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Bdale Garbee interview: Debian stays true to its roots



Bdale Garbee, former Debian Project Leader, now chief technologist at HP
Open Source & Linux Organization, talked about Debian Project [0].

He highlighted the history, his and other developers motivations and
some of the key advantageous characteristics of Debian Project, like its
Constitution, Social Contract, elected Debian Project Leader, Secretary,
Technical Commitee, and Debian Policy for developers.

The Debian Project is a social phenomenon [1].

"Since Debian isn't a company, developers don't have to worry about
being bought or sold, going through a hostile take-over, answering to
shareholders or going bankrupt."

A motivated developer with an aligned profile to the project culture
could become a New Maintainer [2].

Other people beyond coders and developers can help [3], for example,
translating, creating art, giving legal advice, accounting, maintaining
infrastructure, documentation and much more.

"Debian runs on more kinds of computer hardware than any other Linux
distribution, and includes more packaged and tested software than any
other distribution I know of. 

It's used in everything from wrist watches to mainframes, including
desktops, notebooks, handheld devices and mobile phones. 

Without the constraints of a financial enterprise, people are free to
work on the things that really matter to them. 

The Debian Project is a collaborative community that enables tremendous
innovation and endless possibilities, which is why you may hear Debian
referred to as the universal operating system.

Debian continues to thrive after 14 years [4], [5]. 

As I roll the clock forward, I realize that derivatives will come and
go, but -- unless the Debian Project loses its way in the next five to
10 years -- it will still be around, still be an industry enigma. 

There will always be people who don't understand how it works or why we
volunteers do what we do, but Debian will continue to fuel technical
innovation and evolve its social processes. 

People will still have fun working together and making an
extraordinarily significant contribution to computer users around the
world. [6], [7]"


[0]
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;56574354;pp;1;fp;16;fpid;1
[1] http://www.debian.org/intro/about
[2] http://wiki.debian.org/WhyDebianForDevelopers
[3] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianForNonCoderContributors
[4] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianHistory
[5] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/
[6] http://www.debian.org/devel/people
[7] http://io.debian.net/~tar/bugstats/


Regards.
Andre Felipe Machado
http://www.techforce.com.br

PS: my pgp key is now signed by a DD.
http://keyserv.nic-se.se:11371/pks/lookup?op=vindex&search=0xE7647B158B24E9C8

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