I, Jeremy Bicha, apply for Core Dev membership.

Who I am

I'm a US Navy veteran and currently live in Florida.

My Ubuntu story

My first packaging change to land in Ubuntu was just before 9.10 Karmic was released to get Moodle to work for Edubuntu.

I got significantly involved in Ubuntu near the end of the 11.04 Natty cycle because I saw there was a big need for help with the Unity/GNOME3 transition. I helped package GNOME3 for the GNOME3 PPAs. The review process felt easier as it was just a PPA. I got more experience with submitting merge proposals (MPs) and working on a variety of packages. As 11.10 Oneiric opened for GNOME 3, I started submitting my work for merging directly into the main archive and officially joined the Desktop Team later that summer.

I got involved with ubuntu-docs about the same way near the end of the 11.04 Natty cycle. The ubuntu-docs package had been synced from a still-incomplete snapshot of the GNOME docs which described GNOME Shell, not Unity. I did most of the work to get that usable for release. I remained part of the Docs team for the next year or two.

I later started Ubuntu GNOME with a lot of help from darkxst. The first release was 12.10 and the first release as an official flavor was 13.04.

I've used my skills outside GNOME packaging and became a MOTU in 2012.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

https://launchpad.net/~jbicha/+uploaded-packages

• Member of the Ubuntu Desktop and MOTUs teams.
• Debian Maintainer, Debian pkg-gnome team member, GNOME Foundation member.
• Co-maintainer of Ubuntu GNOME

Areas of work

Most of my focused work has been with GNOME but I have made many minor changes to the Unity stack. I have done a lot of merging and syncing with Debian.

Why I Want to Join Core Dev

Although I can upload to much of the Ubuntu archive through the unique combination of MOTU & ~ubuntu-desktop, some Ubuntu Desktop packages are not part of the ubuntu-desktop packageset.

I also help out with transitions. Some of these transitions require a Core Dev to complete.

I occasionally need to update seeds across the Ubuntu flavors. It takes quite a bit longer to ask the Flavors to accept my merge proposals or find a Core Dev to do it.

Sponsorship works but eventually, it becomes an extra hassle for the sponsoree and the sponsors.

Things I could do better

I have tried to work better at communicating and discussing my work with the Ubuntu Desktop team in particular.

Plans for the future

General

I am helping with Ubuntu's big GNOME transition this year.

What I like least in Ubuntu

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.

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.''
=== Areas of Improvement ===

CategoryMOTUApplication