Max Kanat-Alexander
Chief Architect, Community Lead, & Release Manager
Bugzilla Project
2004-Now
Primary developer of the well-known Bugzilla Bug Tracking System, used by thousands of organizations worldwide. Contribute or review a significant portion of all the code in the project. Release Manager in charge of coordinating all the administrative details of each version release. Make the majority of technical decisions and design most new features as Assistant Project Lead.
Major accomplishments:
- Led major, long-term re-architecture work on Bugzilla while still releasing stable new versions regularly.
- Downloads increased 10x over the period in which I worked on Bugzilla.
- The release of Bugzilla 2.18 in three months, after it had been delayed a year.
- The release of Bugzilla 2.20, Bugzilla 2.22, the monumental Bugzilla 3.0, Bugzilla 3.2, Bugzilla 3.4, Bugzilla 3.6, Bugzilla 4.0, and over a dozen other smaller releases, including nearly all bugzilla.org web site updates, and writing the release notes.
- Doing between 30% and 50% of all code work on major Bugzilla releases.
- Wrote the cross-database support of Bugzilla, consisting of thousands of lines of written and reviewed code.
- Maintaining/reviewing MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MS-SQL, and SQLite support for Bugzilla.
- Leading development of mod_perl support for Bugzilla.
- Leading development of Bugzilla's XML-RPC and JSON-RPC interfaces, and personally developing the full-coverage test suite for these interfaces.
- Leading development of Bugzilla's custom fields architecture.
- Leading development of Bugzilla's new email interface.
- Leading development of Unicode support in Bugzilla.
- Developing the Bugzilla migration system for migrating from other bug-tracking systems to Bugzilla.
- Developing the jobqueue.pl daemon for asynchronous email sending.
- Reviewing Bugzilla's major new UI changes.
- Maintaining checksetup.pl, the installation and upgrade script for Bugzilla.
- Developing the Bugzilla Extensions system.
- Reforming code standards and developer documentation to make it easier to contribute to Bugzilla.
- Writing thousands of words of technical documentation, such as the guide for contributing to Bugzilla and the Extension documentation.
- Personally fixing over 1000 bugs, and doing thousands of code reviews.
- Wrote and maintained the Bugzilla Project's continuous integration and test systems.
- Managed the open-source community, including recruiting developers, resolving conflicts, helping developers stay on task, and doing research into how open-source communities function best.
Author & Maintainer
fedorafaq.org
2003-Now
Author of www.fedorafaq.org, the oldest support resource on the Internet for Fedora Linux, receiving up to 120,000 unique visitors a month to the site.
2nd Level Tech Support Engineer
Kerio Technologies, Inc.
2003-2005
Managed Technical Support for the Western Hempisphere as the senior Technical Support engineer. Ultimately responsible for the resolution of all customer problems and bugs. Major accomplishments at Kerio were:
- Installed and managed a successful Ticket Tracking System internationally, along with policies for its use.
- Implemented, wrote for, and reviewed every article for the Knowledge Base.
- Installed, administered, and managed Bugzilla, the QA and Bug-Tracking System.
- Authored the development process that went with Bugzilla.
- Filed over 400 bugs.
- Handled all technical communication between the US and European offices.
- Set the record with 48 support tickets handled in one hour.
- Installed, administered, and mangaged the Windows 2003 Active Directory domain.
- Managed IT for Kerio's cross-platform Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux office.
- Managed Kerio's high-level technical contacts, including a close relationship with Apple Computer.
- Authored a 50-page Technical Support Training Manual that described policies and procedures for new technicians.
- Wrote the Kerio Certified System Administrator Exam, described alternately either as the "best" or "hardest" test resellers had ever taken.
- Wrote scripts in python or perl for any customer or internal need.
- Interviewed and Hired all technicians.
Other Accomplishments
- Author of Code Simplicity, a technical blog about software, with an estimated 2500 subscribers and 10,000 unique visitors a month.
- Author of the Perl module VCI, a library that gives an abstract interface to version control systems, including CVS, Subversion, Bazaar, Mercurial, and Git.
- Author of the Perl module Parse::StackTrace, which parses text representations of Python and GDB stack traces and converts them into objects.
- Author of the Perl module RPC::Any, a generic RPC framework with support for both XML-RPC and JSON-RPC.
- Author of the Perl module Math::Random::Secure, a cryptographically-secure random number generator for Perl, designed to replace Perl's very poor built-in random number generator.
- Author of numerous Bugzilla extensions, including Sitemap, VCS, and TraceParser.
- Author of the Supybot Bugzilla Plugin, which reports changes from Bugzilla to an IRC channel.
Skills
-
Operating Systems
- Windows NT / 2000 (Server & Pro) / XP / 2003 / Vista
- Mac OS 8 / 9 / X
- Linux (Red Hat, Fedora, SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo)
- UNIX (Solaris, SunOS, Athena, etc.)
-
Database Design & Administration
- MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, FileMaker Pro
-
Network Administration
- ISC DHCPd, ISC BIND, Linux iptables, Apache, IIS, Active Directory, Apple Open Directory, SpamAssassin, Kerio MailServer, Kerio WinRoute Firewall, Postfix, qpsmtpd, Dovecot IMAP
-
Web Development
- (X)HTML, CSS 1/2/3, JavaScript, ANSI SQL, T-SQL, Zope, Pylons, ColdFusion, Web Accessibility Issues
-
Programming Languages
- Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, C / C++, MIPS Assembly, Motorola HC11 Assembly, Shell Scripting (bash)
-
Development Tools
- CVS, Subversion, Bazaar, Git, Mercurial, Bugzilla, Testopia