What is your FAS Username and Matrix ID?

• FAS: maxamillion
• Matrix ID: @maxamillion:one.ems.host

What Matrix rooms do you tend to use?

• #fedora:fedoraproject.org
• #fedora ai:fedoraproject.org (AI/ML SIG)
• #fedora bootc:fedoraproject.org
• #epel:fedoraproject.org
• #fedora releng:fedoraproject.org

Why do you want to be a member of FESCo and how do you expect to help steer the direction of Fedora?

I am a long time Fedora user and contributor, with my first contribution dating back to 2008. Having previously served as a member of FESCo from 2015 to 2018, I understand the gravity and operational realities of this committee. My foundational engineering roots in the project include serving in SysAdmin Main within the Fedora Infrastructure Team and working as a member of the Fedora Release Engineering Team, where I contributed to our core build tooling, container infrastructure, and Project Atomic. Additionally, I spent roughly a decade upstream as a member of the Ansible Core Engineering Team, driving various Fedora focused integration efforts.

In recent years, my engineering focus has centered squarely on the AI infrastructure space. I currently serve as the Technical Advisory Council (TAC) Chair for the Linux Foundation AI & Data, and I am a core maintainer of the OpenShell Agentic Security & Governance project.

What I hope to bring to FESCo this time around is a pragmatic, deeply experienced perspective on how we can responsibly bring AI technologies into both the inner workings of Fedora as a project, and into the deliverable artifacts we release to our users. My goal is to ensure this transition happens safely, securely, and in absolute alignment with the open source way.

How do you currently contribute to Fedora? How does that contribution benefit the community?

I have recently re-engaged my hands on contributions, focusing primarily on AI related projects and working to scale my contribution footprint back to my historic levels. Even with a multi year hiatus, my historical contributions still ranks me in the top 50 of all contributors in the Fedora Badge System. Over my career, I have contributed to more than 200 open source projects, many of which remain packaged and shipped in Fedora today. My current work aims to ensure Fedora stays ahead of the curve as the landscape shifts toward AI native software stacks.

How do you handle disagreements when working as part of a team?

I always aim to find consensus through collaborative discussion, transparency, and healthy, respectful debate. I believe a steering committee's job is to weigh technical merits and community impact objectively. However, if a consensus cannot be reached and a majority vote is taken, I fully practice the principle of "disagree and commit." Even if a decision goes against my personal vote, I will actively support and work to successfully execute the majority decision to keep the project moving forward smoothly.

Where do you think the Fedora Project should position itself concerning the use of 'AI' in software development?

Fedora needs a pragmatic open source strategy to address AI’s disruptive impact on both the software development ecosystem and open source itself. We must establish clear, principles based guardrails around the ethical use, consumption, and application of AI within our project's development pipelines, while continuously solidifying Fedora's core principles of The Four Foundations, in a rapidly changing world. We should position Fedora not as a passive consumer of industry hype, but as the secure, foundational infrastructure that makes open source AI development possible.

When it comes to AI in software development, my position centers on two fronts:

• Infrastructure & Tooling: Fedora must excel at providing the open source building blocks, runtimes, and container environments required to build, test, and serve models locally and securely. We need to ensure our developer tooling adapts to modern workflows while fiercely protecting user privacy and data sovereignty.
• Security, Sandboxing, & Provenance: As AI assisted code generation and autonomous agentic tools inevitably find their way into development pipelines, FESCo must proactively advocate for strict isolation, predictable build environments, and robust supply chain security. We must ensure that automated code contributions or AI developer aids do not introduce unvetted security vulnerabilities, malicious packages, or license compliance risks into the Fedora ecosystem.

What else should community members know about you or your positions?

I have been an open source contributor for more than 25 years. Professionally, I am a Distinguished Engineer at Red Hat. In my open source community efforts, I serve as the TAC Chair of the LF AI & Data and am an active upstream core maintainer of OpenShell. I have previously had the distinct honor of serving the Fedora community on FESCo, and I would be incredibly grateful for the opportunity to bring my combined history in Fedora and my current expertise in AI systems back to the committee to help steer our next chapter.