gregoa's blog

when I woke up today (after sleeping in for the first time with my new roll-top in front of my bedroom window) I was surprised & confused by a couple of "congratulations!" messages in my irc away-log. it took me a bit of time & coffee (& looking into my mailbox) to begin to realize that my Debian account had indeed been created while I was asleep. — in fact I guess I still haven't completely realized my new status as Debian Developer.

as others I'd like to follow the good tradition of taking the opportunity to thank some of the people who helped me to get there:

• first & foremost Tony Mancill, my advocate, permanent sponsor, & long-time co-maintainer; for all his support in preparing & quickly uploading packages, tracking down bugs, encouraging & advocating me but also for our very pleasant "chats" via email. — we have already agreed to continue co-maintaining each other's packages.
• the friendly & helpful guys from the Debian Perl Group: Gunnar Wolf, for always encouraging me (to join the group, to apply for the New Maintainer Process, ...); Damyan Ivanov, for teaching me so much (even if he called it "nitpicking"); Gunnar, Damyan, Krzysztof Krzyżaniak, Niko Tyni, Roberto C. Sánchez, Stephen Gran, Frank Lichtenheld, Jaldhar H. Vyas, Russ Allbery, Raphaël Hertzog, & some others for uploading packages I've prepared & helping me when I had questions or problems; Martín Ferrari, for all his help, expertise, & especially for the fun & the good times we share on IRC.
• my Application Manager Wouter Verhelst; for guiding me through the New Maintainer process not only fast but also in a very helpful, at the same time demanding & supporting way.
• the Debian Women sub-project; for making Debian a better & friendlier place not only for women but in general.
• finally: the people who used the time while I was asleep to actually create my account tonight :)

some final thoughts about the NM process from my point of view:

• it took me some time to actually apply for NM; what deterred me was not that I knew it would take some time but that I didn't know how long the time would be; & that I knew that the bigger part of the overall time would consist of waiting.
• I applied on 2007-04-03, my account was created on 2008-04-18; 380 days is not bad altogether in my opinion; the actual work with my AM was from 2007-08-12 until 2007-11-28 (i.e. 108 days, or 28% of the whole duration).
• I did enjoy the actual checks; I had to read & think a lot, & I learned a lot in that period.
• Front Desk (i.e. Christoph Berg) was very quick on all necessary steps.
• I was never demotivated about my Debian work because of all the people supporting me & taking the burden of uploading packages I had prepared. but I have to admit that I got a little bored in the last months of waiting after the report had been submitted by my Application Manager.

& now it's time first to celebrate & then to try to fully grasp my new rights & responsibilities.

first I was wondering why viewing photos with qiv takes so long. then I was wondering about the high incoming network traffic; netstat showed that it was coming from my laptop to my desktop machine.

then I realized that I had started qiv in the xterm that contained the ssh connection to the screen session on my laptop.

on 2007-04-03 I applied to become a Debian Developer; that means that today's my first anniversary of being in the New Maintainer process.

(details on the past & future steps & stages of my NM process can be found on my NM page).

update: DAM have reviewed my application on 2008-04-07, so "only" the actual account creation is missing.