Afif Elghraoui

My name is Afif Elghraoui, my educational background is in physics and bioinformatics, and I'm currently working as a bioinformatics scientist.

I started using Linux-based operating systems eight years ago after I was introduced to it in my first programming class. I was immediately drawn to the idea of unrestricted ("free") software for the reason that work done once should not be billed multiple times, and that we can more easily build on past achievements if we don't have to deal with restrictions like those imposed by proprietary software.

Debian 4 was the first OS I ever used on my own machines after leaving Windows. I then tried other distributions for some time and finally came back to using Debian again over a year ago.

Some of the things I love about Debian are that it is a large community with principles, that it aims to prioritize users' needs instead of developers' philosophies, and that it has a governance structure that promotes consistency in the system while not being controlled by a single business to the exclusion of qualified community members.

I maintain seven packages (with five more currently in queue, and others still as ITP on my to-do list) as part of the Debian Med team, largely in the areas of genomics and systems biology. I also maintain one unrelated package (ori), because I thought it was interesting and useful.

There are many parts of Debian that I'd like to work in, but I am primarily interested in facilitating biological and medical research and usability in general. Scientific software tends to be difficult to install for many users, or may lack adequate test coverage yet still have influential results in publications. While packaging the software and assisting the upstream developers with QA helps, many users of such software do not have administrative access to easily install and use our packages. For this usability issue, for example, I would consider contributing to dpkg development.

I also understand that there are jobs nobody really wants to do, like checking license texts, and I'd be willing to contribute some time to help minimize the amount of work any single person has to put into such tasks.