Guus der Kinderen Application 2019

This is the 2019 Q2 re-application for XSF membership of Guus der Kinderen, a software engineer from Rosmalen, the Netherlands.

My previous applications can be found here, here and here.

= Personalia &amp; Contact Details =
 * Name: Guus der Kinderen
 * Jabber IDs: [xmpp:guus.der.kinderen@igniterealtime.org guus.der.kinderen@igniterealtime.org], [xmpp:guusdk@jabber.org guusdk@jabber.org]
 * E-mail address: [mailto:guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com]
 * Company name: GoodBytes
 * Github: guusdk
 * Twitter: @guusdk
 * LinkedIn: guusderkinderen

Affiliations


 * Member of the Board of Directors of the XMPP Standards Foundation (2018/2019 & 2017/2018)
 * Team lead of the Summits, Conferences & Meetups Work Team
 * Board member of the Ignite Realtime Foundation
 * Developer of the Openfire server, Spark client, and Openfire Meetings video conferencing plugin for both.

= Motivation =

Over the years, I've been working on XMPP-related implementations on and of, both voluntary as well as in a professional capacity. My primary reason for applying for XSF membership is to contribute back to the community that has provided me with a lot of opportunities over these years.

= Contributions to the XMPP community =

Pre-2016 (from the 2016 Q2 application)
I got introduced to XMPP in the early 2000s, when I was working on my thesis. That thesis later evolved into Nimbuzz, where I was employed for a number of years.

We based Nimbuzz on Openfire, a project that I continued to support in my spare time after I left the company. After Jive Software slowly but surely pulled out, I became the de facto project lead for Openfire. Although somewhat hard to combine with my daytime jobs at the time (didn't have a remote connection to XMPP), I helped keep the project and the broader Ignite Realtime community afloat until dwd stepped up.

Last year, I leaped and/or plunged, quitting my job and starting a business of my own. Now that I'm self-employed, I find myself more and more involved in projects that relate to XMPP (Yey). As a result, the amount of time that I spend on XMPP-related activities has increased a lot. Being more active as ever, and having to owe part of my paycheck to XMPP, I thought it to be good and contribute back to the community, starting by signing up as an XSF member (okay, I started by fixing a link on the xmpp.org website, but this is the next best thing, right?)

2016/2017 (from the 2017 Q2 application)
In my first year of XSF membership, I've tried to contribute to the XSF by maintaining the xmpp.org website, by producing bugfixes and chasing down issues on the issue list. I participated in Summit 21 and helped man the XSF booth at FOSDEM 2017, which I enjoyed a lot.

I've been helping out preparing for the the XSF participation in Google's Summer of Code 2017, and serve as a mentor of one of this year's students. Finally, I've been made a member of the iteam only days before the re-application period ended.

Outside of the XSF, I've been contributing to XMPP as a member of the Ignite Realtime community. For Ignite, apart for my continued work on Openfire and other project, I was involved in revitalizing [1][2] the Spark client project and creating a legal entity for that community[3], serving as the Chair of the board for the Ignite Realtime Foundation. Other than that, I continue to be a regular contributor to various XMPP-related software projects, most of which are available via my Github profile.

2017/2018 (from the 2018 Q2 application)
Last year, I've been happily continuing the work that I had been doing. This year did have some highlights: As promised in the year before, in 2017, I've helped out organizing Summit 22 and the XSF presence at FOSDEM 2018. To facilitate that, I've started and joined the Summits, Conferences & Meetups Work Team. Also, mentoring in the Google Summer of Code 2017 edition allowed me to travel to Google's Mentor Summit, where I was able to meet up with a bunch of community members, and a lot of others. That was great! Finally, by the end of 2017, I ran for board, and was voted in. I currently serve in the Board of Directors of the XSF.

Apart from my involvement with the XSF directly, my other XMPP-related endeavors continue. On the one hand, I'm still very active in the Ignite Realtime community as an open source contributor, while at the same time, I continue to work on proprietary, XMPP-based, solutions as my daytime job (a good deal of the work that I'm doing there, being contributed back upstream, to the open source projects!)

2017/2018 (the 2019 Q2 application)
I've been able to re-iterate many of the personal highlights of previous years: I enjoyed participating in Board, organizing and joining Summit 23 and FOSDEM 2019, and was particularly happy to detect uptake in activity in the XMPP community.

My focus for the immediate future is to spend effort to try and improve the ecosystem around XMPP: although there are many great XMPP projects, many of these are limited to the time and attention that can be given to them by volunteers, even though there often is a desire to grow beyond that. I'd love to see if we can improve here, and help those projects that are interested in growing. My rationale here is two-fold: for one, I'd love to see people be able to make a living from what they love doing, and second, having more of an economy around XMPP will boost its development and adoption.