Rebecca Natalie Palmer

Account namernpalmer
OpenPGP fingerprint 618F D7C9 6C31 3F4A 11FC 3D66 524D D222 7A50 17ED 0 Endorsements
Status Debian Maintainer since 2018-03-25

Short Biography

I became a free software contributor (of more than bug reports and occasional comments) in 2013, when I noticed that something I was considering using in a solo project had missed a release of Debian for lack of maintenance. This didn't matter for my own planned use, but I decided to help get it back into Testing anyway.

This turned out to be the point at which I almost completely switched from solitary hobby programming to contributing. I'm not entirely sure why, or whether I consider my free software activities to be fun or charity. I believe it is a morally good thing for poor people (i.e. for whom the monetary cost of user-pays proprietary software would be a serious barrier) to have access to computers, and a morally bad thing for advertising (i.e. the common funding model for gratis proprietary software) and big business to have too much influence, but my choice of what packages to contribute to mostly hasn't matched either of those. (Though if you know of packages that would fit those and are in need of help, you're welcome to suggest them.) Instead, I've mostly just picked up packages I found in an under-maintained state and decided I wanted to fix.

My skills are at the mathematical end of programming, including physics simulation and statistics, both as a game and as a serious tool. I have also noticed and patched several security bugs, but generally don't deliberately go looking for them. My main language is currently Python, but I can and do make small fixes in almost any language.

Personal history

New-style processes
Started Last Target Applicant UID Status AM
2024-12-19 2025-02-17 DD, upl. Rebecca Natalie Palmer rnpalmer Approved pgt
2018-03-10 2018-03-25 DM Rebecca Natalie Palmer rnpalmer Closed
Old-style processes
Applicant From To Applying for Progress AM Advocate(s)