Hello, Ubuntu Community! My name is Nils Büchner, also known in the community as “ravage”. I have been an avid user, supporter, and contributor to Ubuntu projects since 2009.
My journey with Ubuntu began with hosting an official Ubuntu archive mirror. Since, I promoted Ubuntu in professional environments, and develop and maintain Snaps. I very actively take part in community discussions. Right now I am playing a pivotal role in integrating and enhancing the Ubuntu experience on Matrix. I attached a complete list of contributions at the bottom.
An Ubuntu membership would give me the opportunity to further strengthen my commitment for the Ubuntu Community. I aim to make Ubuntu even more accessible, welcoming, and thriving for users and contributors alike.
I am keen to continue my work with the Matrix council and further enhance communication platforms for the Ubuntu Community. Gaining Ubuntu membership is not only a recognition of my contributions. It is integral to run for election within the Matrix council and contribute at a higher level. I believe in Ubuntu’s philosophy and its community-driven approach.
Thank you for considering my application.
Contributions to Ubuntu
Official Ubuntu Archive Mirror Host: Since 2009, I’ve been hosting an official Ubuntu archive mirror, providing reliable access to Ubuntu updates and packages to users worldwide. Link to proof
Promotion of Ubuntu in Professional Settings: At my company, Ubuntu is the primary operating system for all open-source projects. I’ve been instrumental in advocating for and implementing Ubuntu across various use cases, demonstrating its versatility and reliability. Currently, I run and maintain roughly 350 Ubuntu servers since the release of 18.04, leading to contributions in testing new LTS releases of Ubuntu and reporting bugs to improve the next versions.
Snap Development: I have started building and maintaining Snaps with the goal of joining the Snapcrafters team. My contributions can be viewed at my Snapcraft publisher page and include several projects where I contribute as a maintainer.
Community Engagement and Support: As “ravage,” I’ve been an active member of the Ubuntu IRC channels, particularly ubuntu, providing support and engaging with the community. I’ve also rejuvenated and administered the semi-official Ubuntu Matrix room, transitioning it to a more active and supported community space now at #support:ubuntu.com
Matrix and Ubuntu Integration: Following Ubuntu’s interest in exploring Matrix as a communication platform, I was selected for the temporary Matrix council to assist in this transition, bringing my experience from running my own homeserver and moderating the Ubuntu Matrix room. I played a crucial role in the setup and approval of a test bridge between IRC and Matrix, aimed at unifying our community platforms.
Matrix Experience Enhancement: My efforts have been key in creating and improving the Matrix experience for the Ubuntu Community. I have provided valuable insights into moderation tools and practices on Matrix, leading to the successful onboarding of over 70 rooms on the ubuntu.com homeserver.
Nils has been a pivotal force in the Ubuntu Matrix project. His experience with Matrix has been invaluable. He’s always been there help me figure out how Matrix works, and has provided great insights in how we can build out our moderation tooling.
I can also attest that he believes in our philosophy and embodies it during his interactions with our community. He’s very respectful and he strives for collaboration and consensus in both his words and actions.
Finally, although Nils has already provided a significant contribution to our ecosystem, this membership application is just the start of his contributions. There is a lot of work ahead of us to bootstrap the Ubuntu matrix project and foster the community there. I’m confident Nils is an amazing addition to the team working on this.
So I give a strong endorsement to his membership application.
My experiences with Ravage has always been great and professional.
Ravage is online a lot on several Ubuntu support channels both irc and matrix
and very helpful to help users with their troubles.
Personaly he helped me a lot on 22.04 development branch testing some
bugs.
I also strongly recommend his ubuntu membership, good luck!
I started interacting with @nbuechner in 2023 when I was collecting information about Matrix as a possible communication platform for the Ubuntu community.
Since then, Nils has been a driving force of the Ubuntu Matrix project. I can very comfortably say that without him, we would not be where we are today with our Ubuntu Matrix homeserver.
His contributions have been extremely useful.
He has been testing many Synapse settings and changes on his Matrix homeserver and provided instructions and feedback. He configured IRC to Matrix bridges using various bridging technologies. He also worked with @merkata to test the snapped version of the matrix-appservice-irc bridge. Nils has been also very helpful with Mjolnir moderator bot configuration and testing. He also contributed to our documentation.
Working with @nbuechner in the temporary Ubuntu Matrix Council has been an absolute pleasure. I strongly recommend him for Ubuntu Membership, and I really hope he applies to continue his work in the Ubuntu Matrix Council.
Echoing the sentiments above, Nils has performed a lot of the heavy lifting preparing Ubuntu Matrix for federation and his expertise on many fronts has made him a very important member of Ubuntu Matrix and the Ubuntu Matrix Council.
Nils is a good decision maker, executes tasks well and maintains a thoughtful coolness of mind when performing moderation and operator tasks setting a good example for everyone, myself included.
Nils is considerate in discussion and has a good sense of humor which helps create a friendly environment. As far as i’ve interacted with Nils it’s been a wonderful experience.
I consider it a wise investment to make Nils an Ubuntu Member and strongly endorse his application.
Great to see you making this next step.
The heavy lifting for your application is done
Please review Membership/Boards - Ubuntu Wiki
and select the date/time to meet the board with your request. Be aware that the 20:00/22:00 time slots are preferred as a convenience for most of the board members.
-hope to see you there-
Nils(ravage as I know him) has been very helpful in the community IRC support channel for the past several years. He has given concise, accurate and helpful advice to all those who seek support. As for his recent actions, thank you Nils, for using OSS technology and mindset to try to bridge gaps between OSS projects. I feel Nils should be awarded Ubuntu membership primary based on his recent actions which directly reflect the Open Source and hacker ethos.
Nils (or ravage) is a very thoughtful and reliable person that i know from years of IRC support. There are only few people I know on IRC that are that patient and friendly when trying to cat-herd the trolls. He is always open minded and tries to research things he does not know about before giving a wrong answer.
Nils is surely a great OSS and Ubuntu person and definitely deserves membership right away for his great contributions to Ubuntu over the years… not to mention that he’s another of these persons where I see a thread like this and have a WTF moment thinking “WHAAAAT ?!? he isn’t a member, i thought he was since years !!!”
I have removed several flagged replies to this topic.
I would like to remind everyone here this thread is for providing supporting testimonials for Ubuntu Membership. Tangential conversations or speculation about the applicant are not appropriate. I would recommend if there are concerns about the applicant they be brought up directly to the members of the membership board.
The Ubuntu Membership Board can be privately reached by emailing ubuntu-membership-boards@lists.ubuntu.com - in case anybody has any concern that are not good to be placed publicly here please do send them to us (pls make our life easier by adding a list to this discourse post in your email, for easier referencing…)
As one of the newer Ubuntu Members, I fully endorse @nbuechner application for Ubuntu Membership.
I was a member of the Ubuntu Matrix server long before it became official, and Nils did an awesome job moderating that server to support the Ubuntu Community on Matrix. Now, Nils is a driving force behind the official, federated Ubuntu Community Matrix space and adopting a modern communication standard that enables a wider community to contribute to Ubuntu. Nils has routinely protected the community from spammers and trolls as moderator and operator of a Draupnir bot. As a member of the temporary Matrix Council, Nils has directly contributed to setting the direction for the Ubuntu Community on Matrix, as well as inviting in all the other “friends of Ubuntu” projects on Matrix into the Ubuntu Community space. Nils has also been quite supportive of my own moderation efforts on Matrix for the Ubuntu HPC community, often answering many of the questions that I have about Matrix and providing guidance on how to enable various widgets and integrations.
Nils would be an excellent addition to the Ubuntu Membership
