Meet the Members is a look into the lives and stories behind the incredible human beings whose contributions have helped shape our project and community.
Our featured member today is @teward
What’s your name (username)?
Thomas Ward
Can you please tell us a little bit about yourself?
I live in Pennsylvania, United States, and work in the IT security field as a Senior Network Security Administrator, with my hands in Linux and systems development as well as Security. I have over 15 years of experience in the cyber-security industry and almost 20 years working with and running Linux.
How did you first get involved in the Ubuntu Community?
I initially got involved in the Ubuntu community by needing support with Ubuntu 9.04 initially. That was my first introduction into the Ubuntu community. However, as I learned Linux and got more familiar with administration of the system and the nitty-gritty of Ubuntu and programming and packages, I began to get involved with Ask Ubuntu, helping users with issues and asking and answering questions in the Ask Ubuntu web space. That slowly expanded into development and technical side of things in Ubuntu (such as package maintenance, development, etc.)
Can you tell us about your contributions that lead to Ubuntu Membership?
A large amount of contributions on Ask Ubuntu and helping the users in the community led to my pursuing Ubuntu Membership. And the membership board at the time saw my work there as exceptional and supported my membership application. After membership, I began following the technical side of stuff, but my primary contributions that got me membership were supporting other users via Ask Ubuntu.
What is the core motivation that keeps you contributing to Ubuntu and the open source movement?
My core motivation to keep contributing to Ubuntu is to “keep Ubuntu great” and also keep open source as a viable alternative to closed-source operating systems. As well, my intention is to keep Open Source Software in a ‘positive’ view despite the general problems that come up within distributions.
What’s your proudest moment or most memorable interaction within the Ubuntu community?
My proudest moment was when I applied to be on the Community Council - the top leadership board for the Ubuntu community and project - and was accepted. It’s especially memorable because I have continued to be on the Community Council since then (2020), and that has driven me to continue to have a drive to get more involved in the governance structure (with Technical Board since 2024)
How has being a part of the Ubuntu community impacted you personally or professionally?
Personally, being part of the Ubuntu community has led me to have connections and friendships worldwide with a diverse group of people. It has helped me to also gain more self-confidence in my own abilities by seeing the Community recognize my own contributions and actions over time and in seeing my contributions’ impact to the wider Community.
Professionally, it also has let me have more connections with professional contacts in the Ubuntu world, but has also given my employers reasons to continue to follow up with Ubuntu as a primary operating system, as they know there’s someone investing time to keep an eye on their systems that also has the ability to give them a heads up about any major changes coming to their architecture and systems.
What’s one piece of advice you would give to someone who wants to start contributing but doesn’t know where to begin?
I would suggest that you start with what you’re interested in with regards to Ubuntu and go from there.
Want to help users with your knowledge (NOT AI-powered knowledge!)? Help out with things on Discourse in the Help and Support section. Or on Ask Ubuntu.
Want to work on development? Find some packages you’re interested in that align with your knowledge base and take a look at the bugs on those packages and see where you contribute. Even if you end up following up to the program’s upstream development team to get your fixes there too.
Outside of the world of Ubuntu and tech, what are some of your other passions or hobbies?
Outside of Ubuntu and technology, I am a hardcore video game fan. I’m usually playing first person shooters or third person shooters (and MMO games like Helldivers II), or more recently some VR games like Beat Saber.
This said, I’m still an open source developer of some Python code and packages separately, so even outside of tech, I’m a tech person.
What excites you about the future of Ubuntu?
The ever-expanding landscape of the future. Ubuntu is a leader in the Linux world, and many users’ “first experience” with Linux. Because of other operating systems’ choices of deprecation of hardware or inclusion of extremely ingrained AI that people are frowning upon, it makes Ubuntu a prime choice for migration of WIndows users and Enterprise users to the Linux platform via Ubuntu.
As well, the future of Ubuntu is bright for the Enterprise! With Canonical’s work and integrations of authd and other components, there is more interop with Ubuntu as an Enterprise-grade desktop environment with existing authentication tooling like MIcrosoft Active Directory for Windows-network houses.
The ever-expanding nature of Ubuntu’s use cases and integrations is also a wonderful thing! The future means that Ubuntu will be able to expand into more and more environments and use cases that hadn’t previously been considered. And with the ever-expanding capacity of technologies, that means Ubuntu has even more room to grow!