MOTU

I, Simon Quigley, apply to be a Master of the Universe in the Ubuntu project.

Name

Simon Quigley

Launchpad Page

~tsimonq2

Wiki Page

tsimonq2

Who I am

I'm a 15 year old living in Wisconsin, USA who likes Linux, Ubuntu, and technology in general. I have had a passion for computers ever since I was 9, starting out by learning some basic HTML on a Windows XP machine, growing my knowledge and passion from there.

My Ubuntu story

I installed Ubuntu in February of 2015 after breaking my Windows 7 install, and was instantly attracted to the development side of the project. I wanted to work with others to develop software, which was always something I wished I could do but didn't have any interested friends. But, after reading the Ubuntu Packaging Guide, I was stuck, some steps didn't work, and that discouraged me. So I gave up.

I then joined a Lubuntu IRC channel that July after finding out Lubuntu ran better on my computer. I joined that community, started working on other projects within Ubuntu such as the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, and I worked to get Ubuntu Membership on February 4th, 2016.

From then on, I expanded my contributions, becoming the Lubuntu Release Manager, helping run the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, and a few other contributions listed on my main page. I continue to do various tasks within the community as a contributor outside of my development work.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

I have an increasing number of examples of my work and things I am proud of, but not all of them are specific to Ubuntu Universe/Multiverse. Here are two of them that are notable.

Fix out-of-bounds read, potential heap buffer overflow, and other CVEs - vlc

This was tracked in bug 1693893.

This is something I am proud of because it was a semi-large security update for a well-known music player, VLC, and it demonstrates knowledge of proper procedure.

I was listening to an episode of the Ubuntu Podcast and a listener submitted feedback about the fact that VLC had several known vulnerabilities that were not even being paid attention to. I looked into it to see if anybody had picked it up, and nobody did, so I used an existing bug, assigned myself, and got working. I spent several hours preparing patches, uploading to my PPA to later test (a solid chunk of relevant testing per upload), and attached it to the bug report. Soon after, the patches were reviewed and uploaded with no changes necessary. This proved that I had knowledge of the security upload procedure, the sponsorship procedure, and knew how to properly perform QA on my uploads.

Merging msttcorefonts from Debian

LocutusOfBorg initially approached me about doing this merge, and it was a difficult merge to do, as I had not ever done a merge this complex. Ubuntu had a rather large delta, and only some of it was upstreamed to Debian. It took me about four hours to completely finish the merge, as the script from merges.ubuntu.com dropped some of the delta for no apparent reason, and I had to start over several times because I messed things up. Once I finally finished the merge and tested it (it worked), I submitted my debdiff to LocutusOfBorg and he uploaded it without question. I think this is a good example of a complex merge I did correctly, and my ability to properly assess a complex Ubuntu delta.

Areas of work

  • Helping maintain various Lubuntu packages, whether it be LXQt, LXDE, or applications that any of the installations have or share.
  • Kubuntu development team member.
  • Qt packaging in Ubuntu and Debian.
  • Maintainer of vc, hardinfo in Debian (I'm in the process of adopting more) and in the Debian Qt/KDE team.

  • General Universe cleanup (merges.ubuntu.com, qa.ubuntuwire.org/ftbfs, helping with transitions such as Python 3.6, etc.)

Things I could do better

  • Be a bit more patient sometimes, things take time.
  • Improve my skills in updating copyright files (this could possibly be because I don't have much experience with it).

Plans for the future

General

  • Help the Kubuntu team upload whatever packages they need uploaded but aren't in the kubuntu packageset. As a member of the Kubuntu team, this will be extremely helpful to the Kubuntu team, who only has Kubuntu Developers at the moment.

  • Continue to do work as part of the Kubuntu team.
  • Update the Ubuntu Packaging guide at one point, it's frustratingly outdated in a couple of places. Had this actually been functional and up-to-date, I would have joined the community much sooner, and I'm confident that I'm not the only one who has been deterred by its lack of functionality...
  • Help maintain the Qt packages in Ubuntu, and work with the Kubuntu and Lubuntu team (as members of those teams) and any other team that uses or may use Qt in Ubuntu to make sure Qt is functional and up-to-date. A lot of this work will be done in Debian, as I am working with others to greatly reduce Ubuntu's delta.
  • Work more on the Lubuntu development team to fix bugs in our applications and in LXQt and LXDE (and to help maintain the Lubuntu Qt spin).

What I like least in Ubuntu

  • A good amount of the Ubuntu-specific documentation is horribly outdated, I want to help update it.
  • The barrier for entry required to do packaging is higher than a lot of other areas within Ubuntu.


Comments

I have worked with Simon on packaging in Kubuntu, administration of our CI etc. His endless enthusiasm and willingness to get stuck into what can sometimes less than exciting tasks, means that I have no doubt that he can succeed and excel at whatever role he puts his mind to within Ubuntu or related projects. His technical knowledge has a good foundation, and will undoubtedly blossom further. The main areas of improvement that could be addressed are working better with others, as his enthusiasm can boil over somewhat, and better targeting of his fine attention to detail. As a MOTU I think he would very rapidly gain the experience required to continue the recent improvement in these areas that myself and others have recognised. -- rikmills 2017-07-24 21:01:04 - Kubuntu Developer

In my ventures, starting out in OSS, Simon has been an invaluable resource and guide to the larger Debian/Ubuntu ecosystem. His guidance has not only expedited my involvement but helped make the environment more approachable. Volunteering his time to spend with new entrants shows his dedication to growing the community as a whole and ensuring that new people have the information they need to be productive contributors. Through his involvement in Kubuntu and Lubuntu, and helping manage the milestone checklist tracking for all the flavours, he understands the community, giving additional insight that some other members may not yet have. Having set his goal to become a MOTU some time ago, Simon shows the drive and determination needed to stay on top of the details required for a position like this. An asset to the community as a whole, having a position like this will only continue to give him the tools to improve both himself and the ecosystem as a whole. -- bashfulrobot 2017-07-30 05:41:28 - Ubuntu Budgie Team Member

I have had the joy of working with Simon since he first appeared on IRC looking for help. He's grown a lot in that time period both technically and personally. He's ambitious, goal-oriented, and meticulous. When he puts his mind to something, it will get done, at least assuming he has no external blockers preventing him from doing so. That's where his impatience comes in, but at least he's not unkind about it­. He's capable of teaching himself with a little direction from others. I handed him the reigns of Lubuntu Release Management and he has not only done the job, but excelled at it. He has worked his ways through almost every aspect of Kubuntu development, and then took that knowledge and started doing more general development, ultimately culminating in this application. Kubuntu gave him a glimpse of hope and that was enough for him. I think that being unfettered will give Simon the ability to get a lot of stuff done. Having someone so enthusiastic in MOTU will be a great boon to other maintainers. -- wxl 2017-08-14 17:57:55

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.

Dmitry Shachnev (mitya57)

General feedback

I have been working with Simon on Qt packages (mostly in Debian, but in Ubuntu too) — he helped us with Qt 5.7 and 5.8 updates and did most of the work with Qt 5.9 update. He added at least one new package, qtspeech. He is also helping with upcoming Qt 5.9 transition in Ubuntu and (maybe) its demoting to universe.

Our goal is to minimize the differences in Qt packaging between Debian and Ubuntu, so most work happens in Debian Git (we have ubuntu branches for some modules).

Specific Experiences of working together

  • Qt 5.x packages in Debian: I reviewed and/or sponsored qtbase, qtcharts, qtconnectivity, qtdeclarative, qtlocation, qtmultimedia, qtquickcontrols2, qtsensors, qtspeech, qttools, qtwebchannel, qtwebkit, qtwebsockets and qtxmlpatterns for him. This list is getting larger every day.
  • https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/freehdl/0.0.8-2.2ubuntu2 (unfortunately the only example from Ubuntu Sponsorship Miner).

Areas of Improvement

Maybe not being too fast (I am reviewing slower than he is adding changes Smile :) ) and taking more care about details: licensing issues, tests results, etc.


Gianfranco Costamagna <LocutusOfBorg>

General feedback

I sponsored only a few packages in the past days for tsimonq2, but I have to say I have been really impressed by his work, for simple, and not trivial merges, with a good quality result, and a good attitude in learning how to better approach to solve problems.

In the last days I worked closely with him to help in getting qt 5.9 ready for the next Ubuntu, he really cares about it, he is young, full of energy, has a good attention to details and follows up until things are done.

Specific Experiences of working together

Please add good examples of your work together, but also cases that could have handled better. http://ubuntu-dev.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi?render=html&sponsor=costamagnagianfranco%40yahoo.it&sponsor_search=email&sponsoree=Simon+Quigley&sponsoree_search=name

I just sponsored two gtk+2.0 patches as SRU for him, and syncd some packages, as well as merged a lot of stuff for seeding the new artful images, he did everything correctly, from filling the SRU template, giving bzr branches to merge, looking at the code, helping me in doing merges, and so on.

Areas of Improvement

Areas of improvement is to be careful in reducing deltas, submit patches on Debian, get them sponsored and sync packages afterwards (sometimes this requires non-trivial knowledge about the history of Ubuntu, because changelog are not always verbose about reasons for having deltas)

His work is not worse than mine, so I think he should really become a MOTU, and hopefully he won't be his arrival place, but the starting one.

I hope to see your nickname even more in my daily sponsoring work Smile :)

thanks for your work so far!

-- costamagnagianfranco 2017-07-27 21:27:04 - Ubuntu Core Developer / Debian Developer

Mattia Rizzolo

General feedback

I count 26 packages uploaded to ubuntu (syncs included) and sponsored by me, and a few more to Debian. By far not many, but in all of those I remember how I've never seen anything horribly wrong: in fact most of the time they could have been uploaded without further improvements (but the perfectionist in me screams ).

Overall, I've have worked with Simon for more than 6 months, and I believe it would be a great addition to the MOTUs: whilst he might not have a remarkable broad knowledge as of yet, he does know his way around packages, and can deal with not-so-trivial matters involving transitions (see Qt and a couple of uploads he did related to the stdc++5 one). He also displayed a knowledge about procedure (SRUs, freezes, syncs, transitions…) that makes me feel confident he won't wreak havoc upon the archive.

Specific Experiences of working together

Probably his most remarkable upload was this one where thanks to it Simon became more aware of Debian's procedures (he then adopted the package in Debian. After that one he started also to work toward pushing more changes to Debian and keep out an eye on syncable packages.

Areas of Improvement

I'd probably tell him to keep improving: whilst he is already good and ready to be a MOTU, IMHO there is still much space for general improvements (nothing major, but he can say what kind of perfectionist I am, trying to keep everything as tidy as possible :)).

Also, it might be that I'm more of a "Debianite", but I tend to have a much slower pace than him, I have my troubles keeping up with everything Simon brings to me Big Grin :)

-- mapreri 2017-08-02 21:54:16

Martin Wimpress

General feedback

Simon generously gives his time to many projects throughout Ubuntu and Ubuntu MATE has found a great collaborator and friend in Simon. I had the opportunity to meet Simon at Linux Fest North West 2017 where he was manning the Ubuntu booth and was a great ambassador for Ubuntu over the course of the weekend.

Specific Experiences of working together

Simon regularly volunteers to assist the opt-in Ubuntu flavour releases for the alphas and early betas, and that is how we first go acquainted.

Simon is leading the charge to land LXQt in Lubuntu Next, a project I'm very interested in seeing join the ranks of the Ubuntu flavours. Simon has diligently communicated with the other projects and teams that share common technologies to ensure LXQts introduction doesn't adversely affect anyone.

More recently Simon has been assisting Ubuntu MATE by completing SRUs that close bugs affecting all desktop environments using GTK and GVFS. Two significant examples are:

Most notable was landing CVE fixes for many vulnerabilities in VLC across several supported Ubuntu releases. Ubuntu MATE recently started funding Simon to work on similar SRUs because we'd rather have him working on Ubuntu than flipping burgers during his summer break Wink ;-)

I support Simon's MoTU application as we certainly need more skilled and energetic people helping to maintain the health and integrity of the *verse repositories.

Areas of Improvement

Simon has boundless enthusiasm and energy and this can, at times, be misinterpreted as impatience. Everyone should strive for continued self-improvement and see evidence that Simon won't stand still and will continue to acquire new skills and knowledge that will benefit Ubuntu and Debian -- -- flexiondotorg 2017-08-14 15:45:28

Seth Arnold

General Feedback

I've reviewed several security updates from Simon; the initial quality of the debdiffs was good and Simon took feedback eagerly. -- Seth Arnold


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

tsimonq2/Applications/MOTU (last edited 2017-08-14 17:57:55 by wxl)