I, Eric Desrochers, apply for Contributing Developer.

Who I am

I joined Canonical in August 2014 as a Technical Account Manager within Canonical's STS team. As a result of hard work and effort, I earned respect from my peers. Since then, along with the Canonical Technical Services Engineering team, some of my responsibilities are fixing userland/kernel bugs filed by Ubuntu Advantage customers, providing hotfix, backporting, making them (patch/fix/backport) available in stable through the SRU process, collaborating with upstream developers, ...

My Ubuntu story

I officially started to used Ubuntu in 2006 for my personal computers. In the same time, in my professional life, I was also deploying a few hundreds OpenVZ (Virtuozzo) containers running Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake).

Ten years later, I am still running Ubuntu on my personal computers and now have the chance to work for Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, as a Technical Account Manager fixing userspace and kernel bugs.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

* crash starting at kernel v3.13.0-72 in timer code

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1546320

* read() from pty doesn't finish

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1512815

* libpam-sshauth dropped support for publickey authentication

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/trusty/+source/libpam-sshauth/+bug/1507798

* ambiguous error message "sh: echo: I/O error

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ifenslave/+bug/1326854

* NTP : Use-after-free in routing socket code after dropping root:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ntp/+bug/1481388

* ntpd rejects source UDP ports less than 123 as bogus

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ntp/+bug/1479652

* Targets are not consistently shown with large numbers of targets:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tgt/+bug/1498697

* sosreport does not collect logs for Landscape Dedicated Server 15.01 and newer:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/trusty/+source/sosreport/+bug/1449131

* openipmi package compile without SSL

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openipmi/+bug/1546735

Areas of work

I've been mostly involved in fixing userland and kernel bugs for Canonical's UA customers. Working on various packaging aspects including hotfix/testfix, SRUs, backports, patches, debian patch, ... I worked with the sustaining engineering team at Canonical.

Things I could do better

Build and consistently sustain my network by attending more local networking events in my area.

Plans for the future

General

I wish one day I can become a core developper and I also hope to have the chance to give back by mentoring someone the same way I've been mentored.

What I like least in Ubuntu

In general, documentation is good but unfortunately not maintained nor updated, which have the effect to turn out-to-date very quickly.

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.

Robie Basak

General feedback

I'm happy to endorse Eric's application for Contributing Developer. Our interactions are not extensive, but I appreciate that he has worked on small pieces with various Ubuntu developers, so I'm providing this endorsement so that the DMB can more effectively consider his contributions in aggregate.

I've worked with Eric on one bug. He is courteous and communicates well.

Specific Experiences of working together

We worked on bug 1479652 together. I sponsored three debdiffs for the SRUs. Eric was aware of SRU policy and process, handled the SRU paperwork and coordinated with me for the "Fixed in development release" SRU requirement. His debdiffs were good, and functionally perfect. There were only some minor DEP-3 additions I wanted.

Areas of Improvement

Please try to communicate in public channels wherever possible. This helps with coordination and in training others. I appreciate it is trickier to do this effectively when dealing with Canonical customers (whose identity may need to remain private), but most discussion could still happen in #ubuntu-devel or #ubuntu-server on Freenode.

Chris J Arges

General Feedback / Specific Experiences of Working Together

I've worked with Eric on bug 1498697. I sponsored debdiffs for all stable series. Eric showed an understanding of the SRU process and attention to detail. I think he'd make a good contributing developer.

Areas of Improvement

I'd like to see more uploads as well as more discussion in public channels. I think this will happen as Eric fixes more things in Ubuntu.

-- arges 2016-03-07 15:36:45

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 ===