MOTU application for James Westby (james_w)

[James Westby]

Hi,

I would like to apply to become a MOTU.

To support my application I have my wiki page, showing some of the
tasks that I have undertaken for Ubuntu.

  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JamesWestby

I also hopefully have support from some of my sponsors:

  * Martin Pitt (policykit and others)
  * Sebastien Bacher (gnome)
  * Bryce Harrington (X related)
  * Nicolas Valcarcel
  * Daniel Holbach

To my sponsors, sorry for not asking your permission prior to sending
the email. If you don't feel comfortable advocating me I don't mind,
and I'll try and find other people, or continue working until you do.

As well as making universe rock, I no longer want to be filling the
sponsor queue, and want to help drain it instead. Also, I was acutely
aware that I was taking up people's time just before FF when they had
their own things to do, so I would like to alleviate that.

A lot of my work is in main, and so being a core developer would help 
with that, and I intend to apply for that one day. However, there seems
to be a higher barrier to core-dev, and I don't think I'm ready yet.
I'm not just applying for MOTU because I see it as easier though. I
want to be a MOTU, partly because I like the MOTU community, and want
to be a real part of it. I also do work on universe, and so upload
rights would really help.

My immediate plans for MOTU would be helping with sponsoring
and mentoring new contributors. Longer term I may join one of the key
teams.

I'm not a prolific uploader, and I doubt that will change if I get
upload privileges. I prefer to try and fix things elsewhere so that we
get the fix without the overhead. However, having the ability to upload
will help, especially during the freeze. Having less overhead
to each upload from not finding a sponsor will hopefully make me more
productive, and less likely to skip a fix as uploading takes time.

Also, on a more selfish note, having upload rights to a distribution
will greatly help my work, as I will be able to experience the workflows
for myself, so I can design tools that developers want to use. I feel I
have a good grasp of what it is like for a sponsoree, and I would like
the same grasp of what it is like for a developer.

As for my skills and knowledge, I hope that I am able to recognise my
limitations, and I am not afraid to ask for help. I also try not to
make the same mistake twice (though I do have a habit of forgetting
to call update-maintainer).

Thanks for your consideration,

James