Open Mainframe Summit 2022

The purpose of the Linux Distributions Working Group is to oversee the health and maintenance of the s390x port of various Linux distributions to ensure that it remains a supported architecture for them all. To this end, the group collaborates on shared challenges and successes, work together to nurture new contributors, and make sure they have the infrastructure they need. In this talk, we will demonstrate how we grew this working group to include over a half dozen Linux distributions since its inception in 2021 and the immediate benefits the group has seen through discussions and patches shared across the distributions. We also feel strongly about demonstrating that collaboration between similar open source projects is sometimes better than pure competition, a lesson we hope is valuable to the rest of our community.