Core Developer Application for Harald Sitter (apachelogger)

[Harald Sitter]

On Saturday 30 August 2008 21:15:44 Scott Kitterman wrote:
> On Thursday 28 August 2008 21:05, Harald Sitter wrote:
> > Hello!
> >
> > Please accept this mail as a differnt kind of application to become one
> > of the Ubuntu Core Developers.
> >
> > To get my application please add
> >   deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/apachelogger/ubuntu intrepid main
> > to your sources.list and install 'apachelogger-core-dev-app'.
> >
> > The application is startable via a terminal or the Utilities section of
> > your preferred application menu.
> >
> > I CCed my sponsors Jonathan Riddell and Scott Kitterman, as well as some
> > people to testify my commitment on getting new people to join the Ubuntu
> > Developers (as stated in the Advanced section of my application).
>
> I've been a bit conflicted about how to respond to this application.
>
> Harald clearly has substantial technical expertise in KDE and QT
> development and packaging, is a good community member, and extremely
> energic and does a lot of good work.
>
> It does seem to me though that sometimes he lets his enthusiasm get ahead
> of himself.
>
> I've only actually sponsored one upload that made it to the archives and it
> was fine.  Recently however he asked me to sponsor a fix to Bug 256261:
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/256261
>
> It took some good detective work for him to discover that kdm's init was
> being run in the wrong place in the boot sequence:
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kdebase-workspace/+bug/256261/com
>ments/14
>
> He asked me to sponsor his change and included in the request (on IRC) was
> the statement:
>
> "ScottK: you don't need to testbuild"
>
> Of course I did and also tried to verify that the fix worked correctly and
> in the process discovered that while the change fixed the bug in question,
> it would have left new installs without a running kdm.
>
> Now this is only one upload and we all make mistakes.  I have the
> impression Harald was in a rush because he was asked to fix this bug in the
> course of comments on his application.  It does leave me a bit doubtful,
> but as I said, it's only one.
>
> Harald: How do you believe things would have gone if you'd already been a
> core-dev and uploaded this yourself?  How can we be confident that your
> (quite wonderful) enthusiasm won't get the best of you again in the future?

When I applied for MOTU you asked me a very similar question.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2007-November/000537.html

Once again I want to stress the fact that it might very well not have happened 
due to the awareness of increased responsibility. Probably nothing worries me 
more than breaking a system, application or feature, even if it would only 
apply for one user, because this is exactly the opposite of what I am trying 
to archive: providing a truly awesome product.
So, the answer is pretty much the same as it was back in November. Someone 
would have complained on IRC, reported a bug or I would have hit the issue 
myself when doing a regular CD testing.
I would be quite embarrassed and annoyed by my own stupidity, but at the same 
time start moving the whole universe to get this issue settled in the most 
convenient way and wouldn't rest unless the issue is resolved (which is 
basically what I did for the wrong patch as well).

However, for the process of learning it doesn't matter if I uploaded it 
myself. I certainly learned a lesson in any case, just like I did with the 
screw up I was talking about in my MOTU application.

And to answer the question about how you can be confident that this won't 
happen again. I think you can about this particular type of issue (I am also 
very accurate regarding version numbers as a result of the pre-MOTU mistake). 
You can't be 100% confident that I don't do another mistake though.... You 
mentioned that we all make mistakes, this is not going to stop unless humans 
stop working on $project. In my humble opinion what really matters is whether 
you can be confident that I do my very best to not let myself do mistakes but 
rather provide the best quality possible, and in case I still make a mistake, 
that I do everything possible to get it fixed. I can assure you, you can be 
100% confident about this.

I hope this helps to resolve the doubt.

Regards,
Harald

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