lfx and a trip to mumbai i didn't pay for
in june 2026 the linux foundation ran its open source summit in mumbai, june 16-18. i was there. and i didn't pay for the trip. it was covered by a travel fund from lfx, the linux foundation's mentorship and training programme. lfx funded the travel itself, outright.
i went as an open-source contributor. the small things i'd sent upstream, a fix here, a review there, turned into something concrete: a funded seat in a room full of people who build the infrastructure the rest of the world runs on.
what stuck with me wasn't any one talk. it was the confirmation that open source is a relationship, not a repo. you show up, you do the boring work, and the community shows up for you. sometimes with a plane ticket.
for three days in june, mumbai was the payoff. the merged pull requests that came before it are on my open source page.
written by dharun ashokkumar · more reflections