MOTU application for Michael Casadevall (NCommander/sonicmctails)

[Cody A.W. Somerville]

Hello MOTU Council,

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 5:47 PM, Michael Casadevall
<sonicmctails at gmail.com>wrote:

> To the MOTU council:
>
> Wiki Page: http://wiki.ubuntu.com/MichaelCasadevall
> LP Profile: http://launchpad.net/~sonicmctails<http://launchpad.net/%7Esonicmctails>
> Primary Sponsors: Scott Kitterman, Steven Kowailk, Sebastien Bacher,
> Jon Riddell, John Dong (Backports),  Luca Falavigna (SRU/MOTU)
> Primary Team Memberships: Xubuntu (Developer), Kubuntu (Developer),
> Backports (Tester), SRU (PowerPC tester), Ports (PowerPC)
>
> I'm writing today apply for MOTU status in Ubuntu. I've been highly
> active during the intrepid release cycle, working to help resolve and
> fix many bugs, as well as build stronger ties with Debian by merging
> patches from Ubuntu when appropriate. I have been urged by my sponsors
> to apply for some time, and finally worked up the nerve to face the
> possibility of rejection


As I said when he applied for Universe Contributor Status, Michael has been
intrinsically valuable to the Xubuntu team having the ability to perform a
wide variety of assignments and handle ambiguity and challenge with a "can
do" attitude. Since becoming a Universe Contributor, I've continued to work
closely with Michael on the Xubuntu project and am happy to report evidence
of growth both as an individual developer and a team player.

 I believe the reason that Michael has waited until now to apply for MOTU is
because I have strongly advised him against doing so. I have felt at times
that Michael's impressive pace of contribution sees Michael sometimes forget
to take due diligence in testing and understanding the changes he is making
resulting in unintended consequences, trivial mistakes, and/or incomplete
solutions. When bringing forth these issues to Michael, he is very
cooperative and often immediately understands what he did wrong and how to
fix it. Based on these experiences, it is clear to me that Michael possesses
the aptitude and skills necessary to understand complex problems and
engineer appropriate solutions but lacks an attitude that is conducive to
minimizing mistakes and misunderstandings.

After one particular string of silly mistakes, I sat down with Michael and
discussed this issue with him. Michael promised me that he would always test
his changes from that point forward. Since then, I feel Michael has a better
understanding and appreciation for the entire process that all developers
should move through when making changes.


 <snip>

Following this, I helped work on packaging Xfce 4.5.80 for Ubuntu,
> which helped earn me Xubuntu Developer status; I continue to work on
> merging Xfce beta packages from Debian, and have worked to reduce our
> diffs from Debian greatly (pkg-xfce and Xubuntu now have an excellent
> working relationship, and our diffs are now down to simply Xubuntu
> specific changes, with all our bugfixes mutually shared). This work
> has inspired me to work to help reduce the diffs in general by
> submitting them back to Debian, and NMUing packages in cases where it
> is needed so that the general workload of having to merge packages is
> reduced.


It should be noted that Michael is the official Xubuntu to Debian liaison.


> Second is codeblocks. This is a new package upload, and was a rather
> longstanding needs-packaging bug. It had a large list of dependencies,
> a few previous attempts, and a very difficult problem in that the
> package can not be forced via configure to comply with Linux FHS,
> forcing the authoring of patches to resolve this behavior. I feel
> quite proud I managed to bring this to intrepid, and I hope I can
> bring it to hardy via backports relatively soon as well.


I sponsored the work on codeblocks. Infact, this is how I actually met
Michael.

I was very happy with the work Michael did on this.

<snip>

I also would like to greatly work towards removing cruft from the
> archive, such as gtk1.2, and improving both Xfce and KDE. One of my
> largest projects in terms of general usability with Xubuntu and Xfce
> specifically is making Xfce fully syncable from Debian with the
> expection of the few Ubuntu specific patches, as well as helping any
> bug


To conclude, I'd like endorse Michael's application to become MOTU with the
stipulation that Michael reconfirms that he'll take due diligence in slowing
down to appropriately test and verify his changes. He possesses the
aptitude, skills, and working understanding of Ubuntu processes required to
be a MOTU and is already regarded as an asset to a number of teams within
Ubuntu. I intend to continue to work with Michael to help him reach his full
potential and develop a mindset and attitude that would enable him to one
day lead the Xubuntu project.


>
> With great regards,
> Michael Casadevall
>
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Cheers,

-- 
Cody A.W. Somerville
Software Systems Release Engineer
Custom Engineering Solutions Group
Canonical OEM Services
Cell: 506-449-5899
Email: cody.somerville at canonical.com
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