Nice interview :)<br><br>
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<div style="padding: 4px; background-color: #c3d9ff;"><h3 style="margin:0px 3px;font-family:sans-serif">Sent to you by Kartik Mistry via Google Reader:</h3></div>
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<div style="font-family:sans-serif;overflow:auto;width:100%;margin: 0px 10px"><h2 style="margin: 0.25em 0 0 0"><div class=""><a href="http://times.debian.net/1322">A Few Questions For Jaldhar H. Vyas</a></div></h2>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.5em">via <a href="http://times.debian.net/" class="f">DebianTimes</a> on 5/6/09</div><br style="display:none">
<h1>A Few Questions For
Jaldhar H. Vyas
</h1>
<h2>Who is Jaldhar H. Vyas?</h2>
<p>
I'm a 38 year old Gujarati-American male who lives in Jersey City, New Jersey
(A suburb of New York) with my wife Jyoti and my children Shailaja (7) and
Nilagriva (4).
</p><p>
My Debian blog is at
<a href="http://www.braincells.com/debian/">http://www.braincells.com/debian/</a> but I should warn
you in advance it is mostly devoid of meaningful content :-)
</p>
<h2>How did you end up using Debian and becoming a DD?</h2>
<p>
Because I don't actually like computers. Growing up in the '70s we were
told computers were great. if you had any problem you could just say
“let's ask the computer!” and
<a href="http://www.thechestnut.com/sentinels.htm">Sentinel One</a>
or whoever would appear as a
hologram and instantly tell you the answer. Or maybe they were lovable
wisecracking robots. But we were lied to. Real computers turned out to
be neither lovable nor cute and they maddeningly refused to do what they
were told for incomprehensible reasons. From the very beginning I had the
urge to take the lid off and try to understand what was going on in these
mysterious boxes in the hopes of somehow beating them into submission.
</p><p>
Way back in college in the early '90s I managed to stumble across the
Internet (just in time for the dot-com boom.) Naturally I wanted to learn
more about it and how it worked and that meant learning Unix. Even if you
used Windows, you used ports of Unix software so there was no way around
it. The trouble is Unix was expensive and ran on exotic hardware far
beyond the purchasing power of a destitute student. Thus when I heard
that there was a free clone of Unix that could run on a 386 pc, I was very
interested. When I learned it came with full source code that you could
tinker with as much as you wished it was like a dream come true. So I
cleared up some space on my massive 40MB hard drive for a version of
Slackware which was the only decent distribution at the time.
</p><p>
I played around with that for a while until the time came when Linux
swtiched from the a.out to the ELF binary format. This process had to be
done manually and I somehow managed to botch it completely. Since I had
to reinstall my system anyway, I decided to take a look at some of the new
distributions which were out there. I must confess my reasons for
choosing Debian were utterly superficial. Red Hat is boring; Suse is a
girls name; Debian on the other hand sounded science-fictionish to me.
</p><p>
After using Debian for a while I was whining about some trivial thing or
another on the Debian users mailing list and Bruce Perens who was the
project leader challenged me to stop complaining and fix the problem
myself. I decided to do so and the rest, as they say, is history. By the
way, there was no complicated process to become a Debian Developer in
those days. You just told Bruce you wanted to work on the project and
what you wanted as your login name and a little while later you would get
an account on master.debian.org and you could upload packages.
</p>
<h2>How are you currently involved in the Debian project?</h2>
<p>
At the moment I am not spending as much time on Debian as I would like to
but it still atleast a few minutes every day. In the past I have been
employed to work on Debian full time.
</p><p>
Apart from packaging, I have written documentation, represented Debian at
trade shows, conferences, and user groups and mentored prospective new
maintainers. One initiative I started which I am particularly proud of is
Debian-IN. This is a group of people interested in promoting Debian and
Free Software in India. Activities include maintaining packages of
cultural interest to Indians, advocaing the use of Debian and increasing
the number of Indian Debian developers. An operating system that is free,
flexible and doesn't drain money in crippling license fees is a good fit
for an emerging nation like India. Plus we have lots of IT talent so we
can give something back to the rest of the world too.
</p>
<h2>How do you currently use Debian?</h2>
<p>
I work as a consultant webmaster/sysadmin/Perl developer and I try to use
Debian or atleast Ubuntu whenever possible. I maintain several websites
and mailing lists related to aspects of the Hindu religion and they all
run on Debian. My personal laptop runs Ubuntu and Debian (naq bapr va n
oyhr zbba Jvaqbjf Ivfgn ohg qba'g gryy nalbar!)
</p>
<h2>What do you do when you're not working on Debian?</h2>
<p>
I come from a Hindu priestly family and I am a scholar of Sanskrit,
preacher and very occasionally priest for weddings etc. This and being a
father take up nearly all my spare time but when I can squeeze in a few
minutes I am an avid reader of fantasy/sci-fi. I prefer authors like
Frank Herbert, Phillip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, or Neal Stephenson. I.e.
the kind that create whole civilizations and tackle philosophical issues
rather than those that focus on technology or laser fights with aliens.
</p></div>
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