu-dev in 2012 and I definitely have not had any cases where I had to guide him through packaging or anything since 2010 or 2011. What I am saying is: make him MOTU already.

Areas of Improvement

There's no such thing. At any rate I couldn't think of anything in particular. There's the regular minor annoyances when one is working with other people, but really, I could not point at anything and go "that needs to improve".

ScottKitterman

General feedback

I don't know how many packages I've sponsored for Rohan, but it's a quite a few (the sponsorship miner says 24). The quality is always good and I've no reason to question his technical ability in Debian packaging. Rohan is pleasant to work with and I do trust him to do a good job and to fix issues if he makes mistakes. In addition to the raw sponsorship count, we've worked together extensively on Kubuntu issues that did not result in package uploads and on getting his work forwarded to Debian.

I have been encouraging this application for a long time. I'm glad to finally see it.

Specific Experiences of working together

Our most recent interchange was not as a sponsor, but as a member of Ubuntu SRU. Upstream had made a new release of kdeconnect that was allegedly bug fix only, but in fact was not. I caught this before it was accepted and discussed it with Rohan. He worked with the upstream developer so that upstream understood better what we were looking for in terms of bug fix updates, got a new release done with upstream, and redid the SRU (I didn't process the subsequent SRU, but I'd imagine it was fixed).

I think this demonstrated Rohan's willingness to go fix things when there are problems, which is essential and also his interest in supporting the current release and not just focusing on development.

Areas of Improvement

As Rohan says himself, his SRU uploads could stand a bit more attention to detail (but in general I've no concerns at all with the general quality of his uploads - SRU requirements are just more picky).

JonathanRiddell

General feedback

I echo those comments above. He's worked on Kubuntu packaging for a long time and it's great he wants to expand his repertoire to more of the archive.

Specific Experiences of working together

The last package I sponsored was an update to kdeconnect. Rohan updated it but a bug was found after upload https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kdeconnect/+bug/1319365 so he worked with the upstream author to get the fix made as a new upstream release and I again sponsored the second upload. A nice workflow.

Areas of Improvement

Maybe be more visible to the developer community, write more blog posts, take part in more policy discussions (as he's currenly doing with licence issue).

MichalZajac

General feedback

I think I have been working Rohan since 2010 because we joined the project roughly at the same time. I do not think I ever had major problems with the quality of his packaging. Working with Rohan is generally a breeze as he is rather meticulous. Obviously mistakes do happen but he is quick to fix them. I fully trust that he does his job to the best of his ability.

Specific Experiences of working together

Recently we have been working on KDE Telepathy software stack in main and I had like...no problems at all. It went quickly and smoothly and now we have a good packaging base to work with when upgrading the packages. During that proccess Rohan also managed to establish a good communication channel between upstream and us.

Areas of Improvement

While I have no problems with that as we have been working together for a rather long time I think he could more verbose at times.

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 ===

CategoryMOTUApplication