I, Amin Bandali, apply for core-dev.

I am applying because:

• I regularly work on packages across the Ubuntu archive as a member of Canonical's Desktop Team. Becoming a core-dev would allow me to upload all kinds of desktop-related packages across the Ubuntu archive, not just the subset I have access to as a member of ~ubuntu-desktop (which excludes most packages in the desktop-core set). It would also allow me to work directly on the other packages I work on and/or maintain upstream of Ubuntu in Debian.

• I'd like to eliminate delays in getting my work sponsored.
• I'd like to reduce the burden on my sponsors.

Who I am

I'm Amin Bandali (or just bandali) and I'm a computing scientist and activist for user freedom by passion and a software developer/engineer by profession as a Software Engineer on the Desktop Team at Canonical.

I am an Ubuntu Developer (via ~ubuntu-desktop) and a https://people.debian.org/~bandali/.

My Ubuntu story

I first tried Ubuntu as a teenager in the late 2000s (I believe it was 9.04), and started using it regularly not very long after. Since then I've used Debian, Ubuntu, and many of their derivatives among other distros. I first contributed to Debian in 2020 and have since become a Debian Developer working on the maintenance of GNOME applications and libraries as a member of the Debian GNOME team, among other packages and teams. I've additionally been working on and contributing directly to Ubuntu as well since starting at Canonical in November 2022.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Include your existing sponsored uploads for the packages for which you are seeking upload rights. You can link directly to an upload by following this pattern.

Areas of work

As part of Canonical's Desktop Team, I've worked a lot on/around desktop-related packages. For my work on Firefox, I've collaborated mainly with ricotz, 0xnishit, and seb128, as well as several folks from Mozilla. For my merges/syncs (many, see below), transitions (notably, poppler 23.08 and 24.02), and +1 rotations (here, here, here) I've worked primarily with jbicha and seb128.

Upstream of Ubuntu, I'm a Debian Developer and I've worked on many packages across the Debian archive as a member of several Debian packaging teams, including the Debian GNOME team where I've helped maintain several GNOME applications and libraries used in Debian's default GNOME-based desktop as well as the Ubuntu desktop.

Below are lists of desktop and non-desktop packages I've worked on directly in Ubuntu, and upstream in Debian.

desktop set

Ubuntu (sponsored for me):

Ubuntu (uploaded by me, no sponsor):

Debian (both sponsored and direct uploads):

non-desktop

Ubuntu (sponsored for me):

Debian (both sponsored and direct uploads):

Things I could do better

I can be somewhat shy about asking for help when faced with a difficult challenge/problem, so I'd like to do better at asking for help or hints earlier than I currently do at times.

Plans for the future

General

I would like to further expand my activities beyond ~ubuntu-desktop. As a Debian Developer, I work on different areas of Debian and by extension Ubuntu already, but I would like to be able to upload my work on those things directly in Ubuntu itself as well.

What I like least in Ubuntu

Having worked on Ubuntu as a contributor and later as an Ubuntu Developer, I've found that developer documentation is a bit all over the place, sometimes inaccessible and hard to find, or severely outdated. I've done a few small things here and there to improve the situation a bit, but there's still much to be done. So I plan on continuing working towards those improvements.

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

Jeremy Bícha

I have had the pleasure of working alongside Amin for more than a year on Canonical's Desktop Team. Although his primary responsiblity is maintaining Firefox in Ubuntu, I have seen him go significantly beyond that. Last year, he earned Debian Developer and Ubuntu Desktop upload rights. He continues to work on packages beyond the Ubuntu Desktop set including both universe packages (like evolution) and main packages (like poppler and gst-plugins-good1.0). I am confident that Amin has the technical ability to do .deb packaging across the entire Ubuntu archive and the understanding of Ubuntu processes to do so effectively. -- jbicha 2024-03-21 15:21:09

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.''
## Full list of sponsored packages can be generated here:
##  https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi

=== Areas of Improvement ===

CategoryCoreDevApplication