Self Introduction: Bret Mogilefsky

[Bret Mogilefsky]

Hello, here's my self-intro per the form proscribed in the Wiki:

1. Name
Bret Aaron Mogilefsky

2. Location
Oakland, CA, USA

3. Profession
Manager of Developer Support (PS[123P])

4. Company
Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc.

5. Goals
I'm interested in making sure that there are widely-tested RPMs
available for the crucial bleeding-edge packages I rely on at work (and
that I'm not the only one responsible for keeping them up to date).  At
the moment I've just packaged subversion-0.34.0 (released today),
apr-0.9.5 and apr-utils-0.9.5 due to pressing needs.  I'm a little
worried about the community process focusing on attention to detail...
The subversion mod_dav_svn RPM in FC1 doesn't properly depend on httpd,
so the httpd 2.0.48 in testing is breaking it.  Also, there's a new
httpd in testing, but no apr 0.9.5 and apr-utils 0.9.5... As it turns
out these are in the httpd tarball, but Apache.org hasn't made their
existence known on apr.apache.org.  So after tracking all of this down
and making the three RPMs, I thought I'd better make sure no one
duplicates the work, and if I was going to post them at all, I might as
well actually contribute them to the distribution now that I can. =)  We
have lots of other packages lying about that I'd much rather contribute
than maintain (jabberd2, etc.) and we'll clean these up and contribute
soon.

6. Qualifications:
I'm an active contributor to many open source projects in that every
time I have to make a tweak or fix in the course of using it I always
contribute patches upstream, and I make my staff do the same.  I'm an
open source nut and have been running Linux since around 1995 or so in
various distributions, but mostly Red Hat.  I've picked up RPM .spec
file creation only recently and would rate myself as somewhat of a
novice at it, with skills derived from being a pro coder, but a novice 
admin.  I can pick up a decent .spec from an existing .src.rpm and
update it, but am not very good at creating them from scratch (though
others on my staff are).

I'm an all-terrain hacker, having programmed in the game industry since
1995 in leadership positions (see
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId=1675).  My
experience ranges from game engine programming in various assembly
languages and C/C++ through more current endeavors with PHP, SQL, and
friends.  I have a special love of Lua, having hacked on it heavily and
having used it in my favorite game (see
http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/50544.asp).  This has led into a
lot of familiarity with various other interpreted languages, which is
what I program in most of the time now, though I still revert to C++ or
assembly for the odd quick project.

Since moving from R&D into a management position at Sony I've spent a
good deal of time hacking on our own internal branch of SourceForge,
which will eventually be cleaned up and sent out into the wide, wide
world.  At the moment, and old version of it runs
http://playstation2-linux.com.  Though I now manage a staff of
engineers, I'm still very technical myself, coding an average of two
days a week between interviews, reviews, and other manager-level
minutia.  In general, I lack time but not enthusiasm... I'm always
heavily immersed in ten projects at once, and that's actually the way I
like it. =)  What time I have to give is yours, but I know in advance it
won't be a lot.

I do QA every day by running FC1 as my desktop, on my laptop, at home,
and on various servers.  Once I become more familiar with the rhythm of
things here I anticipate I'll start filing bugs, but right now I'm just
sticking a toe in.

I suppose you have no reason to trust me that's verifiable, but if
nothing else you can at least look at the existence of the PS2 Linux kit
and site as evidence of my great love for (and dedication to) open
source hacking.  I worked extremely hard to make sure that project
happened.

7. GPG KEYID and fingerprint

On toad at 7:32pm ~> gpg --fingerprint 4CB11F54
pub  1024D/4CB11F54 2002-11-14 Bret Mogilefsky (DevNet Account)
<mogul at ps2-pro.com>
     Key fingerprint = F9DA 1E42 2437 060D 38A7  60EB B547 0E2C 4CB1
1F54
uid                            Bret Mogilefsky (Mgr. SCEA Developer
Support) <mogul at playstation.sony.com>
uid                            Bret Mogilefsky <mogul at gelatinous.com>
sub  1024g/48D749DB 2002-11-14
sub  1024D/6C80125A 2002-11-15


Regards,
Bret
-- 
Bret Mogilefsky <mogul-fedora-devel at gelatinous.com>