Contributor spotlight: Michael Young

When CentOS Linux's future changed almost overnight, a lot of infrastructure teams were left scrambling. Michael Young, known in the community as elguero, was one of the people who didn't just find a solution for his organization. He rolled up his sleeves and helped build one for everyone.

Michael is based in Manchester, NH, and brings a career that spans just about every corner of IT: web development, systems administration, networking, databases, telephony, and cybersecurity leadership at the Director, VP, and Manager level. Through all of it, one constant has remained: when there's an infrastructure problem to solve, he looks for an open source answer first.

That instinct is what led him to Rocky Linux more than five years ago.

From CentOS migration to core contributor

Like many in the community, Michael's path to Rocky Linux started with a practical problem. His organization was running on CentOS Linux, and the shift to CentOS Stream wasn't a direction he was comfortable taking. He started researching alternatives, found Rocky Linux just getting off the ground, and saw an opening to do more than just adopt a new OS.

His employer supported open source contributions, so Michael started giving time, resources, and packaging experience during evenings and weekends alongside the rest of the early team. What began as a migration decision became a multi-year commitment.

The dotnet problem

Ask Michael about a contribution he's proud of, and he'll tell you about a notepad and a strategy.

In the early days of the project, the team needed to untangle a web of dependencies before packages could be built and published. Michael and fellow contributor Skip Grube took on the harder ones. They split the list in two: Skip working from the top, Michael starting at the bottom, both working toward the middle.

One of the most stubborn packages on that list was dotnet. Getting it to a publishable state was a genuine challenge, and Michael credits it as one of his proudest moments. That work didn't stay inside Rocky Linux either. Portions were contributed upstream to reduce the long-term maintenance burden on the community.

That pattern has continued. Any time Michael can submit a patch to an upstream project to add Rocky Linux support, he considers it a good day.

What keeps him here

It's not just the technical work. Michael points to the relationships built over years of collaboration, the camaraderie with the project's founders, showing up at events, and talking with people who are running Rocky Linux in production. That feedback loop keeps him engaged. He runs Rocky Linux in his own personal infrastructure, too. This isn't a theoretical contribution. He's a user of what the project produces.

Advice for anyone thinking about contributing

Michael's message to newcomers is straightforward, and he's honest enough to admit he's had to work past the same hesitation himself:

"One thing that I think holds people back, I am guilty of this myself, is not being sure if you can contribute anything. You can. Just being present and providing input and thoughts helps set future outcomes. Simply saying 'Hi' and welcoming other new members is very important."

Lurking is fine. Jumping in is better. Open source projects survive because the community has each other's backs.

Shoutouts

Michael wants to recognize the people and teams who make it happen week in and week out: the original founders, RelEng, Infrastructure, Community, Docs, and Testing. His closing message to the broader community captures why he keeps showing up:

"Let's not forget what has brought us all together. We love FOSS and what it stands for. We need to look for every opportunity to help support our upstream projects which make up our Enterprise Linux distributions. As a community, let's continue to support the greater good and look for the best in each other."

Find Michael online

GitHub: https://github.com/elguero

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/mlyoung

Bluesky: @elgueromexicano.bsky.social

Mastodon: @elgueromexicano@fosstodon.org

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