Application - Server package set - Jonas Jelten

Community Ubuntu Developer Membership
1

I, Jonas Jelten, am applying for upload rights for server package-set.

Name Jonas Jelten
Launchpad Page https://launchpad.net/~jj
GitHub Page https://github.com/TheJJ
Matrix @jj → :sft.lol

I am applying because:

  • I’d like to reduce sponsorship burden on my team ✓
  • I’d like to eliminate delays in getting my work sponsored ✓
  • I need the ability to restart failed builds independently to save others’ time ✓
  • I want to help sponsor other contributors, enabling more community work to land ✓
  • Increasing my direct involvement allows me to better assess and implement improvements for distribution tooling and infrastructure ✓ :smile:

Who I am

Hey! I am Jonas (jj), a software engineer within the Ubuntu Server team.
My primary focus is creating updates and bugfixes for various Ubuntu packages, as well as developing and maintaining project and team infrastructure.
Currently, I am actively improving and extending git-ubuntu, our daily triage tooling, and Ubuntu’s debuginfod.

Before joining Ubuntu full-time, I worked at the Chair of Network Architectures and Services, the Computational Imaging and Inverse Problems group, and the IT Operations datacenter at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). For their storage system I created ceph-balancer, an advanced optimization tool designed to increase available storage in Ceph clusters.

Outside of work, I collaborate with friends on projects I find interesting.
Many of these relate closely to Debian/Ubuntu, such as my vision for modernized .deb packaging with debmagic :magic_wand:.
My open game engine for Age of Empires has attracted over 14k stars on GitHub.
Additionally, I drove the development of StuStaPay, an electronic NFC-based payment system for large-scale events (I co-organize StuStaCulum).
This system runs on the infrastructure of StuStaNet, a non-profit ISP organization where I remain an active contributor.

My Ubuntu story

My journey began in 2008. After hearing about Ubuntu from a friend, I quickly discovered that the free software world was my true home.
While I experimented with Arch and Gentoo to feed my curiosity how a distribution works internally and to customize it, I always kept Debian and Ubuntu as the standard for my servers.

During my studies, I worked for the StuStaNet ISP, which runs entirely on Debian.
Later, at the TUM ITO datacenter, nearly all of the thousands of machines powering the university and research infrastructure were running Ubuntu.
I spent many years improving and extending this massive infrastructure, introducing technologies like Ceph, LXD, and BBB.
This results in over 18 years of practical experience in provisioning, debugging, and developing on Ubuntu - accompanied by many upstream commits.
To take my contributions to the next level, I decided to work for Ubuntu full-time, and I am now proud to be part of the Ubuntu Server team.

Examples of my work / Things I’m proud of

Quick links: Uploads on UDD, Launchpad Uploads

Below is a selection of my contributions since May 2025.

Ubuntu contributions

main inclusion requests

fixes and SRUs

merges and syncs

upstream contributions

Areas of work

Currently my involvement is:

  • Packages (mainly from server-set)
    • openldap
    • multipath-tools
    • nginx
    • ipxe
    • sssd
    • dovecot
    • postfix
    • unbound
    • bacula
    • lftp
    • and drive-by contributions and backports in various other packages
  • Infrastructure & tooling
    • git-ubuntu
    • triage tooling
    • ubuntu-debuginfod
    • debmagic

I work within the Ubuntu Server team, collaborating closely with my colleagues to ensure precise and reliable delivery.

Things I could do better

  • In reviews or design decisions details are important, but I can improve on focusing more on more the overall effects and bigger picture.
  • I should investigate more infrastructure bugs, and if possible propose fixes.
  • I’d like to focus more on meaningful contributions, to better priorize among the infinity of todos.

Plans for the future

General

I intend to encourage and unblock more contributions to Ubuntu by sponsoring community uploads and decreasing the workload on my team members by handling my uploads independently.

My long-term goal is to modernize distribution tooling.
I want to gain deeper insights into the current architecture and pain points to strengthen my understanding of improvement opportunities and then tackle them.

Ultimately, I aim to increase my involvement to become a Core Dev, allowing me to drive improvements in the distro architecture and infrastructure so that everyone can benefit from a stronger foundation.

What I like least in Ubuntu

  • The packaging tooling and infrastructure could benefit a lot from vast improvements.
    For example autopkgtests, and even features like tracking file names or debugging symbol should be integrated in Launchpad.
    The code review UI could be modernized and more integrated and tailored towards Ubuntu development.
    Overall, the number of tools duct-taped onto the Launchpad API is really worrying.
  • The flow of testing package uploads by creating a PPA, creating a source pkg, uploading, running (and making sure to re-trigger) autopkgtest, waiting for results, creating merge proposals, approving should be more automated.
  • Debian integration could also be better, like full-automatic update merges, salsa/dgit and git-ubuntu history sharing.
  • A lot of the packaging internals is crafted with rather legacy technologies (Perl and Bash codebases) where seemingly few people dare to touch it, and if, tools remain isolated and quite unmaintained.
    Thus, many tools have been stacked metre-high on top to improve weakenesses in the tool below, but that whole stack isn’t integrated well and each layer missing different features - I wish collaboration and integration of such tools would be increased.
  • I’d love to see more git-based packaging in general, since mixing (or even loosing) rich history due to a lacking upload standard is annoying.
    I think this happens due to remaining problems and usability issues, which we should work towards improving.

Endorsements and Comments

If you’ve worked with me or can judge my contributions and their quality, I’d be glad about an endorsement reply to this post :smile:

Here’s a template for your comments:

Endorsement comment inspiration:
- Sponsoring feedback
  Please fill us in on your shared experience.
  - What did you sponsor? A list of sponsored packages can generated [via UDD here](https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi)
  - How would you judge the quality and describe the improvements?
  - Do you trust the applicant?
- Specific experiences of working together
  - good examples of your work together, also cases that could have handled better.
- Areas of improvement and next steps
  - What is the journey you see ahead of the applicant, the next steps they should take, the next things they likely have to learn and the next mountains to climb?
2 Likes
2

I endorse JJ for server package set upload rights.

Sponsoring feedback

I sponsored 9 uploads for 5 different packages, including openvpn, multipath-tools, ipxe, dbconfig-common, and lftp. These consisted of various merges, SRUs, and bug fixes. Every package was well prepared, and required minimal or no changes before sponsoring. All prepared SRU documentation was especially great!

Specific experiences of working together

The two of us work together on the Ubuntu Server team. Through it, we have collaborated on packaging and additional work such as charming and git-ubuntu. I have seen many great contributions to Ubuntu, tooling, and infrastructure.

Areas of improvement and next steps

I believe JJ has more than enough experience for server package upload rights, and is well on his way to Core Dev/MOTU. Focusing on these next steps for the future, I think it would be great to see further contributions outside of server, and additional interactions with the community via platforms like matrix.

3

General feedback

I have been Jonas’ mentor since he joined the Ubuntu Server team in May 2025. Due to his prior experience as an open-source contributor and Gentoo packager, he hit the ground running and quickly picked up the Debian/Ubuntu-specific tooling and approach to distro work. When walking through the different tools together, Jonas always went deep to understand the inner workings, spotting misconceptions and raising bugs/fixes several times. He showed a great learning ability too, as he got into the debuginfod and git-ubuntu projects quickly, adding new features, improving the infrastructure, and contributing plenty of ideas for future developments.

Jonas actively contributes to the Ubuntu Server team bug & documentation triage process, keeping the team’s bug work under control and fixing high-priority bugs, such as FTBFS (LP: #2125198). He is always attentive and curious about new things that he reads about in git history and does not hesitate to ask questions to the relevant people if anything is unclear.

I sponsored 7 packages for Jonas, which can be seen from the list below. This number is relatively low, because I always encouraged him to seek sponsorship from others first before falling back to me (the mentor). Jonas did that in most cases, gaining experience and insights from a multitude of core-devs and reviewers.

sponsored by slyon:

Jonas worked his way through proposed-migration, keeping the team packages in good shape and learning about all the relationships between packages, transitions, autopkgtest CI and the processes involved. He drove the bacula MIR (LP: #2112455) that was requested by the IS team at the time. I trust in his skills and decision-making in the best interest of the Ubuntu community.

I fully endorse his application for the Server Team package set.

Specific Experiences of working together

Besides supporting Jonas’ distro work (as described above) and collaborating on the common Ubuntu Server team chores, I was (one of many) sparring partner for debmagic. His work on this new build tool clearly shows a deep understanding of the Debian build & test pipeline, integrating best practices from more modern approaches (Gentoo, Nix, ..) and his attention to details and edge cases.

Areas of Improvement

There are always new things to learn in Ubuntu. With new powers come new responsibilities, so Jonas should learn about dput-ng and additional helpers, such as https://git.launchpad.net/\~ubuntu-server/+git/ubuntu-helpers/tree/cpaelzer/.dput.d/ . Furthermore, he should try to be more visible in public Ubuntu channels and participate on +1 Maintenance rotations on his route to become a Core-Dev.