BryceHarrington

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 * '''Wiki''': https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BryceHarrington
 * '''Blog''': http://bryceharrington.org/drupal/
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I've helped get a variety of open source projects off the ground, and especially enjoy building successful communities. Most recently I co-founded and help run a project called Inkscape. Professionally, I worked for the Open Source Development Labs building automated test harnesses, web app development, and NFSv4 testing from 2001-2007. Before that I designed spacecraft propulsion systems. Today I'm with Canonical as Ubuntu's Xorg maintainer. I am Bryce Harrington, I've been involved in Open Source since 1994, Ubuntu specifically for about a year, and Mandrake and Gentoo in years prior. I am currently focusing on maintaining Xorg, through packaging, bug triaging/fixing, and spec work as Canonical's Xorg maintainer. Thus I am eating and breathing all things X lately. Outside Ubuntu, I am one of Inkscape's founders and I enjoy woodworking. Professionally, I worked for the Open Source Development Labs building automated test harnesses, web app development, and NFSv4 testing from 2001-2007. Before that I designed spacecraft propulsion systems.
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I am passionate about open source and open content communities, and feel strongly that projects founded on a solid community are inherently better than any others. I've been involved in the early stages of a number of these sorts of projects - Mozilla, Wikipedia, OCAL, etc. - I guess I'm sort of an open source entrepreneur at heart. My efforts revolve principally around keeping Xorg and Inkscape packages up to date, and triaging/fixing bugs in the same. I also am a big believer in the role of process documentation and statistics tools to help make software communities more effective, and so have created/maintained several web docs and tools:
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I've used a number of distros, generally preferring ones that seem to have vibrant communities. I was very impressed by the quality of mandrake's community-supported packaging and used them for about 4 years. From that I switched to gentoo, which seemed the most community-oriented distro at the time. But Ubuntu's combination of community focus, politeness, and good (deb-based) packaging system convinced me that it was far and away the best. I want to help solidify Ubuntu's superiority by strengthening the communities behind it.  * Created web interface for [http://people.ubuntu.com/~bryce/Plots/ Ubuntu Bug Plots]
 * Coded up [http://people.ubuntu.com/~bryce/Xorg/versions_current.html X Merge Status page]
 * Wrote Xorg Debugger's Handbook: http://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Debugging
 * Collected Xorg documentation at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/X
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Since mandrake integrated KDE quite nicely, I've had a strong preference for KDE. Despite this, most of my coding experience has been GNOME, due largely to my Inkscape involvement. Ubuntu's good GNOME integration is quickly winning me over, however. Ultimately, though, I'd like to see much of the Gnome or KDE specific things be done at the X level. == Ubuntu Gutsy Contributions ==

During the Gutsy development cycle, I cut my teeth deeply on packaging, from small X apps to large, complicated things like xorg, xserver, mesa, and linux-restricted-modules. I also invested a lot of time into trying to get caught up with the huge backlog of untriaged Xorg bugs, and to help build up an Xorg packaging and testing community.

For two of the Gutsy specifications, I implemented '''Bulletproof-X''', and helped glatzor integrate his '''displayconfig-gtk''' GUI tool for xorg configuration.

When I started with Canonical, magazine reviews of Feisty invariably reported that in their tests Ubuntu failed to select the correct monitor resolution. Since this seemed to be an extremely high profile (and embarrassingly bad) X issue for Ubuntu, I took this as my primary objective. After much experimentation, I '''fixed all the issues in xresprobe''', with the result that when Gutsy was released hardly anyone reported monitor resolution detection issues. (There are still issues, they're just far more obscure things now.)
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== Contributions to Ubuntu == == Ubuntu Hardy Contributions ==
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 * installation testing of feisty & bug reporting
 * misc bug triaging in launchpad, esp. in xorg		 My objectives for Hardy are to a) triage the New bugs to 0 for all major Xorg components, b) reduce the number of open bugs for -intel to under 100, and c) reimplement our xorg GUI config tool in C for inclusion in gnome-control-center.
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== Goals == As of January 25 objective (a) has been met, as the number of '''New bugs in xorg, xorg-server, -intel, -ati, and -nv were reduced to 0'''. I plan to turn my triaging focus to reviewing Incomplete bugs, and pushing appropriate bug reports upstream.
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People judge books by their covers, and for Linux the book cover is drawn on X. Thus I feel that in order to make Linux successful as a desktop operating system, xorg must be improved. In particular: Getting the '''-intel bug total from over 160 to below 100''' has proven a deeper challenge; while I've reduced it to 130, the bug count has been growing quite steadily and is difficult to get a handle on. However, I've set up a bi-weekly call with Intel to review bugs, have been pushing bugs upstream, and am even coding up some patches myself.
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 1. '''Monitor detection.''' Everyone complains about this. it needs to "just work", including HD and multi-monitor.
 2. '''Xorg testing community.''' Tons of people love fiddling with xorg; if they can be organized into an effective analysis community, we could address a lot of xorg's hardware-specific troubles.
 3. '''Graphics driver project relations.''' Whether it's open source reverse engineer communities or proprietary graphics driver vendors, we need to provide them good testing resources and gain rapid feedback for real issues.
 4. '''Eye candy.''' From beryl/compiz to opengl and other powerful technologies, we have the tools to make Linux absolutely beautiful. We simply need to get organized about integrating these things and making their stability rock solid.		 While displayconfig-gtk was well received in the Gutsy release, unfortunately in parallel to that development Xorg has been making the xorg.conf file optional. Since displayconfig-gtk draws its configurational information from that file, with elements in that file becoming optional and disappearing due to Xrandr, displayconfig-gtk has grown increasingly more broken. Thus I've taken it as a goal to solve this by '''implementing Xrandr 1.2 multi-head support in gnome-control-center'''. Whether by implementing something myself, or contributing to work done by others, my hope is that we can gain a solid, supportable solution for us all.

I also participate in the ubuntu-mobile team maintaining their Xorg components, including their git-head copy of libdrm, the Poulsbo video driver, and various patches to xserver that they need.

Contact Info

About Me

I am Bryce Harrington, I've been involved in Open Source since 1994, Ubuntu specifically for about a year, and Mandrake and Gentoo in years prior. I am currently focusing on maintaining Xorg, through packaging, bug triaging/fixing, and spec work as Canonical's Xorg maintainer. Thus I am eating and breathing all things X lately. Outside Ubuntu, I am one of Inkscape's founders and I enjoy woodworking. Professionally, I worked for the Open Source Development Labs building automated test harnesses, web app development, and NFSv4 testing from 2001-2007. Before that I designed spacecraft propulsion systems.

My efforts revolve principally around keeping Xorg and Inkscape packages up to date, and triaging/fixing bugs in the same. I also am a big believer in the role of process documentation and statistics tools to help make software communities more effective, and so have created/maintained several web docs and tools:

Ubuntu Gutsy Contributions

During the Gutsy development cycle, I cut my teeth deeply on packaging, from small X apps to large, complicated things like xorg, xserver, mesa, and linux-restricted-modules. I also invested a lot of time into trying to get caught up with the huge backlog of untriaged Xorg bugs, and to help build up an Xorg packaging and testing community.

For two of the Gutsy specifications, I implemented Bulletproof-X, and helped glatzor integrate his displayconfig-gtk GUI tool for xorg configuration.

When I started with Canonical, magazine reviews of Feisty invariably reported that in their tests Ubuntu failed to select the correct monitor resolution. Since this seemed to be an extremely high profile (and embarrassingly bad) X issue for Ubuntu, I took this as my primary objective. After much experimentation, I fixed all the issues in xresprobe, with the result that when Gutsy was released hardly anyone reported monitor resolution detection issues. (There are still issues, they're just far more obscure things now.)

Ubuntu Hardy Contributions

My objectives for Hardy are to a) triage the New bugs to 0 for all major Xorg components, b) reduce the number of open bugs for -intel to under 100, and c) reimplement our xorg GUI config tool in C for inclusion in gnome-control-center.

As of January 25 objective (a) has been met, as the number of New bugs in xorg, xorg-server, -intel, -ati, and -nv were reduced to 0. I plan to turn my triaging focus to reviewing Incomplete bugs, and pushing appropriate bug reports upstream.

Getting the -intel bug total from over 160 to below 100 has proven a deeper challenge; while I've reduced it to 130, the bug count has been growing quite steadily and is difficult to get a handle on. However, I've set up a bi-weekly call with Intel to review bugs, have been pushing bugs upstream, and am even coding up some patches myself.

While displayconfig-gtk was well received in the Gutsy release, unfortunately in parallel to that development Xorg has been making the xorg.conf file optional. Since displayconfig-gtk draws its configurational information from that file, with elements in that file becoming optional and disappearing due to Xrandr, displayconfig-gtk has grown increasingly more broken. Thus I've taken it as a goal to solve this by implementing Xrandr 1.2 multi-head support in gnome-control-center. Whether by implementing something myself, or contributing to work done by others, my hope is that we can gain a solid, supportable solution for us all.

I also participate in the ubuntu-mobile team maintaining their Xorg components, including their git-head copy of libdrm, the Poulsbo video driver, and various patches to xserver that they need.

BryceHarrington (last edited 2009-04-19 11:05:22 by 92)