Student Application Template
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Name: Daniel Lobato García
Contact/Email: elobatocs at gmail.com , facebook Daniel Lobato García, gtalk elobatocs
Background:
I have been studying in University Carlos III of Madrid from 2009 to 2011, right now I am finishing my second year and I will be starting the third next september at the University of California at Irvine, so maybe I will finish my degree there. My main interests at the university are several math areas, computer architecture, artificial intelligence, files and databases, security in it and programming methodologies.
Outside the uni I have been contributing to the webpage before listed http://www.machinedancezone.net as I love that game. I have also some actual industry experience as I did an internship in IBM developing cobol legacy libraries and mantaining them. I have also been involved in other big project, Expogamer, a project that a friends and I started and went into one of the biggest videogame expositions in spain. We had one edition and we decided to give us a break for two years. Besides some marketing, I developed the webpage but we stopped paying the domain after the event was celebrated.
I have some experience concerning the project as I have been an avid Debian user for over 4 or 5 years. I eventually moved to ?ArchLinux this last year and I started using Red Hat and Mandrake Linux a lot of years ago when I started using it as my daily system. I have only changed very small things in some scripts, programs, etc... but I have coded a nice shell in C for the university in a course of Operating Systems and I know well how things work inside Debian thanks to a course I am taking on Designing Operating Systems at the university. I have also taken a course on File structures and Databases which will be helpful here.
I feel comfortable in C as I did a lot of projects at the university with it (even though most of them did not concern operating systems). I have experience creating, developing and applying hash functions if it is of help. I do not have any experience on open source projects (machinedancezone.net is not open source and neither my internship in ibm were open source).
Certainly I think I can be a good contributor to this open source project as I like what it is about and I feel like I have the technical background required
Project title: Declarative Diversions
Synopsis: This project has to do with the implementation of declarative diversions in dpkg, which are currently made by calling to the dpkg-divert command. This has to be substituted by a new control file that dpkg has to understand.
Benefits to Debian: A brand new dpkg able to implement declarative diversions
Deliverables: A well-documented new control file and any changes that have to be made to dpkg. If the mentor wants to, I could be writing a blog explaining what I do every 3 days for instance.
Project details: Stated in the description of http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2011/DeclarativeDiversions
Project schedule:
Apr 25 - May 24 : Read documentation and ask as many questions as I need in order to get started. Honestly I do not think that reading documentation to get started should take that amount of time so if I feel confident enough as to start programming by these dates, I will start. Uni ends on May 10th but I will have sporadic exams until May 27th so please bear that in mind.
May 25 - June 25 - A month should be enough to deliver the first prototype of the new control file and all the changes that would need to be done in dpkg.
June 25 - July 15 - Everything but testing should be done by this dates. I will be developing faster the more I familiarize with the project.
July 15 - August 7 - There is time enough to fix bugs and test thoroughly the project within this dates. Also, documentation should be finished by August 7th.
August 7 - August 26 - There is time enough to surpass any unexpected problem that I may encounter and if we have finished by that time, documenting and testing should be our priority by that time.
Other summer plans: No plans.
Exams and other commitments: I will have no exams from May 27th on, except for an exam on 27th June. So I do not feel like this would be a problem.
If you are not a Debian Developer: If I feel like I am actually contributing, I will definitely take part in the community.
Why did I choose this project: I am not using Debian on my laptop computer, the one that I use the most, BUT still after 5 years or so using it on a daily basis I have to say that I have loved it for the time that I used it, it was the first distribution that offered me what I was looking for and I introduced some of my friends to linux thanks to it and thanks to ubuntu (my brother's laptop is currently equiped with ubuntu and the shared computer we have at home still has debian). I have to say that my commitment with the community is huge no matter if I am still using it on a daily basis or not. Besides that, a lot of people use debian/debian based distributions, helping out that many people is also one of the reasons this project is the one that I loved the most!