If you are missing the memories, you can still find a good part of the forums archived via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Click here to navigate to the last snapshot of the official forums. You can also find downloads of the survival and creative Minecraft worlds below:

• Creative world: 2015 Nov. 2 backup (~29MB)

• Survival world: 2018 Sept. 22 backup (~43.6GB)

• Survival world: 2018 Dec. 3 backup (~44.1GB)

History of the CrystalCraftMC forums 🔗

Since December 2013, I maintained the CrystalCraftMC forums on my own infrastructure and dime. Even after I passed the torch in April 2018, I continued to maintain and manage the forums. When the game server finally closed in December 2018, I continued to keep the forums alive as a novelty for past players. For me, whenever I felt nostalgic, the forums always gave me a place to remember good friends and memories from that era of my life.

If you are one of the few original folks who kept up with CrystalCraftMC in its lifetime, you may remember we used a different forum at one point, hosted by Enjin. Those forums are (miraculously) still alive, and you can still find them! Visit old.crystalcraftmc.com to get a nostalgia trip on the oldest memories of our Minecraft community.

Why the forums closed 🔗

The forum software behind crystalcraftmc.com was called XenForo. We used the 1.x versions of XenForo. XenForo was a great fit for us when CrystalCraftMC was in full swing, but the forums fell behind on updates. The forums eventually stopped receiving maintenance and security updates for XenForo 1.x when XenForo 2.0.0 was released. Since I never renewed our license and didn’t have time to complete the complicated upgrade, the CrystalCraftMC forums remained on XenForo 1.x.

This month, I took on a project to reduce the costs of my personal infrastructure. The total cost to run the CrystalCraftMC forums was >$200 USD every month. I hoped to reduce the cost to less than $50 USD every month. My goal was to migrate the database for the forums to a competitive and more affordable hosting service. However, during the migration, I discovered that XenForo 1.x did not support newer versions of the MySQL database software. I would need to continue paying my bill for a hosting service that supported the legacy version of the database used by the CrystalCraftMC forums.

After careful consideration, I decided ten years was a good run and it was time to finally close things down. It was not the outcome I wanted, but it was what had to be done. Nevertheless, I took a final “snapshot” of the forums and database. I retained a final copy, and perhaps one day in the future, I may choose to put a read-only copy online again. But for now, the forums will remain offline until further notice.

(This also doesn’t even note the hundreds of spam, scam, and porn emails I received every day because of the contact form on the website not having a captcha form to stop spambots!)

What now for CrystalCraftMC? 🔗

I will continue to pay for the domain names of crystalcraftmc.com and ccmc.pw. Both domains will now redirect to this blog post, which might be how you ended up here. But otherwise, there are no more public archives of CrystalCraftMC other than our memories, YouTube “Let’s Plays” and Echophox video series, and the super-old forums. This is the end of the road for CrystalCraftMC.

To all the players and the CrystalCraftMC community, you will always have a special place in my heart. CrystalCraftMC was one of these incredible things that happened to me in my life, especially when so many things in my life were honestly upside-down. I wish you all the best and hope you all also have fond memories of building spawn points, running drop parties, building amazing forts and bases (while hoping they don’t get raided), and hanging out with other folks who ended up becoming close friends.

Long live CrystalCraftMC.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash. Modified by Justin Wheeler.

This blog post is a story roughly covering 2010 to 2014 on the meaning, values, and promise of open source. This story impacted a community of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly adolescent children, teenagers, and young adults. It is a tale about the simultaneous success and failure of the GNU Public License (GPL).

From the beginning: Bukkit, Minecraft, and the GPL 🔗

In the beginning, in December 2010, there was Bukkit.

Bukkit is an up-and-coming Minecraft Server mod that will completely change how running and modifying a Minecraft server is done - making managing and creating servers easier and providing more flexibility. Learning from the mistakes made by other mods, Bukkit aims to be different and fill the void left by them: built from the ground up we’ve focused on performance, ease-of-use, extreme customisability and better communication between the Team and, you, our users. The overall design of Bukkit has been inspired by other mods and our experience as Minecraft players just like yourselves, giving us a unique perspective and advantage going into the creation of the Bukkit Project.

About Us, Bukkit.org

Bukkit was an open source server for Minecraft. It provided an API for developers to create plugins that extended Minecraft in unique and fun ways. While Bukkit was not the first open source Minecraft server, it was the first organized project. Bukkit launched with the GNU Public License (GPL) v3 license.

From 2011 to 2014, Bukkit was the de-facto standard for running a Minecraft multiplayer game server. Over time, more Bukkit servers (and derivatives) were used than the official server software distributed by Mojang. Mojang is the company responsible for Minecraft development.

Hard work on Bukkit recognized 🔗

The project’s success was also recognized by Mojang too. At the first-ever Minecraft convention in 2011, MINECON, four Bukkit lead developers were hired by Mojang to work on Minecraft. All but one of the hired employees then departed from Bukkit. That one developer who remained active in Bukkit would depart from Mojang mysteriously in 2013.

Had a great time working for Mojang but it's time for me to pursue other interests. As of yesterday, I am no longer working for Mojang.

— EvilSeph (@EvilSeph) October 2, 2013

However, there was always one caveat. Bukkit was an open source project licensed under the GPLv3. However, it also reverse-engineered some parts of the Minecraft game code to build its server code and API. This was never a problem for Bukkit or Mojang:

“When we started up Bukkit in December of 2010, we decided we wanted to do things right. Right from the beginning we wanted to be sure we were bringing about a positive change to Minecraft, one that Mojang themselves would approve of. To that end, we set up a meeting with Mojang to get a feel for their opinions on our project and make sure we weren’t doing anything they didn’t like. The gist of the meeting was that Mojang “liked what we were doing” but not how we had to go about doing things. Unfortunately, we both knew that we had no alternatives, so we continued along - albeit now with the reassurance that our project would most likely not be shut down any time in the future.”

EvilSeph (Warren Loo), “Bukkit: The Next Chapter”

Nobody ever raised a copyright issue over the reverse-engineered code from Minecraft in Bukkit. Yet, for years, the GPL code released by Bukkit included bits from official Minecraft code.

Act 1: The Minecraft EULA 🔗

An alternative perspective on the Minecraft EULA is in this Guardian article. “Minecraft: how a change to the rules is tearing the community apart.”

All was fine for a number of years. Bukkit was a volunteer-led project even after some of its core developers were hired to work at Mojang. However, in 2014, unrelated tension started to grow in the Minecraft community.

The tension was about the language used in Minecraft’s End User License Agreement (EULA). The EULA used ambiguous language over the monetization of Minecraft multiplayer servers:

“The one major rule is that you must not distribute anything we‘ve made. By “distribute anything we‘ve made” what we mean is “give copies of the game away, make commercial use of, try to make money from, or let other people get access to our game and its parts in a way that is unfair or unreasonable”."

2014: account.mojang.com/documents/minecraft_eula

While many open source projects flourished around Minecraft, a huge game server industry also co-existed in this ecosystem. Multiplayer server owners running Bukkit (or derivative projects, like Spigot) created web stores for their servers. Players paid real money to buy in-game perks for a specific multiplayer server. Using open source plugins, players paid for things like item packages with diamond swords or virtual currency to spend in-game.

This behavior was allowed to flourish for years. However, the EULA was discreetly edited in December 2013. In mid-2014, someone in the community noticed the changed language. They tweeted and tagged a Mojang employee asking if this meant multiplayer servers had to stop selling in-game items for real money. In as much detail that a 2014 tweet with a 140-character limit allowed, the Mojang employee confirmed the EULA language did technically forbid that.

Panic! In The Bukkit Server 🔗

“Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.”

The community erupted into chaos. Suddenly, a community that had mostly co-existed peacefully was at a virtual war with each other. The situation was understandable from both ends, if for different reasons.

Anyone could start their own multiplayer server. So it was possible for malicious servers to scam players (usually young children) of money. Usually this happened by failing to deliver on the purchases or closing down after a period. Frequently, Mojang was contacted for help (usually by angry parents) about game servers Mojang did not control.

At the same time, many good people built (probably unwise) business models around the permissive nature of Minecraft intellectual property. The open source software made it easy to extend Minecraft in ways Mojang did not intend.

Act 2: The Bukkit cards are revealed 🔗

Tension was already high between the the trinity of business owners, open source developers, and Mojang. By 2014, Mojang was a multi-million dollar company (even before their multi-billion Microsoft buyout). The EULA tension placed a heavy burden on the open source developers, who received pressure from both ends.

Then, the unexpected happened on August 21st, 2014. The Bukkit project lead, Warren Loo (EvilSeph), announced the end of development on the Bukkit project:

.@CraftBukkit: It's time to say goodbye - http://t.co/LRG2uiMbDe

— EvilSeph (@EvilSeph) August 21, 2014

Read the full announcement from Bukkit team

Bukkit gets “owned” 🔗

This was sad news. But the real shock came an hour later when the lead developer of Minecraft at Mojang shot back on Twitter:

Warren over at bukkit seems to have forgotten that the project was bought by Mojang over two years ago, and isn't his to discontinue.

— Jens Bergensten (@jeb_) August 21, 2014

Two other former Bukkit developers working at Mojang chimed in too:

We took ownership of the Bukkit github repos & project. We'll see what happens from here.

— Erik Broes (@_grum) August 21, 2014

To make this clear: Mojang owns Bukkit. I'm personally going to update Bukkit to 1.8 myself. Bukkit IS NOT and WILL NOT BE the official API.

— Nathan Adams (@Dinnerbone) August 21, 2014

It was now revealed that the Bukkit open source developers hired by Mojang in 2011 had given up their personal copyright and rights to their open source contributions as part of their employment contracts. The open source developer and business owner communities both learned this abruptly over a 140-character tweet.

The community was confused, upset, and angry.

“The decision to keep the acquisition of the Bukkit codebase a secret was made between Mojang and Curse, which only recently came to light. I was completely unaware that I had spent the last two years of my life as a Bukkit Administrator, and successor to the project lead, under the illusion that the project was independently ran. Had I known back then perhaps my choice would have been different, perhaps not. It’s easy to speculate on what might have been, but unless faced head on with the choice, the decision is not always clear.”

TnT, “So long, and thanks for all the fish”

What is known now was that for about three years, the volunteer-driven open source project was “owned” by company valued for millions of dollars that did little to support the open source project that helped build a community around the game. The only visible contribution made by Mojang to Bukkit was the explicit permission to continue their endeavor in the legal gray area.

Act 3: DMCA take-down of Bukkit 🔗

On September 5th, 2014, a lead developer not hired by Mojang, who had contributed over 15,000 lines of code to the project, invoked a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take-down on all of his personal contributions to the project (and all derivative projects). In a day, all the source code for a project used ~3x more than Mojang’s official server software disappeared from the Internet.

It is easy to understand why this lead developer did what he did. To find out the last few years of your life spent volunteering on a game project that was secretly owned by a multi-million dollar company is a shattering experience. It’s essentially free labor. But at the same time, this was a project used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. It was more than a project; it was also a community.

One of the lead developers of Bukkit said this of the project in their resignation letter to the community:

“The Bukkit Project is so much more than CraftBukkit, getting updates out and providing API. It’s about giving the community a place where they feel welcomed and can program to their hearts’ content with the use of our product. The Bukkit API gave people the ability to change the behavior of Minecraft, but it would have meant nothing without the contributions from the plugin developers in the community.”

feildmaster

The DMCA take-down wasn’t just a take-down of the software; it also was a take-down of a community. The overnight disappearance of Bukkit left a huge power vacuum full of bitterness, personal harassment, and doxing. (Don’t forget this was also the era of #GamerGate.)

Who was this community? 🔗

The project I participated with, Spigot, was a fork of Bukkit created in 2012. Like Bukkit, Spigot was also hit by the DMCA take-down, although the Spigot team worked out a clever legal workaround to continue development.

A huge plugin community and third-party software around Bukkit’s API grew around both Bukkit and Spigot. The unusual thing was, with few exceptions, most of the leaders of these communities were young adults in their 20s, teenagers, or even 11 year old kids. Open source wasn’t a strongly understood concept in this community. It was just what everyone did. The messaging around licensing was not always great, but working in the open was the nature of how this gaming community operated.

The spirit of open source died 🔗

For this community, the promise and glory of open source died. For years, the Bukkit developer team shared their belief in open source with the community:

“Bukkit chose to go the open source route with our API for several reasons. Not only is open source awesome, but we knew that there were many talented individuals within the Minecraft community that could help us evolve, mature and grow our project much faster than we could have ever dreamed on our own.”

EvilSeph (Warren Loo), “Bukkit Project Changes and Improvements”

But with the complications of a project doomed to failure under the GPL that never should have been, combined with the hidden secret of ownership and DMCA take-down of open source code, the promise of open source both helped and failed this community.

Who was right? Who was wrong? 🔗

On one hand, the lead developer who issued the DMCA take-down was able to vent the frustration faced by those who discovered their secret “free labor” agreement with Mojang (at a great personal cost, as he was harassed, stalked, and received death threats). On the other hand, the collective community faced the end of an era brought about extraordinary circumstances that actually voided the GPL as a valid license:

“A license is a contract. There are many reasons why a contract would be void, and many conditions that make a contract invalid from the get-go. One such condition is being “tricked” into the agreement, which would include agreeing to work on a project under false pretenses. As stated above, an open source project being secretly purchased by a company, in hopes to have that company’s game be improved through it, is as close to a loophole for free labor as you will find. Free labor was outlawed in this country a while ago. We had a whole war about it.”

/u/VideoGameAttorney, “My Response to Vubui, Mojang, and the hundreds (yes, hundreds) of you who asked me to weigh in on this.”

The only conclusion I can muster on this saga is from that same Reddit thread: “But at the end of the day, don’t just believe one side is “good” and the other “bad” here. These things are rarely so simple.”

Why did I write this? 🔗

Because I keep coming back to this story, across my life. I was writing an event report about a copyleft licensing conference I went to in February 2020, when I recapped this same story to someone there in-person. It wasn’t the first time I told this story at a conference though. It’s such an interesting case study of copyleft licensing.

Because it is in the open source gaming world and the largest demographic of this particular gaming community is under 30 years old, many folks who have been “around the block” in open source are unaware of this story.

But as my first open source community and also something I invested nearly a whole decade of my life into (as have countless others), this experience shaped my outlook on open source and community in an unusual way. It’s an experience I can’t forget. Even if I only have an abrupt ending to this story, it’s a story that I think deserves to be told, in respect to those who invested far more time, energy, money, and tears in this than I ever have.

Preface 🔗

When I started writing this in January, I read freenode’s “Happy New Year!” announcement. Even though their recollection of the year began as a negative reflection, the freenode team did not fail to find some of the positives of this year as well. The attitude reflected in their blog post is reflective of the attitude of many others today. 2016 has brought more than its share of sadness, fear, and a bleak unknown, but the colors of radiance, happiness, and hope have not faded either. Even though some of us celebrated the end of 2016 and its tragedies, two thoughts stay in my mind.

One, it is fundamentally important for all of us to stay vigilant and aware of what is happening in the world around us. The changing political atmosphere of the world has brought a shroud of unknowing, and the changing of a number does not and will not signify the end of these doubts and fears. 2017 brings its own series of unexpected events. I don’t consider this a negative, but in order for it not to become a negative, we must constantly remain active and aware.

Secondly, despite the more bleak moments of this year, there has never been a more important time to embrace the positives of the past year. For every hardship faced, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Love is all around us and sometimes where we least expect it. Spend extra time this new year remembering the things that brought you happiness in the past year. Hold them close, but share that light of happiness with others too. You might not know how much it’s needed.

First year of university: complete! 🔗

Many things changed since I decided to pack up my life and go to a school a thousand miles away from my hometown. In May, I officially finished my first year at the Rochester Institute of Technology, finishing the full year on dean’s list. Even though it was only a single year, the changes from my decision to make the move are incomparable. Rochester exposed me to amazing, brilliant people. I’m connected to organizations and groups based on my interests like I never imagined. My courses are challenging, but interesting. If there is anything I am appreciative of in 2016, it is for the opportunities that have presented themselves to me in Rochester.

Adventures into FOSS@MAGIC 🔗

My involvement with the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community at RIT has grown exponentially since I began participating in 2015. I took my first course in the FOSS minor, Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development in spring 2016. In the following fall 2016 semester, I became the teaching assistant for the course. I helped show our community’s projects at Imagine RIT. I helped carry the RIT FOSS flag in California (more on that later). The FOSS@MAGIC initiative was an influencing factor for my decision to attend RIT and continues to play an impact in my life as a student.

I eagerly look forward to future opportunities for the FOSS projects and initiatives at RIT to grow and expand. Bringing open source into more students’ hands excites me!

I <3 WiC 🔗

With a new schedule, the fall 2016 semester marked the beginning of my active involvement with the Women in Computing (WiC) program at RIT, as part of the Allies committee. Together with other members of the RIT community, we work together to find issues in our community, discuss them and share experiences, and find ways to grow the WiC mission: to promote the success and advancement of women in their academic and professional careers.

Also, hey! If you’re a female high school or university student in the Rochester area (or willing to do some travel), you should seriously check this out!

Google Summer of Code 🔗

Google Summer of Code, abbreviated to GSoC, is an annual program run by Google every year. Google works with open source projects to offer stipends for them to pay students to work on projects over the summer. In a last-minute decision to apply, I was accepted as a contributing student to the Fedora Project. My proposal was to work within the Fedora Infrastructure team to help automate the WordPress platforms with Ansible. My mentor, Patrick Uiterwijk, provided much of the motivation for the proposal and worked with me throughout the summer as I began learning Ansible for the first time. Over the course of the summer, my learned knowledge began to turn into practical experience.

It would be unfair for a reflection to count successes but not failures. GSoC was one of the most challenging and stressful activities I’ve ever participated in. It was a complete learning experience for me. One area I noted that I needed to improve on was communication. My failing point was not regularly communicating what I was working through or stuck on with my mentor and the rest of the Fedora GSoC community. GSoC taught me the value of asking questions often when you’re stuck, especially in an online contribution format.

On the positive side, GSoC helped formally introduce me to Ansible, and to a lesser extent, the value of automation in operations work. My work in GSoC helped enable me to become a sponsored sysadmin of Fedora, where I mostly focus my time contributing to the Badges site. Additionally, my experience in GSoC helped me when interviewing for summer internships (also more on this later).

Google Summer of Code came with many ups and downs. But I made it and passed the program. I’m happy and fortunate to have received this opportunity from the Fedora Project and Google. I learned several valuable lessons that have and will impact going forward into my career. I look forward to participating either as a mentor or organizer for GSoC 2017 with the Fedora Project this year.

Flock 2016 🔗

Towards the end of summer, in the beginning of August, I was accepted as a speaker to the annual Fedora Project contributor conference, Flock. As a speaker, my travel and accommodation were sponsored to the event venue in Kraków, Poland.

Months after Flock, I am still incredibly grateful for receiving the opportunity to attend the conference. I am appreciative and thankful to Red Hat for helping cover my costs to attend, which is something I would never be able to do on my own. Outside of the real work and productivity that happened during the conference, I am happy to have mapped names to faces. I met incredible people from all corners of the world and have made new lifelong friends (who I was fortunate to see again in 2017)! Flock introduced me in-person to the diverse and brilliant community behind the Fedora Project. It is an experience that will stay with me forever.

To read a more in-depth analysis of my time in Poland, you can read my full write-up of Flock 2016.

Maryland (Bitcamp), Massachusetts (HackMIT), California (MINECON) 🔗

2016 provided me the opportunity to explore various parts of my country. Throughout the year, I attended various conferences to represent the Fedora Project, the SpigotMC project, and the RIT open source community.

There are three distinct events that stand out in my memory. For the first time, I visited the University of Maryland for Bitcamp as a Fedora Ambassador. It also provided me an opportunity to see my nation’s capitol for the first time. I also visited Boston for the first time this year as well for HackMIT, MIT’s annual hackathon event. I also participated as a Fedora Ambassador and met brilliant students from around the country (and even the world, with one student I met flying in from India for the weekend).

Lastly, I also took my first journey to the US west coast for MINECON 2016, the annual Minecraft convention. I attended as a staff member of the SpigotMC project and a representative of the open source community at RIT.

All three of these events have their own event reports to go with them. More info and plenty of pictures are in the full reports.

• Going to Bitcamp 2016
• HackMIT meets Fedora
• SpigotMC goes to California for MINECON

Vermont 2016 with Matt 🔗

Some trips happen without prior arrangements and planning. Sometimes, the best memories are made by not saying no. I remember the phone call with one of my closest friends, Matt Coutu, at some point in October. On a sudden whim, we planned my first visit to Vermont to visit him. Some of the things he told me to expect made me excited to explore Vermont! And then in the pre-dawn hours of November 4th, I made the trek out to Vermont to see him.

Instantly when crossing over the state border, I knew this was one of the most beautiful states I ever visited. During the weekend, the two of us did things that I think only the two of us would enjoy. We climbed a snowy mountain to reach an abandoned fire watchtower, where we endured a mini blizzard. We walked through a city without a specific destination in mind, but to go wherever the moment took us.

We visited a quiet dirt road that led to a meditation house and cavern maintained by monks, where we meditated and drank in the experience. I wouldn’t classify the trip has a high-energy or engaging trip, but for me, it was one of the most enjoyable trips I’ve embarked on yet. There are many things that I still hold on to from that weekend for remembering or reflecting back on.

A big shout-out to Matt for always supporting me with everything I do and always being there when we need each other.

Finally seeing NYC with Nolski 🔗

In no short time after the Vermont trip, I purchased tickets for my favorite band, El Ten Eleven, in New York City on November 12th. What turned into a one-day trip to see the band turned into an all-weekend trip to see the band, see New York City, and spend some time catching up with two of my favorite people, Mike Nolan (nolski) and Remy DeCausemaker (decause). During the weekend, I saw the World Trade Center memorial site for the first time, tried some amazing bagels, explored virtual reality in Samsung’s HQ, and got an exclusive inside look at the Giphy office.

This was my third time in New York City, but my first time to explore the city. Another shout-out goes to Mike for letting me crash on his couch and stealing his Sunday to walk through his metaphorical backyard. Hopefully it isn’t my last time to visit the city either!

Finalizing study abroad 🔗

At the end of 2016, I finalized a plan that was more than a year in the making. I applied and was accepted to study abroad at the Rochester Institute of Technology campus in Dubrovnik, Croatia. RIT has a few satellite campuses across the world: two in Croatia (Zagreb and Dubrovnik) and one in Dubai, UAE. In addition to being accepted, the university provided me a grant to further my education abroad. I am fortunate to have received this opportunity and can’t wait to spend the next few months of my life in Croatia. I am currently studying in Dubrovnik since January until the end of May.

During my time here, I will be taking 12 credit hours of courses. I am taking ISTE-230 (Introduction to Database and Data Modeling), ENGL-361 (Technical Writing), ENVS-150 (Ecology of the Dalmatian Coast), and lastly, FOOD-161 (Wines of the World). The last one was a fun one that I took for myself to try broadening my experiences while abroad.

Additionally, one of my personal goals for 2017 is to practice my photography skills. During my time abroad, I have created a gallery on 500px where I upload my top photos from every week. I welcome feedback and opinions about my pictures, and if you have criticism for how I can improve, I’d love to hear about it!

Accepting my first co-op 🔗

The last big break that I had in 2016 was accepting my first co-op position. Starting in June, I will be a Production Engineering Intern at Jump Trading, LLC. I started interviewing with Jump Trading in October and even had an on-site interview that brought me to their headquarters in Chicago at the beginning of December. After meeting the people and understanding the culture of the company, I am happy to accept a place at the team. I look forward to learning from some of the best in the industry and hope to contribute to some of the fascinating projects going on there.

From June until late August, I will be starting full-time at their Chicago office. If you are in the area or ever want to say hello, let me know and I’d be happy to grab coffee, once I figure out where all the best coffee shops in Chicago are!

In summary 🔗

2015 felt like a difficult year to follow, but 2016 exceeded my expectations. I acknowledge and I’m grateful for the opportunities this year presented to me. Most importantly, I am thankful for the people who have touched my life in a unique way. I met many new people and strengthened my friendships and bonds with many old faces too. All of the great things from the past year would not be possible without the influence, mentorship, guidance, friendship, and comradery these people have given me. My mission is to always pay it forward to others in any way that I can, so that others are able to experience the same opportunities (or better).

2017 is starting off hot and moving quickly, so I hope I can keep up! I can’t wait to see what this year brings and hope that I have the chance to meet more amazing people, and also meet many of my old friends again, wherever that may be.

Keep the FOSS flag high.

Arriving in Anaheim 🔗

I arrived in Anaheim early in the morning on Friday, September 23. Unlike last year when I flew in on the first day, I had some time to get to my hotel, settle in, and meet the team before the action began. Michael Dardis, the project lead, and Jordan Taylor, a fellow community moderator, were already in California. Michael was visiting from Australia and Jordan flew in from the UK. They decided to take advantage of the opportunity to travel and see some of what the west coast has to offer.

After checking into our room and leaving our luggage, we went to scout the convention floor and see what we would be facing on Saturday and Sunday. The convention was held in the Anaheim Convention Center, which was a large venue to accommodate over 12,000 attendees. I checked myself in as an Agent, or in other words, a convention volunteer. After getting our badges and goodies, the team visited some of the various food trucks outside the convention center. Without much of a delay, we began meeting various others from the Minecraft community. One of the people we spent the most time with over the weekend was Ryan Michela, a former developer of the Bukkit project. He would join us for most of the weekend as an honorary Spigot team member.

As the day began to close, we traveled through Anaheim to see if we could find a spot to host our annual tradition of a community meal, and that we did!

Spigot hits the MINECON floor! 🔗

Saturday morning started bright and early as some of the team members had meetings with other people in the community, and I had my Agent shift for the Hypixel Arena for most of the morning. My shift mostly consisted of directing people to and from various computer stations for a tournament bracket of various mini games. This was probably one of the most high-pace jobs for the volunteers as it was low-light and required constant vigilance to cycle new players into open stations. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the experience and met some cool members of the Hypixel team and other Agents along the way.

After my shift ended, I reunited with the rest of the team as we explored everything MINECON had to offer. It was a different experience than last year since SpigotMC did not have a booth, but we watched some interesting panels and talked with various fans throughout the day. Those of us on the floor had brought plenty of SpigotMC swag, from t-shirts to flyers to wristbands. By the end of the convention, we had distributed around 20 t-shirt packages and nearly 500 wristbands.

Minecraft mods for teaching 🔗

One of the big highlights of the weekend was the “Using Minecraft Mods for Teaching” panel. Our project lead, Michael, was one of the panelists to speak. The panel covered the various methods and tools from Minecraft and the community. These methods and tools help enable teachers and mentors to introduce programming concepts to children and grow interest in computer science.

Asking about open source 🔗

As some in the team joked that they knew I would bring it up, I asked the panelists about the role of open source in Minecraft and computer science education. Through my own experiences, I believe the game is a powerful medium to empower children to begin thinking critically of their digital world, and not only to think about it, but to begin shaping it. Open source fits well with this because kids can read how others did a particular task or project and learn by example. Arun Gupta, the panel moderator, took lead on the question and talked further about how open source is an important part of the puzzle.

Encouraging girls into programming 🔗

Lastly, a question I did not expect to hear but was glad to hear it was from Nina Arens, an educator and part of the Living Computer Museum in Seattle. Her question specifically targeted how to help more young girls get interested in what is traditionally a male-dominated environment. While the discussion was hard to come to a definitive solution in the time of the panel, I was happy to see this question raised. The discourse for raising interest in computer science in children needs to include these types of questions. The role of diversity in tech is an ongoing issue and needs more exposure even in places where it’s not traditionally asked. Thank you, Nina, for asking some of these hard questions during the panel.

For more coverage of these points, you can watch the full panel above.

Community dinner 🔗

Tradition calls for the SpigotMC team to organize an annual meal for our community members. This year, we settled on the California Pizza Kitchen as our venue. Because of a range of complications, we were unable to reserve ahead of time. On Friday night, Michael, Jordan, Ryan, and myself did a trial run of CPK and decided we would host there. The view was beautiful from the outside tables, with the sun setting right down the middle of the boulevard. We went ahead and booked the reservation the day of.

Night of food and fun 🔗

On Saturday, after the convention floor closed up, we began gathering the team members and some of the community together from the convention center and walked over to the restaurant. Some people were waiting there or joined us shortly after we arrived. Overall, I think the total number of attendees was close to 40 people. We didn’t have cool name badges like last year, but it was an enjoyable event and I was happy to meet so many amazing people from the community in-person. If you attended our dinner, thank you again for coming out and I hope the team will get to see you again!

Furthermore, one thing I find worth noting is the kind generosity that I have come to know from Michael. At the end of the evening, he left one of the most generous tips to the (awesome) wait staff at the California Pizza Kitchen. The manager had to come out and verify that the amount was correct before charging it. It was clear this made their night. For these reasons and plenty of others, I am happy that Michael is the person leading the SpigotMC project.

Open education 🔗

One of my most interesting conversations was with Christie Fierro, part of the YetiCraft team and an educator at the Tacoma Community College in Tacoma, Washington. I quickly found that Christie and I shared many of the same interests and engagement with using open source and open content to empower students and build better curriculum in education systems. The big project she was helping drive was a Minecraft seeing eye dog to help engage blind students.

Another one of the big goals she was helping drive was Creative Commons-licensed textbooks and material for courses. This was fascinating for me to hear about and I enjoyed learning how the open world is continuing to have a larger presence in education. Thank you Christie for the great conversation and discussion, and I hope we can collaborate together in the future with some of the open work at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Meeting my server staff 🔗

This event report wouldn’t be complete without noting the opportunity I had to meet one of my Minecraft server staff members. For over four years, I created, manage, and run the CrystalCraftMC Minecraft server network. One of the people who has been around for almost the entire time is Justin Natzic. Justin is now a moderator on the server and has helped complete projects like a Mob Arena, where players fight endless waves of monsters and bosses to receive prizes and loot. Together with the rest of the team, Justin helped lead and develop challenging waves to keep players on their toes.

Sunday night dinner 🔗

On Sunday night, I went to dinner with him and his father. We had to chance to reminisce about four years of memories, brainstorm some new ideas for the server, and enjoy the chance to finally meet each other in-person. I am fortunate to have an awesome team of volunteers like Justin help with my Minecraft server. Without my staff team, CrystalCraftMC would never have made it this far. I look forward to a chance where I might see him again, on the west coast or otherwise!

A double special thanks goes to him and his father for driving me to the airport, where I ended up racing through the airport with lights turning off behind me. I made my flight by about two minutes… no more, no less. I appreciate that I had them to drive me there, because I wouldn’t have made it back in time for my 10:00am class on Monday otherwise!

Saying goodbye 🔗

The end of the weekend was difficult for me. A couple of weeks after MINECON, I officially announced my resignation from the SpigotMC team. While I was still a staff member during MINECON, I had given this thought for a while and knew that this would likely be my last convention as a team member. SpigotMC is a major part of my life. From the project, I discovered the world of open source software and learned about various other things from the community. My experiences afforded by the SpigotMC project even influenced my choice in university and degree.

Special thanks go to FOSS@MAGIC at RIT for helping sponsor some of my travel costs to this convention. Without the support of the university, I would never have been able to attend. Extra big thanks goes to Stephen Jacobs for helping me navigate attending the convention even after the last-minute rejection of my panel.

Parting words of advice 🔗

Throughout the years that I served, I have met many incredible and inspiring people. I am happy to know that the team behind the SpigotMC project are some of the best people I have met in open source. Even though my time is up, SpigotMC is in great hands and I know that its leadership will make the right decisions, even when it is hard to do. As I said to some of the others in the community, the absence of one giant gives way to the rise of others. I hope that with my passing, more members of the community will answer the call of building the community forward and caring for the SpigotMC family.

My other parting words for anyone reading is to always keep an open mind. What we learned as a moderation team is that no matter what decision we make, there will always be someone who thinks it is the wrong decision. It is impossible to make everyone happy. But the team is thoroughly committed to do the best job we can. So if there is ever something that frustrates you, spend time considering how decisions impact others. Try to think through our motivations for making the decisions we make. If you still disagree, instead of only complaining, help build a collaborative solution for how to make it better. This kind of feedback is always welcome. And should you ever feel stuck, my email inbox is always open. You can reach me at jflory7 [at] spigotmc [dot] org.

Thanks, team 🔗

I was incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to travel to California this year and meet my fellow SpigotMC team members. I am thankful that I was able to see all the team members one last time and help wave the “SpigotMC flag” for another MINECON. Thank you everyone who has been a part of my journey through the world of Minecraft and SpigotMC. It has shaped my life immensely. Saying goodbye after all this long feels impossible to do. So instead…

So long. See you soon.

When people first think of “open source”, their mind probably first goes to code. Something technical that requires an intermediate understanding of computers or programming languages. But open source is a broad concept that goes beyond only binary bits and bytes. Open source projects hold great regard for community participation. The community is a fundamental piece of a successful open source project. For my experience getting involved with open source, I began in the community and worked my way around from there. At the age of fifteen, I was beginning my open source journey and I didn’t even know it.

Gaming introduces open source 🔗

One of my strongest memories of a “gaming addiction” was when I was fifteen and a younger cousin introduced me to the game Minecraft. The game was in beta then, but I remember the sandbox-style of the game entertaining the two of us for hours. But what I discovered was that playing the game alone became boring. Playing and mining with others made the experience more fun and meaningful. In order to do this, I learned I would have to host a server for my friends to connect to play with me.

I originally used the “vanilla” Minecraft server software at first, but it was limited to what it could do, and didn’t compare to other multiplayer servers in existence. They all seemed to be using something that offered more, so players could play games, cast spells, or do other unique things that would normally not be possible in the game. After digging, I discovered Bukkit, an open source Minecraft server software with an extensible API to let developers change the multiplayer experience. I soon became wrapped up with Bukkit like a child with a new toy. Except this toy had me digging through my computer to set up “port forwarding”, “setting NAT records”, and “creating static IP addresses”. I was teaching myself the basics of computer networking in the guise of creating a game server for my friends.

Over time, my Minecraft server hobby began to take up more and more time. More people began playing on my server and I began searching for ways to improve the performance of my server. After doing some digging, I discovered the SpigotMC project, shortened to just Spigot. Spigot was a fork of the Bukkit project that made specific enhancements to performance. After trialing it on my server, I discovered the performance gains were measurable and I would commit to using Spigot from then on.

Participating in SpigotMC 🔗

Before long, I began running into new challenges with managing my Minecraft server community, whether it was finding ways to scale or finding the best ways to build a community up. In October 2013, I registered an account on the Spigot forums to talk with other server owners and seek advice on ways I could improve. I found the community welcoming and accepting to helping me learn and improve. Several people in the community were owners of larger servers or developers of unique plugins to Spigot. In response to my detailed inquisitions, they responded with genuine and helpful feedback and support. Within a week, I was already in love with the people and helpfulness of the Spigot community.

I became an active participant in the forum community in Spigot. Through the project, I was introduced to IRC and how to use it for communicating with other server owners and developers. What I didn’t realize was a trend in my behavior. Over time, I began shifting away from asking all the questions. Almost as if in a role reversal, I became the one answering questions and helping support other new server owners or developers. I became the one in an advisory role instead of the one always asking.

In April 2014, the project lead of Spigot reached out to me asking if I would consider a role as a community staff member. Part of my responsibilities would be responding to reports, encouraging a helpful and friendly community, and maintaining the atmosphere of the community. With as much prestige and honor as my sixteen-year-old self could muster, I accepted and began serving as a community moderator. I remember feeling privileged to serve the position – I would finally get to help the community that had done so much to help me.

Expanding the open source horizon 🔗

Through 2014 and 2015, I actively served as a moderator of the community, both in the forums and the IRC network for Spigot. I remained in the Spigot community as the project steadily grew. It was incredible to see how the project was attracting more and more users.

However, my open source journey did not end there. After receiving my high school diploma in May 2015, I had set my sights on the Rochester Institute of Technology, a school I noted as having the country’s only Free and Open Source Software minor. By coincidence, I also noticed that my preferred Linux distribution, Fedora, was holding its annual contributor conference in Rochester, a week before I would move in for classes. I decided I would make the move up early to see what it was all about.

Flock 2015 introduces Fedora 🔗

The summer passed, and before I knew I was ready, I was packing up from my home outside of Atlanta, Georgia to leave for Rochester, New York. After fourteen hours of driving, I finally arrived and began moving into my new home. A day after I arrived, Flock was slated to begin, marking my first journey in Rochester.

At Flock, I entered as an outsider. I was in an unfamiliar city with unfamiliar people and an open source project I was only mildly familiar with. It was all new to me. But during that week, I discovered a community of people who were united around four common ideals. Freedom, Friends, Features, First: the Four Foundations of the Fedora Project were made clear to me. The community members at Flock worked passionately towards advancing their project during the talks and workshops. And after the talks finished, they gathered together for hallway discussions, sharing drinks, and enjoying the presence of their (usually) internationally dispersed team. Without having ever attended a Fedora event before, I knew that the Four Foundations and the community behind Fedora were the real deal. Leaving Flock that year, I vowed to pursue becoming a part of this incredible community.

Pen to paper, keyboard to post 🔗

The first major step I took towards contributing to the Fedora Project was in September 2015, during Software Freedom Day. Then Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator Remy DeCausemaker was in attendance representing Fedora. During the event, I reached out to the Fedora Magazine editorial team asking to become involved as a writer. By the end of September, I penned my first article for the Fedora Magazine, tying in my experience in the Spigot community to Fedora: run a Minecraft server using Spigot.

My first step getting involved with the Fedora community was an exciting one. I remember feeling proud and excited to see my first article published on the front page, not only helping Fedora, but also helping Spigot. I realized then that it was relatively straightforward to contribute this kind of content, and I would keep writing about software I was familiar with for the Magazine.

As I continued writing posts for the Fedora Magazine, I became aware of another team forming up in Fedora: the Community Operations, or CommOps, team. I subscribed to their mailing list, joined the IRC channel, and attended the first meetings. Over time, I became wrapped up and involved with the community efforts within Fedora. I slowly found one thing leading to another.

Today in Fedora, I am the leading member of the Community Operations (CommOps) team, the editor-in-chief of the Fedora Magazine, a Marketing team member, an Ambassador of North America, a leading member of the Diversity Team, and a few other things.

Advice for other students 🔗

When you’re first getting started, it can sometimes be tough and a little confusing. As students getting involved with FOSS, there are a few challenges that we might have to face. A lot of this can be with making the first steps into a new project. There are countless open source projects of various sizes and they all do things a bit differently from others, so the process changes from project to project.

One of the most obvious challenges with getting involved is your personal experience level. Especially when getting started, it can be easy to look at a large project or well-known project and see all the work devoted there. There are smart and active people working on these projects, and many times their contributions are quite impressive! One of the many concerns I’ve seen other students here face (including myself at first) is wondering how someone with beginning to moderate experience or knowledge can get involved, in comparison to some of these contributions from active contributors. If it’s a large project, like Fedora, it can be intimidating to think where to start when there’s so many things to do and areas to get involved with. But if you think of it all as one big project, it is intimidating and difficult for you to make that first step.

Break a bigger project into smaller pieces. Start small and look for something you can help with. A healthy open source project usually will have things like easyfix bugs that are good ones to start with if it’s your first time contributing. Keep an eye out for those if you’re getting started.

Another challenge you might face as a student or beginner to open source is something called imposter syndrome. For me, this was something I had identified with before I knew what it was. For a definition, I’ll pull straight from Wikipedia first: " Term referring to high-achieving individuals marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a “fraud”.

Imposter syndrome can be a common feeling as you get involved with open source, especially if comparing yourself to some of those active and smart contributors that you meet as you become involved. But you should also remember you are a student – comparing yourself or your contributions to a professional or someone with years of experience isn’t fair to yourself! It’s not apple-to-apples. Your contributions as you get involved with open source are worthy and valuable to an open source project regardless of how deep, how many, or how much time you spend on the project. Even if it’s a couple of hours in the week, that’s saving others those couple of hours and it’s adding something into the project. A contribution is a contribution – it’s a bad idea to rate the worth of contributions to other contributions.

Those are some of the challenges that are useful to know and understand as you become more involved with FOSS. If you know the challenges you are up against, it makes it easier to handle them as they come.

There are also benefits to contributing to open source as a student as well. Contributing to open source is a great way for you to take knowledge and info you have learned from classes and begin applying it to real-world projects and gain experience. It’s one thing to take you to the next level as a student. If you are contributing to a project in the real world, that is unique experience that is helpful for you for future career outlooks as well.

It’s also a great networking opportunity. In open source, you meet many incredible and smart people. In my time in Fedora, I’ve met many contributors and had various mentors help me get involved. I’ve made new friends and met people who I normally would never have had the opportunity to meet.

There are also opportunities for leadership in open source projects. Whether it’s just one task, one bug, or even a role, you might find that sometimes all it takes is someone willing to say, “I’ll do this!” to have leadership on something. It might be challenging or difficult at first, but it’s a great way for you to understand working in team environments, how to work effectively even if you’re remote, and how to break down a task and work on finding solutions for complex problems.

Lastly, it’s important for younger people to become more involved with open source communities. As students and younger community members, we add unique perspective and ideas to open source projects. It’s important to a healthy community for an open source project and any open source project worth contributing to should be welcoming and accepting to students who are willing to spend time working on the project and helping solve those problems, whether they’re bugs, tasks, or other things. In short, there is absolutely a role for students getting involved with open source!

My Year in Review 🔗

With an hour left until the New Year, there never seemed a better time to begin writing my Year in Review article. While it is a stereotypical kind of thing to do, I also think it’s a great opportunity to reflect on the gifts, changes, and special occasions that this past year has presented to me. 2015 is special to me in many ways because it marks a significant milestone in my life of moving away from home and beginning my journey into full adulthood.

There are many important and special people in my life that have made this year incredible, and I want to reflect and make note of this.

</high school> <college> 🔗

This past May, I graduated from high school. Looking back, it’s interesting to see how much has changed in my personal life and even in my own interests. Some friends have come and gone, but there are an important core of people who have always been present in my life, and I am privileged to have been one to know them deeply over the past four years.

Interestingly enough, it wasn’t until my junior year when I realized that I wanted to spend my life working in computer science. I remember when I walked into the classroom of my AP Computer Science teacher asking how I could get going with only one year left. Now, here I am immersing myself in digital technology in countless different ways. I feel like I am where I am meant to be.

These four years haven’t been easy either. I worked hard to get to the place I wanted to go. Despite quite a few personal challenges, I was fortunate enough to afford an education here at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Just in the semester and a half that I have been enrolled here, I’ve met countless people who have affected my life and helped shape the direction of where I’m going in the world. Special shout-out to the FOSSbox and RITlug, and everyone involved with both.

Coffee and Doughnuts 🔗

For most of 2015, I worked a not-so-typical job at Dutch Monkey Doughnuts in my hometown. Dutch Monkey is an important part of my town and they have helped create a name for people visiting the region. They’re well-known for their homemade doughnuts and Counter Culture Coffee, both of which are legendary within their own right.

During my time at Dutch Monkey, I was able to attend workshops and classes at the Counter Culture Coffee Training Center in Atlanta. Throughout the eight or nine classes I took, I was able to further my understanding and appreciation for an extremely complex and fascinating beverage. My appreciation and love for coffee has become a part of my being. The coffee industry is a wild and exciting place, and it is very much an ethical hotbed of all kinds of issues. I joke to myself that if sysadmin doesn’t work out, the coffee industry could always make a good fallback…

I was also fortunate to have some awesome co-workers who helped make the 4am shifts a little more enjoyable. Special shout-out to Jordan Hughes for the long talks about music, the music industry, and so many other things. I learned a lot from you and you’ve had a big impact on my own music tastes.

MINECON and SpigotMC 🔗

This was single-handedly one of the most profound events of the year for me. If you weren’t aware, I am a community moderator for the SpigotMC project. I have been a moderator since April 2014. Spigot is my true first open-source project, even though I wasn’t a contributor of code, but a community builder (or so I like to think).

MINECON announced 🔗

In February of 2015, Mojang announced that MINECON 2015 would be happening in London, England. Instantly, I thought there would be no way I would ever be able to afford a trip overseas for a two-day convention. However, I found the application for a MINECON Agent, which is the small group of “interns” that volunteer to help set up and prepare MINECON for over 10,000 people with the Mojang team. The only benefit to being an Agent was a waived ticket cost (around $120 last year). I applied for the program, unsure of what would come of it, doubtful I would be able to go even if I were accepted.

April rolls around, and I finally hear back from Mojang! “Congratulations, you are now a MINECON Agent!” It was difficult to believe at first, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to go regardless.

Getting in gear for MINECON 🔗

I began talking with the rest of the team at SpigotMC. We were also getting in gear for MINECON 2015 and were planning to attend as an organization with our own booth. We had arranged to have a booth and most of the team knew who was going to be there. Michael, our project lead, would be in attendance, along with Matthew, the other lead developer; Jordan, another community moderator like myself; Cindy, our local wiki staff, IRC staff, and contributing developer, or also the official “Spigot Mom”; and Miguel, our witty Spigot volunteer who has an ambiguous position with Spigot. Cindy’s son Alex was also going to be in attendance.

I didn’t think I would be able to attend. However, a very unique set of events happened one after another, and suddenly, the possibility of me attending MINECON this year began to materialize. Thanks to awesome people behind Spigot, I was fortunate enough to make it out to this year’s convention. When I figured out that I would be going to London, I was beyond stoked.

Going to London and MINECON 🔗

I would be there from Saturday, July 4 to Wednesday, July 8, 2016. Saturday and Sunday were the days of MINECON. Together with the team, we helped represent the SpigotMC project among thousands of convention-goers. We had brochures, bracelets, and a video running in the booth for visitors to take and see. I met some incredible people from our community, and I am privileged and honored to have met some incredible people there.

Thanks to Michael being the incredible individual he is, we went to a few dinners and meet-ups with others in the Minecraft community. I met two of the major Minecraft developers, Nathan (Dinnerbone) and Erik (Grum) and countless others in the YouTube and development community. It was almost unbelievable. The entire time I was in London, the experience felt surreal. Six months before this, I would never have believed any of this would ever have happened.

The Monday and Tuesday we were there, Cindy, Jordan, Alex, and I went around London doing our proper duty as tourists. We went to see Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, rode a double-decker bus, went to the Queen’s castle, and indulged in what Jordan called a “proper British meal”. On Monday night, Jordan treated me to a short trip around London hopping between bars (although everything closed so early)! We ended up crashing in some late-night diner, had a meal, and headed back for the next round of sightseeing on Tuesday.

Thanks to the team 🔗

This was truly a life-changing experience that was bestowed upon me. I was honored and privileged to have met the other members of the Spigot team that I’ve been working with for the past two years. I wouldn’t trade my time in London for anything else, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to help host the crew this upcoming MINECON if it ends up in the northeast US.

Open Source and Fedora 🔗

I have used the Fedora operating system on my laptop since December 2013. I began using it on my desktop I built in November 2014. I have used this operating system for almost two years and I never had thought too much about the community behind the Fedora Project. I knew that it was a large and complex community, but I was never sure where to take the first step. I had always wanted to be an Ambassador, but questioned my usefulness or whether I was a right fit for the program.

Flock to Fedora! 🔗

I learned that Flock, Fedora’s annual contributor’s conference, was to be hosted in Rochester, NY in 2015 from August 5th to the 9th. I would be moving right next door to Flock just a week after the conference! After contacting a pair of people who seemed knowledgeable about the details back in February 2015, little did I know I was setting in motion an entirely new track of events in my life. The two gents I emailed, Remy DeCausemaker and Prof. Stephen Jacobs (SJ), helped give me advice on travel details and how I would get myself into Rochester in time for Flock.

Come August, I am back from MINECON, packing my bags for Rochester, and ending my last few days at Dutch Monkey. When I arrived in Rochester with my mother, it was an exciting and new experience, something I had looked forward to for a long time. Once Flock rolled around, I was almost instantaneously immersed in the Fedora community, and over the course of the week, I would begin to feel a part of a Project that I had questioned how to enter for almost a year.

The talks were fantastic, the speakers were passionate, and the community was welcoming. I was jump started into Fedora at Flock 2015, despite walking in a stranger. At first, I questioned whether coming was such a grand idea. It was obvious everyone knew someone already and I was only an excited Fedora user and fan. These were the people who did all the heavy-lifting to make this operating system and its community run. What was I doing here?

I distinctly remember Pete Travis (randomuser in IRC) coming up to me, introducing himself and asking me a few questions. In retrospect, I probably looked like I was feeling a bit out-of-place. He and I began talking a bit about his role in Fedora and some of my little experience in open source. After he spoke to me, I began to feel a little more attached to the conference. After a while, I began speaking up at some of the talks I attended, or trying to share some of my perspective or thoughts as an outsider. These were the stepping-stones that got me involved with the project.

One thing about all else stands out to me about the conference. I remember Remy saying to me towards the end (with minor paraphrasing), “You should check out this Community Operations thing that’s coming up soon. It’s going to be awesome.”

Fedora Magazine 🔗

Over the course of the next few months at RIT, I started working with Paul Frields, Ryan Lerch, and a few others on the Fedora Magazine. I began contributing as a writer, with my first article about using Spigot on Fedora. As time went on, I began helping as an editor, revising and reviewing other people’s articles to help get them published for the Magazine. By the end of 2015, I believe I would come to establish myself as a permanent member of the editorial team behind the Magazine.

CommOps 🔗

Additionally, during the months after Flock, I would follow up on what Remy told me, and I checked out this whole Community Operations (shortened to CommOps) thing. It was in the early formation stages, but the core idea behind CommOps was that they were the supporting team to offer support to all the other sub-projects in Fedora. Or in my eyes, a team focused on building and supporting the community with resources and assistance. This was something I thought I could contribute to. My programming skills were not at a level where I’d feel comfortable hacking on to Fedora either on the Infrastructure or as a Packager. But CommOps was that kind of thing that hooked me from the start. I wanted to help build Fedora up, and I could see what exactly CommOps was trying to target and how it was wanting to fix the long-term issues.

Now, months later, my involvement with CommOps has resulted with many tickets filed and many tickets closed. It has been a productive time while I have been with CommOps, and I never feel like there is too little to do. Our horizon is vast and there is much work to be done… 2016 offers great promise to the success of our sub-project, which in turn offers great promise to the Fedora Project. I am looking forward to seeing where this year takes us. I am also happy to work with such an awesome and dedicated group of people as those behind the CommOps team. There are too many to name, but I’m thankful for the leadership of Remy to keep us all together, focused, and driven.

2016 🔗

2016 will have a lot of ground to cover over 2015, but there is a large potential for this to be done. My own personal story with open source continues to grow, and I am beyond excited for what the future may bring. I am exposed to a unique group of people and minds here at RIT, and I am actively pursuing the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) minor.

This self-reflection has turned into a much longer post than I anticipated, but I think this reflection is necessary and useful for my own purposes. Taking a moment to reflect on the events of the past year helps remind me what it’s all about and why I’m doing what I’m doing, especially at the times where everything seems confusing and I begin to question what I’m doing. But the path is illuminated and I am driven to succeed. There are a lot of things at stake for me and my family, and I hope to be able to meet many personal goals and better support the people closest to me in my life.

I would also like to give a special thanks to all the people who have made this year so incredible for me, and for those who have ridden the ride with me. There are so many names to list, and it’s hard to come up with this list in the dark hours of the morning when I know I should be sleeping. But to all of those who play a special and important role in my life, I want you all to know that none of what has happened to me would be possible without your support. Your continued guidance, counsel, and companionship teaches me much and inspires me greatly. My only wish is that I will someday be able to repay all the good deeds that others have bestowed upon me. If not to the original giver, I hope to someday inspire others and help others in the same way you all have shown and taught me. Maybe this is less of a 2016 thing and more of a “crystal ball into the future” moment… but I think it’s worth mentioning regardless.

Thanks for a fantastic 2015. I’m looking forward to seeing where 2016 takes us next.