DavidSugar

David Sugar

Email: <dyfet AT gnutelephony DOT org>
Location: Cape May Court House, New Jersey
Home Site: GNU Telephony
Launchpad Page: https://launchpad.net/~dyfet/

Background

Starting in the 70's, I was at one time a "Telephone Hobbyist", although fortunately much less known and "sought after" than people contemporary to that period such as John Draper. My initial experience with computing was in my early teens with equipment from Ohio Scientific as well as S-100 CP/M systems. I also at the time developed and sold a BBS system.

In more recent times I was a founder of and the former CTO for Open Source Telecom Corporation, and I currently maintain a number of packages that are officially part of the GNU Project. I have at times also been an official speaker for the Free Software Foundation. Most of the upstream packages I maintain are telephony related, including GNU Bayonne and GNU SIP Witch. While I first started using GNU/Linux when it was a distribution of floppy disks and a 0.12 kernel, and I have worked with a variety of different distributions over the years since then, much of the testing, packaging, integration, and development work for the packages I maintain is currently done using Ubuntu.

Recently I had been working on encrypted / intercept-free communication systems based on the work of Phil Zimmerman in publishing the ZRTP protocol, and on a new protocol stack for generically supporting encrypted peer-to-peer services. Lesser known is my involvement both with helping to develop free software solutions around public standards, free software ethics for the visually impaired, and my work with indigenous communities.

Ubuntu Activity

A long time ago I started the GNU Telephony team in launchpad to focus on telephony applications in Ubuntu GNU/Linuz, and I have since become part of the Ubuntu VoIP team. My primary interest was to consolidate and promote the development and use of telephony services within the Ubuntu community, and to use a PPA to offer updated backports for older distributions of Ubuntu of packages I am an upstream maintainer for. I have introduced ucommon and GNU SIP Witch to Lucid as part of this goal.

My interest in VoIP and telecommunications in GNU/Linux is currently focused on privacy and security, and I am the upstream maintainer for GNU SIP Witch and the GNU ZRTP stack used in Twinkle and SIP Communicator to create secure communication systems. Recently I wrote a GNU Sipwitch Client and Server Howto to help others create secure telephone services using Ubuntu. I had also helped form and with Ubuntu Debian packaging for the new 389 Directory Server team.

Starting with Maverick, I have been discussing the introduction of a new telephony stack in Ubuntu based on existing work in oFono and Telepathy. The purpose of this was to finally consolidate the user telephony experience regardless of whether one places or receives calls through VoIP, cellular networks, or even analog lines. This roadmap is outlined at DavidSugar/telephony.

I had helped with a number of specifications for Karmic including establishing voice driven user interface goals for Karmic and later releases, embodied in the Mobile Voice Driven User Interface specification. I have also chosen to champion the LXDE desktop environment specification and participate in the Lubuntu desktop team. I also recently wrote a Howto for creating a custom self-booting SD for the iMX51 Babbage boards.

Community Involvement

Helped organize and co-ran the lubuntu (an LXDE based Ubuntu distribution) specific UDS sessions over the past year.

Helped organize the lubuntu team, and helped us work through the process we now use for dispute resolution.

Helped rally the community around the asterisk blueprint for the server team and I also brought together the original 389 team to operate as a "team".

Spoke at conferences and shared my vision for Ubuntu GNU/Linux as a telecommunications desktop, including at linuxcon 2009 and Scale8x 2010.

Involved in computer enabling indigenous communities.

Future Directions

Broadly speaking, I think Ubuntu GNU/Linux can become a usable telephony platform, both for desktop (and perhaps mobile) users and for the development and deployment of enterprise telephony services. I look forward to further enabling Ubuntu GNU/Linux in all these areas.

Favorite Quote Today

Information in the computer age is the last genuine free market left on earth except those free markets where indigenous people are still surviving - Russell Means


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DavidSugar (last edited 2010-11-25 00:56:30 by 108)