On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 15:32 -0400, John J. McDonough wrote:
My name is John McDonough and I am a retired computer professional
living in
Midland, Michigan. I write ocasionally, have an online tutorial on PIC
microcontrollers, the occasional amateur radio magazine article, and even a
Six Sigma article. I have used Fedora since FC1, although I don't always
keep up with every release.
I feel a certain obligation to contribute, but although I program from time
to time I can't really see myself being able to commit the time nor
intensity needed to develop. However, I believe I have a better than
average command of the English language, and when first Paul Frields and
then Karsten Wade mentioned the need for beat writers, it seemed to me that
this might be a way I could give something back.
Great, John, thanks. Your interest and expertise is most welcome.
Looking at the list of open slots, it seems as if I could add
something in
the gcc arena or possibly Development Tools. I use gcc regularly, mostly C
or C++, but I'm not above writing the occasional line of Fortran or Ada. At
this point, though, it isn't entirely clear how a writer learns what is
going on for subjects that don't have a PoC. Wade through subversion
comments maybe?
Not that bad. Try these:
* Put your name next to the beat on the wiki.
* Subscribe to fedora-devel-list and scan recent archives for gcc
related content.
* Same for reading the Fedora planet (
http://planet.fedoraproject.org)
* Feel free to drop an email to that list and let them know you are
covering this for the release notes.
* Look in
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features for information on
planned and proposed features for Fedora 10 that impact gcc et al.
* New work and interest seems to be happening in gdb, as some folks
appear to have given up on Frysk; changes here would be news for Fedora
10 most likely; look at Tom Tromey's blog posts to see what he is doing
there:
http://tromey.com/blog/
One thing that is fortunate -- Uli Drepper is one of the most consistent
developers when it comes to sending us release notes content related to
gcc. That would point you in more research directions.
Hmmm ... the SelfIntroduction page says you might want to know more
about
me. Well, although I programmed for many moons, my real interest has been
the software process. After retiring I did a little consulting on Six Sigma
as applied to software development at some very large firms on three
continents. Prior to retiring my role was to provide the technical guidance
on large (>1MM USD) software projects. I was (thankfully) insulated from
many of the administrative burdens, although I did play a major role in our
software process.
Do you think of the open source methodology as a new/different approach?
Just curious, rather off-topic but an interest of mine. :)
On the personal side, I am an amateur radio operator, in fact, Radio
Officer
for the state of Michigan, which means I spend a lot of time with the state
police. I like grody technical stuff, build radios, play with
microcontrollers, all that geeky stuff. Still, if one looks at my history,
both at work and at play, the people skills are not entirely absent.
+1 to hams, open source seems to attract our fair share.
With David Nalley's help I got signed up to FAS, did the CLA
thing, now it
looks like I have a heck of a lot to read!
Either ask questions here or come visit us on IRC to work through
anything that comes up.
- Karsten
--
Karsten Wade, Sr. Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu :
http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora :
http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
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