Content Warning: Cancer, hospice care, death.

August 1st 2024 edit: On Tuesday, July 30th, Mel Chua passed away in the company of close family and friends. We are heartbroken by this news. You can find more information on their CaringBridge page or LWN coverage by Joe Brockmeier. Mel, we miss you. <3

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The Fedora Council recently received the news that Mel Chua, a Fedora contributor in the early and formative days of the Project, was placed in hospice care after a long battle against cancer. On behalf of the Fedora community, we extend our condolences and love for Mel and their loved ones. In May, we asked the community to share stories and memories of Mel at the F40 Release Party opening remarks. To honor their memory for the next generation of Fedora contributors, we compiled the stories and a reflection on Mel’s impact on Fedora, its trajectory as a Free Software community, and most importantly, their impact on the people of our community.

About Mel Chua

For many years, Dr. Mel Chua is quite literally one of the faces of “Friends” in the Fedora Project. In the Fedora Project documentation, on the page that describes the entire Fedora Project, there is a photo under the Friends Foundation section. These four faces are the literal stock photo of what we mean when we talk about the Friends Foundation in Fedora.

For a while, I thought it was time to update the photo to something more recent. But the photo was always a really good picture of a Fedora moment. And why fix what is not broken? But today, this photo brings us a beautiful memory of an early “community biologist” of the Fedora Project, Dr. Mel Chua, who traveled through Wiki pages, spanned out over the IRC channels, triaged legions of Trac git repositories, and so much more.

In May, Mel entered hospice care about a long battle with cancer. There is a crowdfunding campaign for their medical expenses as well as the back-story to their situation. The news is difficult to process. Mel has always been a Fedoran. The Four Foundations feels fitting for someone who has advocated for open and accessible work, blazed a path forward early in Fedora and open source history, and most importantly, leaves behind a legacy of compassion, kindness, and inclusion with the things they touched.

Community stories about Mel Chua

These stories were shared by members of the Fedora community in response to the news in May. These stories are published with the consent of the person who shared the story. We hope these stories help to tell the story of their life and their impact in our community.

Stephen Smoogen

“One my most favorite FUDcon memories was my first one where I tried to run a last minute D&D game with too little preparation and was really worried it was going to fall apart. Mel had never played D&D but they had a great time going through all the prep I hadn’t done.. getting characters built, getting into character, playing around with the other players, etc. It made me feel part of Fedora, and has been one of my goto memories when I think everything is going to fall apart. Thank you Mel.”

Mike Nolan

“I first met Mel as an undergrad student at RIT. Meeting Mel was just an initial several hour conversation over a cup of coffee on the campus Starbucks that somehow, nearly a decade later ended up in me pursuing a PhD program on my own. Inspiration comes from the strangest of places but finding someone who was infinitely curious and embodied the spirit of what many hope academia to be inspired me in a way that stuck with me for what I think will be the rest of my life. The inspiration you leave us exceeds your years by magnitudes.”

Julie Pichon

“Many years ago, Mel Chua gave me thoughtful advice and connected me to other members of the Sugar Labs community, back when I was still very new to contributing to open source. These were just a few conversations but they meant a lot to me, and modelled the kind of helpful and encouraging behaviour I continue to try my best to emulate in the communities I’m a part of. I was already looking up to Mel a lot before that, but that only cemented it further.”

Stephen Jacobs

“I first met Mel Chua in 2009 while they were working for Fedora/Red Hat. I was teaching my first Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software class at RIT, and they quickly became a staunch supporter of my work. They became a key team member, teaching me about FOSS’s long and winding road. 

Just as quickly they became a part of my extended family because my wife, Patti Durr, who is partially Deaf herself, was a faculty member at RIT’s National Technical Institute of the Deaf (NTID,) in the Department of Deaf Cultural Studies. They adopted Patti as a role model, as they’d had little exposure to Deaf faculty before meeting her.

Through the years, we continued as professional colleagues and close friends. No matter where they were in the world and in their career, they were a regular guest lecturer in my classes. I encouraged them to take a fellowship at NTID. We worked with other NTID colleagues on the first grant proposal for World Around You, an Open-Content digital library of storybooks in international sign languages built on an Open-Source platform. 

We worked together on our proposal (with them as the lead) for the Critical Digital Infrastructure program, doing a qualitative study of PyPI for that program. The additional work we had to do to acquire funding support for ASL interpreters and transcription services for that effort directly led to the recent work we did together on Open@RIT’s position paper on Accessibility Issues in Federal Grant Funding over the last six months. 

In the last few years, I’ve been able to visit them in California where they were getting treatment, most recently this past March. Despite the fact that they’d been through four surgeries in five weeks, their intellect, passion, and sense of humor showed through. 

When I received the recent news of their transition to home hospice, I was (and am) heartbroken, though not surprised. I can’t find the words to express how much of a positive impact Mel has had on my work, our shared work, my family, the experiences of my students, and the world of FOSS writ large. Nor can I find the words to convey just how much I will miss them.”

Remy DeCausemaker (decause)

“Anyone can teach. Everyone can learn. Even professors.

POSSE (The Professor’s Open Source Summer Experience) was a 3 day bootcamp for the brightest minds in computer science on our campus, and from campuses near and far, to learn?

I was there just as a volunteer, just to help, just to listen, just to learn too. In those few short days, I learned bedrock concepts that would become the foundation of my pedagogical approach to teaching and learning, but there was one particular pearl of wisdom that shone above all. You credited this to Chris Tyler from Seneca College, who introduced it at the first POSSE as something he and Dave Humphries explicitly teach their students. Together, it was a lesson they taught us:

“Be Productively Lost.”

It is jarring, terrifying even, especially as the more of an expert you become, to not understand. To feel lost, to feel ignorant, to feel like a beginner. The further you progress from the beginning of your journey, the more daunting it feels to start over.

The more you learn to not only accept but embrace this discomfort, the better you become at traveling the paths of the Unknown. Fear of being Lost keeps people from seeking and from finding. You will forgo entire universes of possibility if you stick only to what you know, and are unwilling to take the risk.

You taught us not only about how learning to be comfortable in strange spaces and strange lands makes you a more capable traveler–less afraid of the roads less traveled–but you also taught us how to leave breadcrumb trails to find your way back.

You taught me about the true meaning of Pioneering. Not merely going deeper into the unknown for the sake of going first, or going furthest, but so that you could bring as many people with you after, or even along the way.

Documentation, storytelling, questions, answers, sharing, doing, working, living, Openly.

This is the way.

This is the way that you feel not so lost. By sensemaking and orienteering and leaving breadcrumbs for yourself and for others. By teaching, by sharing, you best understand your journey.

And what’s more illuminating than all of that–counter to the tired and supremely destructive tropes hackers continue repeating to ourselves about “basement dwelling lone-wolf geniuses” who only by gift of chance or birth are singularly capable of great feats of wizardry in the magic of coding–you showed us that no one is nor needs be alone on that journey.

It is amongst The Community that you experience not only the support to navigate the Unknown, but the Triumph of Discovery–of finding and being found.

I have repeated to every new traveler beginning their own Hacker’s journey, every single one of them, these 3 seemingly simple words. Be Productively Lost. They changed my life, and I know they have changed the lives of hundreds of others.

And that was before watching you live them.

Becoming an exemplar of Pioneering. Starting over. Facing the unknown. Learning entirely new languages. Moving to new entirely places. Surmounting the highest levels of academia. Facing the unimaginable challenges of an uncooperative body, housing one the most collaborative minds I have ever known. It is the definition of Tragedy. Losing so soon such a bright mind, to such senseless, dark, circumstances.

But when it is darkest, light shines brightest.

I would offer 3 different quotes from 3 different times that each emanate from that same intellectual and spiritual wisdom that you shared with us, within which I find peace and purpose, and I hope you will too.

“Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds.”

“Those who light their candle at mine, receive light, without darkening me.”

“Thousands of candles can be lit by a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.”

Thank you for being unafraid to be lost, thank you for being brave enough to go into the dark, and thank you, eternally, for not just shining bright, but for teaching us all how to light the way for each other <3″