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Hello Gentoo Developers,
I'd like to thank Hardave Riar (hardave) and Joshua Kinard (Kumba) for
nominating me for a position on the soon to be formed Jedi er, Gentoo Council.
First I'll detail a little about my background with Gentoo and then get into a
little bit about why I believe I would make a good Council member.
Background:
I've been working with Linux as a hobbyist/enthusiast since late 1997/early
1998. Having originally started with Slackware, my introduction to Gentoo in
2001 was smooth. One of the big appeals of Gentoo for me was that like
Slackware, Gentoo really didn't try to do hold your hand or make assumptions
about how you wanted your system configured. Plus Gentoo had a lot more
packages to it than Slackware, which was a plus because I was always
forgetting how I compiled my packages on Slackware :)
Though I initially was using Gentoo on x86, I became interested to know if
Gentoo had an UltraSPARC port, and lo and behold, it did! Once I found out
there was an UltraSPARC port, I installed it at work and started spending time
helping out in IRC and on the forums. In October 2002, Seemant was kind enough
to make me a developer. When the Zynot fork happened in June-July 2003, I
became the Team Lead for the SPARC port.
Propaganda:
I believe I have the qualities it would take to be a good candidate for a
Gentoo Council member. Having been a developer for almost 3 years, I've seen
a lot of change and people come and go. Also being a manager has helped give
me a little more insight into how organizations function and how people
function. While I am typically low key on most of the mailing lists, I tend
to focus my time on working on testing and quality assurance for the
SPARC/UltraSPARC ports. A lot of users have commented on the stablity of the
SPARC port in comparison to some of the other architecture ports, and I'm glad
that the SPARC team's efforts on that front are noticed and appreciated. That
being said, as a council member, I'd like to try and bring that focus on
quality assurance as well as a larger awareness of alternative architectures
to the rest of the Gentoo developer and user community. Our currently small
and quite dilligent QA team is doing a great job, and I'd like to see their
efforts expanded upon to help try and improve the quality of our little corner
of the Linux distribution world.
With regards to leadership qualifications, I've been the Team Lead / Co-Team
Lead of the SPARC port for almost 2 years now. I also hold the rank of Eagle
Scout[1] in the Boy Scouts of America. As most of the other SPARC developers,
or other Gentoo developers I've worked with a bit and/or had the chance to
meet in real life, I'm not really as crazy as my Orkut picture makes me look
:) I try to bring an open-minded approach to my leadership responsibilities
and be as fair and impartial as I can. I try to encourage folks when they
have ideas, and give them lots of free reign to work with. As a council
member, I'd like to try and help couple that approach with a little more
global direction for the Gentoo project as a whole.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and please feel free to ask me any
questions you may have.
--
Jason Wever
[1] - For those who don't know, the Eagle Scout rank requires that the Boy
Scout striving to obtain the rank demonstrate leadership by developing and
implementing a community service project in a leadership role.
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