[arch-events] Fw: [arch-dev] Information on myself

[Dieter Plaetinck]

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:21:47 +0100
From: Dennis Herbrich <dennis at archlinux.org>
To: Development Discussion for Arch Linux <arch-dev at archlinux.org>
Subject: [arch-dev] Information on myself


Instead of hijacking the other thread, I'd rather start a new one if
you don't mind, and elaborate a bit.

My nick on the forum is "Gyroplast", registered since September 2002. My
activities pretty much ceased when creating the Wiki became the next
hot thing, roughly around the 0.8 Voodoo release, and rasat took over
the migration. The last installation guide I personally took care of
was for the 0.7 Wombat release, which is still floating around in
various forms on the net.

Usually, about 2 weeks before official release, Judd threw a beta/alpha
iso my way to try out and document in advance, and I invested about a
week and a dedicated machine with all kinds of strange old hardware
(tiny SCSI drives, modems, ISDN connections, various CD drives, etc.)
to find and document any issues and compatibility problems people may
stumble upon. Fixed a couple rare and stumping bugs that way.

In addition to the guide, I maintained a FAQ[1] covering some "special"
setups or the common (at that time) problems in more detail than the
guide should. I wrote two Colorboot howtos and created a working i586
port before someone else "beat" me to it.[2]

Last thing I remember doing was an attempt on unifying and improving
the Arch documentation systematically[3], a project I quit when the
Wiki approach became an apparently much better option in the long run.
It's a strange feeling, seeing this assumption from years ago prove
itself. :)

All this stuff is heavily outdated now, usually because the issues at
hand became obsolete through better code (bootsplash) or other projects
doing the same thing, but better (i586 port, documentation).  Winter
2004 my studies were in full swing, a move to a different part of
Germany was on the radar, my now-wife still was my girlfriend, and I
simply was overwhelmed with OTHER stuff to do, thus let Dusty and Rasat
silently take over whatever needed to be done and vanished, lurking in
the shadows for the last couple years, watching Arch grow like weed,
developers come and go, and waiting for my life to settle. :)

I could never decide to "officially" leave, as I always thought things
would get better Real Soon Now™, but they never were. Until now, that
is.

I was relatively active in the newbie corner of the forum, simply
because I knew the common pitfalls people always fell for during
installation and had some solid, broad experience under my belt in most
relevant fields concerning linux, networking and Arch in particular.
This has not changed by much, save for the fact that I've got a BA in
theoretical CS. I'm working as a JAVA (meh) developer of university
administration software used by more than 230 of germany's
universities, for 2+ years now.

Cutting a long story short, I consider myself as a jack of all trades
with a tendency to type too much, so taking care of the installation
guide at a time when nobody seemed to care about it at all except for
Judd, who had enough other things to do, was an obvious choice, and
just when I attempted to do what I can do best, standardizing and
sorting out the mess that was documentation, real life took over
brutally, putting an end to my beloved beancounting ways.

Well, enough for now, nobody's going to read all this anyway. 

I wanted to offer the takeover of xfce if nobody else is available. Of
course I expect you all to treat me as if I were an absolute nobody,
which I effectively *am* after all, archlinux.org mail address or not.
If you're irked by the idea of giving somebody control over a vital
package like xfce just because he asks for it, I'm totally with you. :)

Either way, I'll dive into the existing codebase and see if I find
anything striking my fancy, just like 8 years ago, and things will work
out just fine for me. No need to drag me into devhood at all from my
POV.

Kind regards,
  Dennis

PS: My mail address is still being correctly forwarded.

[1] - http://archlinux.veloxis.de/faq/
[2] - http://archlinux.veloxis.de/
[3] - http://archlinux.veloxis.de/docguide/docguide.html

-- 
"Den Rechtsstaat macht aus, dass Unschuldige wieder frei kommen."
  Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble, Bundesinnenminister (BRD)

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