Cesare Tirabassi

In the next few interviews we will be talking with some of the newly minted MOTUs. Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) is a familiar face to anybody in #ubuntu-motu and became a full-fledged MOTU on 2007-09-21.

Age: Approaching twice your average MOTU …
Location: Rome, home to the Coliseum and the permanent traffic jam.
IRC Nick: norsetto

How long have you used Linux and what was your first distro?
It’s even more embarrassing than the age question. Since, hmm, like, hmmm, February, errr this year. The first try was Debian (a disaster). After a quick flirt with Knoppix I found Ubuntu. It was love at first sight.

How long have you been using Ubuntu?
Ever since and not looking back once.

When did you get involved with the MOTU team and how?
Almost immediately, you can find in the motu mailing list archive the email of “young” me, titled “Willing to help”, dated 7 March.

What helped you learning packaging and learning how the Ubuntu teams work?
Its a very good question because for me the two were strictly correlated, the more I learned about how the Ubuntu teams work, the more I learned about packaging. The biggest help was the feedback from MOTUs, either sponsoring my uploads, commenting in REVU or giving me suggestions or answers to my questions in #ubuntu-motu.

Favorite part of working with MOTU?
The community. Being part of this amazing collection of people whose work reaches millions of other people everywhere, its just overwhelming.

Any advice for people wanting to help with MOTU?
Don’t be shy, don’t be afraid, and the more you give the more you will be given.

What can be done to help new contributors become new MOTUs?
I really think we need somebody which is dedicated full-time to training, recruiting, coordinating sponsorship and mentoring, updating and making available documentation, organising lessons and Q&A sessions, being a point of reference that contributors can look at. Daniel is doing a tremendous job in this respect but there is only so much one can do when one has 4 or 5 full-time jobs.

Any Plans for Hardy Heron?
Learning packaging
And helping new contributors as much as I can with the little I’ve learned up to now.

Favorite quote?
I’ve fortune set to give me quotes from Terry Pratchett books. Every one is a gem.

What do you do in your other spare time?
Sleep. Serious.

Pic of you, your work area, and/or your screen?
Attached. I’m the small white and red hairy one.

Steve Kowalik

This weeks interviewee is Steve Kowalik. Steve is a MOTU, Ubuntu Core Developer, and Debian Developer amongst other things.

Age: 26
Location: Sydney, Australia
IRC Nick: stevenk

How long have you used Linux and what was your first distro?
I started using Linux in late November, 1998, and started with an install of RedHat 5.0 that I later upgraded all the way until 6.2, until I heard about reports of RedHat 7.0 (which was in RC at the
time) being very bad, even for a RedHat .0 release, and decided to switch to Debian, and installed Slink (2.1).

How long have you been using Ubuntu?
I decided to finally look at Ubuntu just after Breezy was released. I’d kept a vague eye on it, being a Debian Developer, but didn’t pay much notice. After Breezy came out, I downloaded a Live CD, and gave it a try. And liked it so much that I left it running on my machine for two days, at which point I thought I should install it.

How long have you been a MOTU and how long did it take to become one?
I became a MOTU on January the 16th, 2006. I think I had been working on Ubuntu for about two months at that point.

Favorite packages?
I will always have a soft spot for xringd, since it’s the first package I maintained in Debian. Also:

• quodlibet
• crack-attack

Favorite part of being a MOTU?
The community — when I first joined #ubuntu-motu, I was collared by two regulars and set to work after a little bit of a chat.

But the real answer is just that, the wonderful and clueful people out there that, like me, are working to make Universe in Ubuntu better.

Any advice for people wanting to help with MOTU?
Jump in, the water’s fine. If you’re interested in helping out, there are plenty of people who are happy to answer your questions on the mailing list or #ubuntu-motu IRC channel.

Can you briefly compare the development styles of Ubuntu and Debian?
Quite different — Debian is very centered around the idea of “Here is one guy, and the packages he looks after. If you need to do anything, file a bug, and wait for him.” Ubuntu on the other hand is a small team of people working together to solve problems in Universe. We may have people that ‘maintain’ a package in Ubuntu, but only because they know it better, or have a relationship with upstream.

Any Plans for Hardy Heron?
At this point, my only plan is getting a better about window in place, one that doesn’t use yelp.

Favorite quote?
“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.” — it’s quite fun to apply this to random packages.

What do you do to relax after a long day of development work?
I am employed as a developer, so to relax after a long day at work, I work on Ubuntu. I guess that doesn’t answer your question.

I’ll read a book, listen to music, or play crack-attack, or WoW.

Screenshot/Pic of work area?
My screenshot is very boring – the default Gnome settings don’t get my way, so I don’t change them. A bunch of terminals in tabs, Firefox, Wanderlust/Thunderbird for reading mail, and Quod Libet playing music on the other workspace.

As you can see from the photo, I’m a big fan of the mentality that a messy desk is a sign of a sane mind. Sound system, machine, laptop, lots of paper – all fairly normal.

Stefan Potyra

After a long hiatus, we are back and today we are talking with Stefan Potyra (sistpoty) who is a long time MOTU and sat on the first Motu Council.

Age: 28
Location: Poxdorf, a small German village near Erlangen/Nuremberg.

How long have you used Linux and what was your first distro?
Back in 1999 at the university. First distribution I installed myself was DLD (Deutsche Linux Distribution – german Linux distribution), but I soon switched to SuSE and then to RedHat. Not too sure, but it must have been sometime in 2001 or 2002 when I switched again to Debian and stayed there until …

How long have you been using Ubuntu?
I installed Ubuntu late 2005.

How long have you been a MOTU and how long did it take to become one?
According to Launchpad, I got accepted as a MOTU at 2005-09-08, however since Launchpad didn’t manage upload rights there yet, it took me another two month until my key was finally in the keyring. I can’t really say how long it took me from my first direct Ubuntu contribution to becoming a MOTU, but I guess it took 3-4 month.

Favorite packages?
hm… not too sure, I guess konsole, zsh, vim, kvirc, mplayer.

Favorite part of being a MOTU?
I really enjoy hanging out on IRC and having fun there. I also like to review packages and help people with problems, however I unfortunately didn’t have much time recently to do this though.

Any advice for people wanting to help with MOTU?
Just come around to #ubuntu-motu and don’t hesitate to ask anything there.
There are no stupid questions, just stupid answers.

Can you talk a bit about REVU and your work with it?
My first point of contact with Ubuntu actually happened when initially developing REVU. Reinhard Tartler (with whom I’ve been in classes at university) asked me back then if I’d like to develop some webtool in python. Since by then python was my favorite programming language I immediately said yes, and we spent a few weeks to come up with a hacked up thingy we called
REVU. Incidentally I was then absorbed by the ubuntu community.

Of course, later on there were many good ideas how to enhance REVU, but it was clear for me, that the current code base for REVU would need to be entirely rewritten to make it actually maintainable. Hence the idea (and a spec) of REVU2 was created, which sadly was never finished. Parts of the new implementation can still be found at launchpad.

Right now, there are plans again to get REVU2 done, using python-django as a base framework. Actually, having fixed a few things in the current REVU codebase, I’ve also become interested in working on REVU2 again. Also the new infrastructure of Launchpad, like PPAs or the ability to store packaging
branches in bzr is something I’d definitely like REVU2 making use of. Actually Reinhard had quite similar ideas, which are to use a Package cache which can fetch/create source packages by different means, like pulling from an apt-gettable archive, getting something via bzr or from a local ftp directory.

How do you think the MOTU Council has affected the MOTU community?
I guess the main effect that MC has on the MOTU community is that we now have some kind of official voice of the MOTU’s. This means that with the foundation of the council, the MOTU community, was made an official part of Ubuntu, which is trusted to be responsible for themselves. Being able to handle applicants independently – which is the main work I’ve done as a MC member – underlines this.

Any Plans for Hardy Heron?
Getting REVU2 out the door would be nice. Also I’d like to finally get FAUmachine into Ubuntu, the project I’m working on at university.

Favorite quote?

Wenn man’s kann, ist’s keine Kunst, wenn man’s nicht kann, erst recht keine.

(Which unfortunately doesn’t translate to English)

What do you do to relax after a long day of development work?
Watch TV, drink beer and talk with my girlfriend. Or eventually play a game.

Screenshot/Pic of work area?