-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Re: support for Francesco Ballarin's application for Debian Developer. 12/5/2025. I support Francesco Ballarin 's request to become a Debian Developer, uploading. I have worked with Francesco Ballarin on fenics-dolfinx, petsc and other python and numerical packages for 17 months or more and I consider them as having sufficient technical competence. Through my pre-existing connection with Francesco via the FEniCS project, I invited Francesco to directly support the Debian (and therefore Ubuntu) packages for FEnICS by applying to become a Debian Maintainer. He already had an established record as an upstream developer and professional mathematician, and as Debian Maintainer he has amply confirmed his competence by patching and making uploads of packages, both the fenics packages and other packages for the wider python and numerical community. He has even prepared new packages (pyvista, and his own pusimp). He has worked with me going through the process of preparing library transitions (petsc 3.22), and has now independently (apart from the new package upload) prepared petsc 3.23 for transition after the trixie release. Francesco has also demonstrated his readiness to work as an independent Debian Developer by asking me to give him DM permissions to patch and upload a package I had never even heard of myself (togl). Francesco has shown a good readiness to communicate respectfully with other teams and package maintainers. He has passed his "apprenticeship" swimmingly, is ready now in my estimation to work confidently as a full Debian Developer, and I have no hesitation in supporting his application. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAEBCAAdFiEEI8mpPlhYGekSbQo2Vz7x5L1aAfoFAmgiYA0ACgkQVz7x5L1a AfpjXBAAoiPFUCH56T7Q+mmpbw6Ljec6dIcs1c7H7/cdkw2wUoDHPHOV4bJ+pKIc W8ATBzExMo9eRmomzG3VyNEP4xCCBn87S8OHZrCbE8TbFe4Mgnc9EsDenlfdyOIT suQrK4XCl2twQMgIOidwfy3BHtanExIM8J9TLWmgNEPxtwb4R4QcCBcm6gzMOBvF vE8EwtxHBE4Qpm7TZDwUr8wkNfuwjqUpAtoWCkMDRKvuIFPlVCyvFKqT1wIa3rdf ACJbz4qjxQsJJ1AdT9R9HOh0jTowzaBe1eJybFdWIZc1jNWmFAO4uGmjYVb784k6 bL2V09A9HzMPrDpf4VE9kbBJX/MwSbzVo7kY9cZk7Q5tdkNU18rYKaxO7h2x7bMr Pc6vAbrsjRK4C4TGJJOVwJ4tiWJ9LoFwd/xeo5Ra9SsdRRNdsYqlOMTl4jhvjrr7 Q/bJzQBa3XT9BPtAXV5BemY1ZFXooA8ArB992saHSHZcGMnhdvp2ef3je+XBzOMo Vrrr4jsHMX/V2SK9PK9sCE14HoPptiYCEg1VwYSOKUEBxrT0fatX7G2V0myywI9n aV2JsWwRAa9CcCOr5C5kYNf9t1c3SPR37A463ZVLFGTVzAw8jnzVa3hBdBMxPDau /nNES3/9IoGnA/LjN2xgfYV+jZkl3/MX0Lg/R/GTtY/4Nwumd7o= =pA1c -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----