[ubuntu-in] How many MOTUs are from India?

[Onkar Shinde]

On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 8:59 PM, ankur mishra<ankurwidguitar at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Who is the one? I would like to know about his MOTU journey.

I got involved with the packaging stuff at the time of hardy
development. Initially my focus was on bluetooth stack. But I soon
realized that fixing C based apps/libs was not easy for me. So I then
refocused on the thing I know better i.e. java. I have fixed some very
bad FTBFS problems, tried to shape up the policies related to java and
contributed quite a few fixes back to Debian.

> I am a high school student. Have been to Ubuntu family for now, one and half
> year. I know a bit of C, C++ and VB. I am learning python from past few
> days. I am regular reader of Full Circle Magazine
> (www.fullcirclemagazine.org). In that, I read MOTU interviews every month.
> Most of the MOTUs I have seen in there are of age below 20. Some are even
> 16-17 years old. I am inspired with that. And I understand that only
> inspiration isn't going to feed my aspiration.
>
> As you said 'You need to attach debdiff (to the bug) between the buggy
> package and the fixed package to get them uploaded', I couldn't understand
> what debdiff is. Similarly I couldn't understand many of such terms on MOTU
> wiki too.

Debdiff is the diff (difference) between to source packages. I am not
sure which links you referred to. A good starting point is
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/Contributing

> I know that I have a very-very long way to go for what I am aspiring. The
> only thing I wanted to ask that where do I start. Will I have to master a
> particular language? If yes, then which one? What Linux specific thing will
> I have to learn? Can you please specify some book for it? Is there some book
> which would explain me this whole thing? Please tell me anything and
> everything basic, that you would like a newborn to know about this packaging
> stuff. I am not asking for another wiki, but yours small explanation will do
> wonders. :-)

You don't need to know a particular language for working as Ubuntu
MOTU. Ubuntu contains thousands of packages which are libs/apps made
in different languages i.e. C, C++, Java, Python etc.
You better learn a language first and then start contributing to Ubuntu.

You will have to learn some linux specific things like 'make', shell
scripting and basic linux commands etc.

As I said before specific questions are more welcome. And #ubuntu-motu
is better place for such questions.

By the way, please follow mailing list guidelines when posting mails
to this list. -
http://ubuntu-in.info/wiki/index.php/MailingList_Guidelines


Onkar