I, Chow Loong Jin, apply for MOTU.

Who I am

I am a Malaysian studying Computer Engineering in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. I have just completed my first year and will be beginning my second year of study in Nanyang Technological University come August 2009.

My Ubuntu story

My involvement

For several months, I helped out at ubuntuforums.org regarding issues to do with Xorg, as I had my own fair share of it when I first started off. Then, being a little frustrated with the lack of new packages at that time, I begun digging around some existing Ubuntu packages, and used those to create new upstream releases. Eventually, I did one such package for Banshee 0.98.1 and posted it on ubuntuforums.org. At that point, Jorge Castro and Sebastian Dröge invited me to join the Banshee Team to start maintaining a PPA for updated Banshee packages, and I got into Ubuntu packaging more seriously.

When I found out about REVU, I began using it to introduce some new packages into Ubuntu, and eventually attempted to get BansheeLyricsPlugin into Ubuntu via that method. While I was searching for a sponsor, IainLane invited me to join the pkg-cli-apps team for Debian. Since then, I've attempted to get some new packages into Debian as well, which have previously gotten into Ubuntu via REVU, as well as become the co-maintainer of Banshee in Debian, as well as several other Banshee-related packages.

I've also joined the Ubuntu-SG loco team, and am currently maintaining an archive and releases mirror for Ubuntu (http://linux.ntuoss.org/ubuntu and http://sg.releases.ubuntu.com).

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

I, with the help of the Geany Plugins developers and EvgeniGolov have successfully gotten the various geany plugins merged into one project that is released together, synchronized somewhat with the release of the Geany editor.

In addition to that I have adopted the nautilus-share from Debian which was bitrotting in both Debian and Ubuntu with a growing Ubuntu-Debian delta and worked on merging all the Ubuntu fixes into Debian, making it syncable again. I have also fixed most of the outstanding bugs in nautilus-share inclusive of patching up the samba auto-installation code to be more robust. Most of these fixes were gotten upstream when I finally managed to contact Federico, one of the upstream maintainers of nautilus-share.

Areas of work

I generally focus my contributions on package maintenance, as well as the introduction of new packages, particularly GUI applications, and any other piece of software I am interested in. I attempt to fix bugs that affect me and are within my capability, such as those regarding pm-utils, as well as bugs of the packages I maintain. A list of packages I have introduced and/or am maintaining in Debian and Ubuntu can be found in Launchpad and Debian QA.

I also maintain PPAs containing backported new upstream releases of software to stable releases of Ubuntu. Among them are:

• Banshee Team PPA

• Banshee Unstable PPA

• Banshee Daily PPA

• Geany PPA

• Remuco PPA

Things I could do better

I often forget to pay attention to the bugs on the Debian bug tracker, since most of the bug reports for desktop applications generally appear in Launchpad. In future, I will attempt to pay more attention to the bug tracker so that I may balance and merge bugs which were filed to both bug trackers, as well as get them fixed.

I also have a habit of harbouring deep grudges against certain pieces of software, but not filing bugs against them for their shortcomings. I hope to change that in the future.

Plans for the future

General

I'd like to help review and sponsor uploads from prospective and existing contributors to Ubuntu who don't already have upload access, in hopes that we shall eventually gain enough users and developers to conquer Bug #1.

What I like least in Ubuntu

It lacks an Office suite that can really stand up against Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org comes close, but is not quite there. At the very least, its equation editor leaves much to be desired. It is as confusing as an equation editor can get, and to this day, I still cannot quite figure out how to use it successfully. The spreadsheet application also lacks various features such as cross-file equations that actually work.

Comments

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Endorsements

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