Hi I'm Jeff Mitchell and I volunteer for 2 charities in my city (currently unemployed). I've frequently used Linux since 2007 and I'd like to become a Fedora package maintainer. I have two desktop PCs and I have Fedora 28 XFCE on my older system - I use this system to experiment on. I've read most of the guides on maintaining packages, now I just need a package to maintain. Last year I failed a programming course and I'm not sure if I ever want to do programming as a job. I'd rather work on Fedora packages and get into programming as a hobby, but working as a full-time programmer doesn't appeal to me. I know a lot of guys who work as programmers and there's nothing amazing about that job. As a teenager I thought that programmers were cool and rebellious but I find that most of them are cookie-cutter personalities, and their opinions are uninteresting (game developers are the obvious exception, but they don't make much money in this country!)

For a long time I wanted to work as a programmer but now I'm not so sure. I volunteer my time for projects which help children and people down on their luck, this is a pretty good life! If I am to maintain packages, then I'm going to need someone to give me direction. I could Google "software Linux" and find something that isn't already packaged, but the "just google it bro" approach is bad in my opinion, it's better to have a mentor. Sure there are a few freak geniuses who are good at computery-stuff but those guys are the exception, and for most people the best thing is friendly human advice. I could use Google 50 times to find information, or I could have someone email to me 3 relevant URLs and a couple of brief paragraphs explaining. One of the problems in my youth was that I tried to teach programming to myself - my goals weren't clear and I developed a lot of bad habits which I only un-learned 10 years later. Similarly, I have a Vox Valvetronix guitar amplifier and after 6 years I finally discovered that you can only get good tones if you put the master volume up really high (master volume drives the tube). I wish I had a musician friend who could have told me that when I bought it! Nothing beats proper advice from someone who knows what they're doing.