Share your open source story

[Deanna]

This community has been built to connect members from unique backgrounds, varying life goals, but with similar interests in open source technology. Is is inspiring to witness a global community come together to voluntarily support others in their career goals, obstacles, questions and achievements - we want to hear how this community has impacted you in your career, life and the world of open source. Feel free to share your stories below on how this community may have impacted you, and why open source communities are meaningful. 

[cooltude1]

My open source story began when I was technical services / general manager of a small computer hardware distributor and was given the opportunity to purchase the company. We downsized the company upon purchase to medium sized value added reseller. Many customers were coming to us asking if we could pre-load Linux on the systems we were integrating for them and thus my Linux journey began. Soon after I was given the opportunity to attend the first training RedHat training class for this new RHCE certification. I was unable to attend the very first class due to scheduling but did make the second class 2 weeks later. I did become an RHCE back then – now lapsed.  I am back here now to get certified again after many years – should be fun.

[lucioseki]

I used to contribute to the OpenStack Cinder and Manila projects by submiting driver codes for NetApp.
After getting some experience, I started to review other vendor's patches as well, as a core team member.
It was an exciting experience, discussing with many people from different companies, from all over the world.

I'm no longer contributing as a developer/reviewer, but I still keep in touch with OpenStack, Linux and other open source softwares as a user.