Homepage of Justin Wheeler, an Open Source contributor and Free Software advocate from Georgia, USA.
This is the third and final post in my series on Flock to Fedora 2026. The first post covered the highlights of what happened at the event. The second post looked behind the scenes at how Flock gets organized. This post is more personal — it is about what organizing Flock has taught me over the last four years. The Underrated Importance of Having Fun The hallway track does not exclusively take…
Flock to Fedora is the flagship contributor community event for the Fedora Project . A lot of work goes into Flock, with planning efforts usually kicking off ten months before the conference target dates. This is often the invisible work which the community rarely gets a window into seeing. This blog post pulls back the curtain on what it actually looks like to organize Flock. It is the second…
In the blink of an eye, it was over almost as quickly as it began. But the three days at the annual Flock to Fedora conference from 14–16 June 2026 in Prague, Czechia were packed with the kind of engagement that keeps the Fedora community going. Flock to Fedora, or often simply referred to as Flock, is the flagship contributor community event for the Fedora community. Flock is a place where the…
I attended Red Hat Summit 2026 in Atlanta last week from May 11-13. As always, the keynotes and product announcements were interesting, but the real value of the event happened in the 'hallway track.' The 1:1 conversations over coffee or meals provide the blunt truth about how people actually feel, especially regarding heated community topics like the proposed Fedora AI Developer Desktop. Over…
The intersection of open source development and artificial intelligence (AI) is currently a minefield of valid excitement and legitimate anxiety. Recently, the Fedora Project introduced the Fedora AI-Assisted Contributions Policy. The full policy text outlines the basic ground rules. I was informally involved in the drafting process. Since its rollout, I am actively adjusting my own workflow to…
It has been a minute. If you look at my blog archives , my last post went up in 2024 . Recently, I decided it was time for a massive digital renovation: I completely migrated this blog from WordPress to Hugo using my own theme. Fortunately, I was able to meet my one key requirement. The migration was a complete one-to-one pairing from WordPress to Hugo. Every post I wrote between 2015 and 2024…
This blog post summarizes the discussions and action items from the Infrastructure and Release Engineering workshop held at Flock 2024 in Rochester, New York, USA. This post is also an experiment in using AI generated summaries to provide useful, at-a-glance summaries of key Fedora topics. Parts of this content may display inaccurate info, including about people, so double-check with the source…
To all Outreachy May 2024 applicants to the Fedora Project , Today is May 2nd, 2024. The Outreachy May 2024 round results will be published in a few short hours. This year, the participation in Fedora for Outreachy May 2024 was record-breaking. Fedora will fund three internships this year. During the application and contribution phase, over 150 new contributors appeared in our Mentored Project…
This year, I am mentoring again with the Outreachy internship program . It is my third time mentoring for Outreachy and my second time with the Fedora Project . However, it is my first time mentoring as a Red Hat associate. What also makes this time different from before is that I am mentoring a non-engineering project with Outreachy. Or in other words, my project does not require an applicant to…
A short poem that I was inspired to write after a short drive running errands, and I was absorbed momentarily into the beauty of the natural world around me. Read more of my poetry on my blog. The media report this season is warmer, The scientists discover the planet is hotter, While glaciers slide into the sea. It is the birth of spring, After a dark, lonely winter, Yet the warmth is not warming.…
A poem to describe love from a constantly suspended state of waiting and wonder. Read more of my poetry on my blog. The air carries a breeze, In from the eastward-facing window. The breeze carries whispers and secrets of the night, Into the ear, mind, & soul. A stolen moment is clearly crystallized, In the cavity of consciousness. The stolen moment seeps to the soul, Filling it with wonder &…
2023 is almost over. It was a busy year. When I was a student, I used to write about what I was learning. But after finishing my studies, I stopped writing regularly. Now I want to focus on the future and adopt a storytelling theme for 2024. This post summarizes my intentions of committing to storytelling. about adopting a theme 🔗 Recently, Joseph Gayoso from the Fedora Marketing Team proposed…
My musing this time is an underdeveloped thought about diversity, equity, & inclusion; allyship; and being a white person. Last year in October 2022, I attended the excellent Inclusion & Diversity in Open Source summit at All Things Open 2022 . There were several speakers who shared experiences and perspectives about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. I appreciated the elevation of…
Read more of my poetry on my blog. Ctrl + Alt + Delete , wired and tied, My threaded process: splintering and fragmenting. Ctrl + Z , nostalgic and longing, The memory buffer: flooded and overloaded. Ctrl + F , buried and lost, The information needed: but information never found. Ctrl + N , weary and tired, A new page and new chapter: for a new time. Ctrl + X , selective and wise, My mental…
Friend, are you okay? How are you? Is it going well? Or is it a tough time? You can tell me, brother. My ear is yours at this moment, sister. Friend, if I have things you need to borrow, please ask me. I appreciate you. I appreciate the person that you are. I love you. These words speak power. Their power comes in their ability to pull someone out from the busy stream of life and reach deep into…
Trust is a word and a concept that is on my mind lately. Trust is an idea that permeates all levels of our waking consciousness, and impacts how we build connections and relationships with other human beings. It is something impossible to ignore, yet it is ironically hard to define and pin down. Beyond what is written in a dictionary, what is trust? What does trust look like? What does trust feel…
The answer suddenly appeared that the only way to solve my dilemma of two split worlds was to find the middle path. This thought emerged to me, as I stood under the warm stream of water in the same shower I had used countless times over the last ten years. Over those previous ten years, so much of my life has changed. The biggest change is that my life was my own now. I have the power to make…
In my daily reading, I came across three product roadmaps from Proton , developers of several open source, privacy-centered products. These include products like Proton Mail, Proton VPN, and Proton Drive. The product roadmaps shared by Proton play a tactical role. They inform consumers and engaged customers about exciting changes yet to come. It gets people excited about the product’s…
This thought was pressed into my mind as I looked over all that I had created. Facing the inevitable end of one life chapter as it transitions into a new one, I recognized one possible way to improve our individual impact through documentation. Software and product documentation are classified as technical writing. While they differ in scope, they share a connection to other forms of written works…
Recently, my team with the CHAOSS Project had a data concern emerge when I was working on a project to run a community survey. This community had never run a survey before, and it was the first notable event where the project made an explicit, structured ask for feedback from the community. As a result, this first experience was also a calibration event, so we could guide this kind of work in…
Since February 2021, the CHAOSS Project is conducting a funded, long-term review of its governance, practices, and processes in a diversity, equity, and inclusion (D.E.I.) “audit.” I originally joined as an internal community liaison and initially helped to identify a team of D.E.I. practitioners external to the CHAOSS Project to support this work. Thanks to the support of the Ford…
Originally published on 27 September 2022 via unicef.org . This year, the UNICEF Venture Fund celebrates five graduating companies from a recent investment round. For the first time, many of these companies are exiting from the Venture Fund having already earned recognition as Digital Public Goods (DPGs) . With the support of a cross-sectional team of mentors, these graduating companies worked to…
Read more of my poetry on my blog. one, two I fell in love with you Caught me by surprise three, four My focus was on you There was me, you, & the road five, six I took each breath Felt each beat of my heart seven, eight I realized Your rhythm Pulled into Your pace nine, ten I became my breath Centered at Your feet one, two Photo by David Marcu on Unsplash . Modified by Justin Wheeler .
It is with a sad heart that I share that the crystalcraftmc.com forums are permanently retired as of 6 February 2022. Nearly ten years ago, in August 2012, I founded a Minecraft multiplayer game server. It would eventually become known as CrystalCraftMC. I passed the torch for the game server in April 2018. CrystalCraftMC got a second life from the dedicated player community until December 2018…
How do we understand value when we talk about sustainability? What does investing in open source mean? The meaning is different for many people because of an implicit understanding of what open source means. This post is a reflection on the past year in my work with the UNICEF Venture Fund . We integrated new open source tools to capture metrics and data about open source repositories connected to…
I was visiting the Fedora Council ticket tracker when I noticed this ticket up for discussion. The ticket’s purpose is minor and appears inconsequential. It involves adding some legal text to the Fedora Accounts system. The change is related to Export Administration Regulations (the “EAR”) as maintained by the United States Department of Commerce. And the change is not actually a…
Open Source is a means to collaborate and solve common problems; during the COVID-19 pandemic, open data and tools proved useful in quickly tailoring and deploying life-saving services. How has the UNICEF Innovation Fund kept up with latest Open Source innovations? The UNICEF Innovation Fund invests exclusively in Open Source technology – with today’s rapidly evolving innovation landscape, Open…
There are moments I reflect back on my life when I met someone who interacted with me in an impressive way. Though unknown to me then, I feel now that they perceived my authentic, true self when I was still searching. In those moments, I think about how lost I truly was. Running away from anxiety and an unhappy past by keeping myself busy. Overthinking and ruminating on all my social interactions…
Community participation and engagement in corporate Open Source projects is valuable, yet difficult to foster. Many companies supporting popular Open Source projects develop diverse communities across different employers, nationalities, genders, educational backgrounds, and more. Increased diversity brings perspective about who finds a product useful. It also gives you the opportunity to help your…
For a long time, it was a “yes”. For a few years, I was pulled in by the fiscal lure. There are no manuals for someone who grows up having less to suddenly land at a juncture of having more. So I had to be my own guide. While I was saying “yes”, I was afforded opportunities that I had known only as unaffordable. I had a chance to live out and explore my heart, and the…
A part of me holds nostalgia for this aspect of the Internet I grew up with. Back when blogs played a bigger role in shaping and developing the Internet culture, and being the exemplar way of how we sought to express ourselves online (or, perhaps for those of us who find both solace and agony inside written language). Blogs were (mostly) safe spaces where we could share our thoughts and views. We…
I often wonder how to best measure and communicate Open Source value. The collective focus of the industry goes into quantifying dependencies; that is, how one software relies on other software in order to complete its primary function. The vocabulary to measure dependency usually includes words like “imports,” “licenses,” “bugs fixed to bugs open,” and other…
Language is powerful. Words are subtle building blocks to how we imagine the world around us. So, with the goal of pursuing more equitable language, I propose the end of accommodations. Accommodations move us closer to equality but not equity. The presence of accommodations implies a belief in an “us” and a “them”. One group benefits from default inclusion, while another…
Përshëndetje nga Tiranë, or in Albanian, hello from Tirana! I am residing for a short time in Tiranë (pronounced Ti·ra·na), Albania . After a previous visit in June, I decided to make Tiranë my home for part of my remote work contract. I moved in this past week. The most common reaction I received from friends and family in the United States is surprise and curiosity. Admittedly Tiranë is not a…
This post was co-published on the UNICEF Innovation Fund blog . 2020 saw the launch of a formalized Open Source Mentorship programme for the UNICEF Innovation Fund , built up on two years of work from RIT LibreCorps expertise and consulting. The Open Source Mentorship programme includes five modules about Open Source intellectual property and communities delivered across twelve months . UNICEF…
Recently a Spotify playlist curated into my feed. The playlist was a perfect match for my soul when I needed it most. This led me to wonder, who or what curated this playlist? What caused it to appear in my feed that day? The era of disc jockeys and long LPs are past. While human-curated playlists continue to exist, they are in steep competition with weekly playlists of tailored content. Every…
This first appeared on the Open Source Initiative Wiki . In light of the election update this year , I am republishing my statement of intent on my personal blog. No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive. Mahatma Gandhi I believe in the value of upholding the Open Source Definition as a mature and dependable legal framework while recognizing the OSI needs to work better with works that…
When I first saw the letter asking for Richard Stallman and the FSF Board of Directors resignations with merely five signatures, I knew I had to sign. Not because I knew it would be the popular thing to do. But because it was what was true in my heart. Only in a sense of deep empathy could I understand the reasons why it had finally come to this . I signed the letter because as much as I have…
Read more of my poetry on my blog. I put on our playlist, Pure poetry to untrained ears. My heart taken by the hand, But led back to the Atlantic blue, Wondering if I am singing your tune? Will I continue to wait here, Under the early April showers? Am I ready to let someone new in?
Four years ago, on March 13th in 2017, I woke up for breakfast in the city of Sarajevo in Bosnia & Herzegovina . As I ate breakfast on the morning of March 14th of 2021 in the seemingly eternal era of COVID-19, it struck me. Bosnian coffee. Balkans and Bosnia. 🔗 My time abroad was counted in months, not years. Yet those five months in the Balkans gave me more opportunity to grow and discover…
When I launched my blog, I always envisioned writing cute snapshots of insight into my life. As much as I would publish them for the Internet, I was also publishing for myself. Or so, it started off this way. But over time, I blurred the lines between personal and professional communication. The emotional words in my vocabulary were gradually phased out through my formal education. There were many…
From January to May 2020, I completed an independent study at the Rochester Institute of Technology on Business and Legal Aspects of Free/Open Source Software . This was the final credit for my completion of the Free and Open Source Software and Free Culture minor. That semester, I traveled to different international FOSS conferences (before COVID-19), analyzed contemporary changes and trends in…
In May 2018, Mozilla and Open Tech Strategies released a 40-page report titled, “ Open Source Archetypes ”. This blog post is a recap of how this report influences the Open Source Mentorship programme I lead at the UNICEF Innovation Fund. I joined the UNICEF Innovation team in June 2020, although this is not the first time I have worked with UNICEF Innovation. I have had some…
The bookmark was creeping on my browser’s toolbar for months. “Cryptographic Autonomy License” CAL-1.0 on the Open Source Initiative webpage . But today, I decided it was time to do my first amateur license review. This is a fun exercise (for me). Remember, I am not a lawyer and this does not constitute legal advice ! The Cryptographic Autonomy License is one of newest Open…
October is here! If you contribute to Open Source projects, you might know that October is the month of Hacktoberfest. DigitalOcean teams up with different partners each year to send a t-shirt (or plant a tree on your behalf) for anyone who makes four GitHub Pull Requests in October. And guess what? TeleIRC is a participating project for you to get your Hacktoberfest t-shirt or tree! This post…
Trigger warning: Grief, police violence, death. This blog post was first written on August 28th, 2020. Today is a sad day. Chadwick Boseman is dead. At 43 years old, he lost a terminal battle with stage IV colon cancer. As his great light dims, I am left to wonder what loss will happen next in 2020. But like the ashes of a phoenix, we will rise. His death reminds me of the fierce urgency of now,…
This El Ten Eleven article is part of my Tervigersate column on my blog, where I review albums by musicians spanning multiple genres. Articles introduce an album and give my interpretation of their meaning. El Ten Eleven is a duo consisting of Kristian Dunn on strings and Tim Fogarty and drums. Plus several loop pedals ! El Ten Eleven’s debut self-titled album released on September 20th,…
Trigger warning: Grief, death. Two years passed since we last met in Bolzano. I remember you traveled in for a day to join the 2018 Fedora Mindshare FAD. You came many hours from your home to see us, and share your experiences and wisdom from both the global and Italian Fedora Community. And this week, I learned that you, Gabriele “Gabri” Trombini, passed away from a heart attack. To…
This is the story about the facilitation of the Principles of Authentic Participation . This post does not describe what the Principles are (click that link to learn more about them). This post describes the story behind the Principles, and how our Sustain Working Group worked together over three months of virtual facilitation during the COVID–19 crisis to build these Principles. Overview 🔗 This…
After almost eight months of work, the TeleIRC Team is happy to announce General Availability of TeleIRC v2.0.0 today . Thanks to the hard work of our volunteer community, we are celebrating an on-time release of a major undertaking to make a more sustainable future for TeleIRC. Download TeleIRC v2.0.0 now! 🔗 If you want to skip the text and get to the software, head to the GitHub v2.0.0 release…