[Debichem-devel] Advocating Filippo Rusconi <rusconi-debian at laposte.net>

[Lionel Elie Mamane]

Please CC me on replies, I'm not closely following MLs these times.

Cross-posted to d-science-maintainers at lists.alioth.d.o and
debichem-devel at l.a.d.o, but further discussion on this topic should be
directed to d-newmaint at l.d.o.


On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 04:55:25PM +0000, NM Front Desk wrote:
> Auth-Key: nmauthc7ce0c742511b1647dda5e06b315aad3
> Applicant: Filippo Rusconi <rusconi-debian at laposte.net>

I have served as Filippo's sponsor and mentor for several years, where
he maintained the Debian package of his software, polyxmass and then
massxpert. He later added some other scientific software; I then
typically reviewed the initial upload, with DM-Upload-Allowed bit
set. The quality of these initial uploads has become such that it
matches / exceeds the quality of a typical Debian package. He has been
maintaining most of these packages as part of the "Debian Science"
nebula / Debichem, which he has joined. Maybe some people from there
have comments on the collaboration?

He has shown on multiple times that he is an avid learner and reader;
if a situation is documented, he is able to find said documentation
and apply the documented solution. I've seen him be very responsive to
bug reports. He's eager to perfection the packaging above the usual
Debian community standards (e.g. separation between build-arch and
arch-indep, which is hard to get right and few package maintainers
bother doing).

On the basis of this collaboration, it is my opinion that Filippo can
be trusted with unlimited upload rights; I'm convinced he won't abuse
them. He has shown in the past the humility to have his work checked
before upload when he was unsure in the slightest about a situation or
bug, even when the upload technically allowed under his DM
"powers". From his character, I know he will rather ask, either in
private or publicly on a ML, than potentially screwing up an upload. I
consider him capable of doing most of packaging work without asking
for advice.

More fundamentally, he has been faithfully contributing to (and
advocating) Debian; I strongly think he should be welcomed as a member
of the project, and have voting rights.

On the political side, he's a free software advocate, through and
through. Both generally in life, and with the special link that (in
our opinion) free software has with scientific research. His students
can testify of this: switching to a free software environment is part
of the contract for them :)

-- 
Lionel
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