I, Simon Quigley, apply to be a Core Developer in the Ubuntu project.

Who I am and my Ubuntu story

I'm a 16 year old living in Wisconsin, USA who has a passion for Linux and Ubuntu. I have been contributing to Ubuntu for a while, originally earning Ubuntu Membership on February 4th, 2016. Here is a timeline of my accomplishments over the years. I...

• was the leader of my LoCo for a solid six months from late 2015 to early 2016. Unfortunately, I no longer have the exact dates.

• became a member of Bug Squad on August 14, 2015.
• became an editor for the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter in March of 2016, lead the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter from February to October of 2017, and stepped down from there.
• was an on and off Kubuntu Ninja until August 2, 2016 where I became a ninja "for good."
• was elected by the Ubuntu Community Council on to the Ubuntu Membership Board with my term starting on September 26, 2016.
• became a Kubuntu Member due to my significant and sustained contributions to Kubuntu's packaging on October 18, 2016.
• became the Lubuntu Release Manager on February 6, 2017.

• became a MOTU on August 28, 2017.

• became a member of the MOTU SWAT Team on August 31, 2017.
• became a member of the Kubuntu Release Team on October 3, 2017.
• was privileged with the ability to use Bileto on November 28, 2017.

• became a Qt 5 Uploader on March 12, 2018.

• was elected to be a member of the Ubuntu Developer Membership board by Ubuntu Developers on May 10, 2018, being the only member who is not already a Core Developer.

My involvement

Here are some activities and transitions that I have been directly involved in the planning or execution of, which relate to my ability to be a constructive Ubuntu Core Developer:

• Following Canonical's transition away from focusing on Unity 8 and the phone, I stepped up to be the primary maintainer of (and the primary person looking after) Qt in Ubuntu after Timo Jyrinki stepped down. I made some changes with the handling of Qt in Ubuntu, including:

  • Keeping the Debian delta minimal and syncing the majority of the packages.
  • Driving the use of the Qt 5.9 LTS series in Ubuntu, to ensure that every developer who wishes to use Qt in the Ubuntu LTS (either as a developer or as a user of Qt software) can do so and have a stack which is both maintained upstream and maintained by Ubuntu.

  • Creating a channel to coordinate Qt development in, now that an increasing number of flavors are using it as their primary UI toolkit. This has proved to be extremely productive, because we have a handful of developers from various upstreams/organizations that support Qt (KDAB, KDE, Debian, Fedora, and probably more) that participate in discussions there, or at minimum, idle and provide feedback where necessary.

• Wrote thorough documentation on and started the migration of Ubuntu's seeds to Git.

My development work in Ubuntu typically focuses on one (or more of) the following:

• Lubuntu, typically by performing surgery or generally maintaining the LXQt stack.

• Kubuntu, mostly bugfixes alongside Rik Mills.

• Qt, in Debian and Ubuntu, to ensure that the packages stay in shape.
• Security work to keep any of the above relatively free from security problems.
• General archive work, including sponsorship of packages when approached (I don't bite!) or when I feel it is a good time to go through the queue.
• Paid work, by Ubuntu MATE, UBports, or Altispeed, on specific projects, which can overlap any of the above.

Uploads and code merged

According to the Ultimate Debian Database, here are the uploads which have been sponsored but I do not have upload access to already.

(Manual formatting has been done for readability.)

Sponsors:

Upload types:

Here are the merge requests I proposed against branches which either correspond to packages in Main or branches I would get commit access to should I become a Core Developer:

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

I don't have any particularly notable uploads or code contributions; I'm just happy that I am able to make a difference.

Notable mistakes and what I learned

First debhelper merge

The first debhelper merge I did, while it did build correctly in a PPA, broke builds in the archive due to the merge not being correctly done.

Fortunately this was quickly caught, and I got a follow-up fix sponsored shortly after.

This taught me to test packages with reverse-dependencies before uploading in a more thorough manner. Even a simple build in a PPA would have revealed the problem, and it could have been fixed prior to being uploaded to the main archive.

Things I could do better

File more bugs and be a little bit verbose at times. Sometimes I end up duplicating work, and that's typically not a good thing.

Plans for the future

General

• Continue to contribute as I already have been, especially as a Lubuntu Developer (which will be easier should I become a Core Developer).
• Put more of an emphasis on mentoring new contributors. As the old saying goes, "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

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@.

Simon has been a huge asset to both myself and the Ubuntu Studio team in advising and helping us clean some Ubuntu Studio core packages. With myself being so new and thrust into the role of release manager among other leadership roles with Ubuntu Studio, he has been a source of council and guidance and wisdom beyond his years. -- eeickmeyer 2018-08-06 22:55:52

I've had the pleasure of working with Simon since his entry into the Ubuntu community. We have been in many of the same projects but mostly Lubuntu, where his diligence and hard work eventually earned him a place as release manager. He's held additional leadership roles within the community and he often is coming up with great new directions. Despite our history and my understanding of his commitment and work ethic, I continuously find myself impressed by the work he's doing. It's getting better all the time. Part of that is his responsiveness to feedback he receives, but a lot of it is simply personal continuous improvement. I am sure that he will be an asset in whatever team he is on, but especially with development, as that is an area of particular interest to him. -- wxl 2018-08-08 15:50:08

Simon has always been an excellent source of information, guidance and direction when it comes to all things Ubuntu and explicitly packaging. As a very active member in the overall community, granting this additional role would be nothing short of beneficial based on his dedication alone. Having made many public proposals, this shows his continued focus on improving the ecosystem and attempting to make process, interactions and results better. A leading guide and community member. -- bashfulrobot 2018-08-08 21:46:37

I enjoy working with Simon: he has a strong commitment to high-quality work and a very strong desire to deliver the best possible user experience. He's eager to ask for advice and willing to teach and explain new tricks to an old dog. When he sees a problem he's good at both starting and maintaining a conversation about solutions and also eager to do the work. -- seth-arnold 2018-08-11 02:24:00

I have worked with Simon for Kubuntu packages, collaborated to assist Qt uploads and migration, and with other packages related to those. He has always been helpful and prompt in solving issues, showing an ever improving technical competence. Should issues occur due to his changes, this only increases his enthusiasm and dedication to the issue at hand. His transition from 'newbie' packager proposing small fixes to Kubuntu CI packaging repos to this core developer application, through MOTU and Qt upload permissions, has been rapid and impressive, but well deserved. I suspect strongly that he would have been granted Kubuntu developer status at the end of 2017 if it had not been unfortunate that quorum could not be reached for his meeting, and his subsequent decision to put that on the back burner. -- rikmills 2018-08-13 13:40:51

I'm not a core-dev so I can't properly advocate/endorse Simon, but I wish to leave a good mark for him as well. I've worked with him for some years already, seeing him grow from pretty much nothing to his heavy involvement with the Debian Qt/KDE team (and I think I advocated him already both for MOTU and DM). He loves to do good work everywhere, often seeking suggestions from his peers on how to do things better, and he doesn't shy away from challenges or new things, making him a great asset for all teams to have. Also, I don't think I ever saw him breaking something and leaving it broken for others to fix, which is also nice. -- mapreri 2018-08-13 19:26:30

Endorsements

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

Gianfranco Costamagna (locutusofborg)

General feedback

I sponsored a lot of packages for Simon in the past months, and he quickly reacted and fixed stuff when broke, and he cared about his ongoing transitions. He asks when in doubt, and cares about users and fellow developers. He is ready for Core-Dev right now.

Steve Langasek (vorlon)

General feedback

I have sponsored a couple of uploads for Simon and landed several merge proposals from him, to both packages and to infrastructure code bases. While some of these MP reviews included multiple rounds of discussion, this is no different from what I expect with any other core-dev. I find Simon agreeable and constructive in his engagement, eager to learn, and gracious in accepting feedback. I do not have the breadth of interaction with his code to make a completely unqualified endorsement for core-dev, but I am confident in his committment to working within the Ubuntu community according to community norms.

Graham Inggs (ginggs)

General feedback

I've sponsored several uploads for Simon. His work is of a high quality and he asks questions when he is unsure. He has a good understanding of transitions and migrations. I've already seen him sponsoring packages for others, and I believe he is ready to become a Core Developer now.

Dmitry Shachnev (mitya57)

General feedback

Even though I am not listed in the sponsors table above, I have worked closely with Simon on Qt packaging, and he is doing the current Qt transition (5.10) mostly without my help. I have also seen him contribute to other packages in various forms (sync, merge, Ubuntu specific, SRU, etc). He is also taking part and starting himself discussions on ubuntu-devel mailing list, and I usually agree with his vision of Ubuntu’s future. I support his application.

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 ===