I, Micah Gersten, apply for core-dev.

Who I am

I'm currently a Security Engineer for Canonical. I've been working with open source technologies for about 11 years. Some of these are: PHP, Perl, MySQL, Apache

My Ubuntu story

I started using Ubuntu about 4.5 years ago in the form of Feisty. I think I switched to Ubuntu as my primary OS after Gutsy was released. I started trying to help out in the Answer Tracker in Dec 2008. In Apr 2009, I moved over to working with bugs, with a specific focus on Firefox. I gained membership in the Ubuntu Bug Control about a month and a half later. Then I started to work on fixed the build failures for the Mozilla daily PPAs. After several months, I became a member of the Ubuntu Mozilla Team. The first UDS I actively participated in was UDS-L and I was participating remotely. I was part of the team that worked on the xulrunner-1.9.2 transition for Lucid. At UDS-M, I actually got to meet a lot of the wonderful people involved in the creation and maintenance of Ubuntu. It was truly an amazing experience. It was there that I talked to various people and got the ok to plan for a Mozilla package set which I applied for the creation of and eventually the ability to upload to it. All the while, I was trying to learn more and helping people in Ubuntu channels (#ubuntu-bugs, #ubuntu-motu, #ubuntu-devel). In Nov 2010, after having sufficient sponsored uploads outside of the Mozilla package set, I applied for MOTU. This past summer, I became a Xubuntu developer after assisting with the various merges/syncs/seed changes related to that project. I was also recently elected to the DMB (but you already know that ☺).

My involvement

• DMB member since Sep 2011
• Xubuntu Dev member since Jul 2011
• Ubuntu Security member since Feb 2011
• MOTU since Nov 2010
• Mozilla Package Set uploader since July 2010
• Ubuntu Mozilla Team member since Oct 2009
• Ubuntu Bug Control since May 2009
• Answer Questions on IRC (#ubuntu-motu. #ubuntu-devel, #ubuntu-bugs, and various other channels)

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

FTBFS

• swig1.3

Syncs

• pygments

• ca-certificates

Transitions

• directfb for libjpeg

• libjpeg8 is not default

• GTK2 to multiarch

• glew1.5 isn't default

• gwenview should use the default libjpeg

• wxwidgets2.8 tracker

Seed Changes

While these were for a seed that I had upload rights to, it shows proficiency in a core activity:

• Xubuntu Oneiric

Security Fixes

• nss

SRU

• python-cups

Things I could do better

Not take on more tasks than I can finish.

Plans for the future

General

I'd like to help upstream more Ubuntu specific changes to Debian and drive updates that I can through Debian.

What I like least in Ubuntu

Trouble keeping updated versions of applications that people want readily in the archive. This requires lots of different users to build their own versions in PPAs which seems like a waste of PPA buildd time (which has been scarce as of late).

Comments

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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 ===

CategoryCoreDevApplication