I recommend to accept Laszlo Kajan as a Debian Developer. 1. Identification & Account Data -------------------------------- First name: Laszlo Middle name: - Last name: Kajan Key fingerprint: 91B46ECD90312D7C86F9469A9BD2D6409A0C52FA Account: lkajan
2. Background ------------- I have graduated as a plant biologist in 2001. My thesis was about a web service I developed on my small Linux box. I do not even remember, it probably had Red Hat on it, but I do remember long nights of compiling kernel. I did my PhD in Italy, coding my work on a Red Hat system, using mainly Perl. In 2005 I started to work at a private bioinformatics company in Poland. I had a small cluster to administer and a project to program. At one point, in my frustration with the OS we used to have there, I decided to give Debian stable a chance, and changed the cluster to it. I recommend (and install) Debian stable for similar clusters ever since: the way the distribution is built and organized, the way releases are done have proven to be the right thing for the computing environments I worked in. After Poland I worked for a year and a half at Columbia University in New York, in 2008 and 9. I was not responsible for the administration of the Linux cluster (which was Red Hat Enterprise Linux, if I remember well), and worked with JavaScript mainly. This was a known bioinformatics group with a complex, popular web service that relied on many pieces of software - developed in the group - to deliver results for web queries. The important bit comes now: When the group moved to Germany in 2009, I with a colleague (Guy Yachdav), have decided to 1: use Debian stable as the OS at the new location, and 2: perform the relocation of the entire software infrastructure of the group using Debian packages we would create. We set up our own Debian repository and packaged all of the software of our group. We then tried to publish this, and were rejected. Soon afterwards, Steffen Moeller contacted our group leader, about one of the packaged tools. His question, if I remember well, was: 'Do you plan to contribute these packages to Debian?'. Having worked with Debian, and having created many Debian packages already, this - contributing our packages to /the/ distribution - seemed like the logical step to make. Also, by this time, the status of being involved with Debian has become associated with a sign of high skill for me, and I started to play with the idea to get there myself. So Steffen became my mentor, and I got my alioth account in 2011, joining the Debian Med Project. I started to transfer packages (the Debianization) from our own repository to alioth, and learn to do it better, now under the review of Steffen, later Andreas Tille who is very active in the Med Team, and the FTP masters. Steffen introduced me to the finer details of packaging gently, and I owe him a big thanks for this. Being a bioinformatician, with almost no formal education in informatics, there was a risk for me early on to bail out because of the unexpected multitude of packaging details I had to address for Debian. This was a problem, because taking the effort to provide packages for major Linux distributions is not the standard in bioinformatics. I had to justify the extra effort, or at least, convince myself that it is not too much. Of course it /was/ too much, but by the time I realized this, I got involved too much, and even went to the Debian Med Sprint in Southport in 2012 [1]. I applied to become a Debian Maintainer somewhat late, and was accepted in March 2012. I then taught a course at the University, where I asked my students to prepare Debian packages for the remaining free software from our lab. These components can now be found as the dependency tree of the 'predictprotein' package. The experience of this course highlighted the advantages of being a Debian Developer. I therefore have asked Steffen and Andreas if they think I am ready, and if they could advocate my application. They answered positively, and so here we are. I am applying to become a Debian developer now. The reason why I use free software for my work is that I want to be able to control it. In as much detail as I am able to. This works well for me, I am able to get my working environment do what I want it to do; I rarely have to make compromises. I believe this would not be the case with a closed source working environment. Volunteering my time for Debian is not really volunteering. As I wrote above, we run our lab on Debian, and have our lab software as Debian packages. At this point, when I just do my daily work, I automatically contribute to Debian. I often do volunteer my spare time as well, but that is on winter days, when paragliding is not possible. I would say my primary area of interest in Debian is to prove that it is the best operating system for my working environment. Since I recommended Debian, I am interested in keeping it in a shape that proves me right. In particular I focus on software related to bioinformatics, the tools I need in the lab. My contributions as along these lines [2]. True, many of the packages under my name are from our lab. That is because I got to package this software first. But when I come across something that I find useful and I am the first to it, I package that too (concavity, conservation-code, librcsb-core-wrapper, hhsuite, etc.). The goal to accomplish is to become a Debian developer, a proof of dexterity for me. I believe in this, please do not take it away from me! :) Debian, the OS is just a tool for my work. My direct goal is to achieve something at work, and I need my tools in a good shape. This translates to the goal of keeping Debian the most useful it can be. [1] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMed/Meeting/Southport2012 [2] http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=lkajan%40rostlab.org -- Eugene V. Lyubimkin aka JackYF, JID: jackyf.devel(maildog)gmail.com C++ GNU/Linux userspace developer, Debian Developer -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". 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