People behind Debian: Bdale Garbee, chair of the technical committee

Written By
Web Webster
Web Webster
Mar 29, 2011

[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]

“I made my first personal contribution of source code to what we
now call Free Software in 1979. I started with HP in 1986 and for
nearly a decade have served the company as Chief Technologist for
Open Source & Linux. I am president of Software in the Public
Interest, which is the “umbrella organization” providing legal and
financial existence for Debian in the USA. I also represent users,
developers, and Debian interests on a number of boards including at
the Linux Foundation and the Freedombox Foundation.

“I’m happily married with two children. Many people in Debian
have met some or all of my family. They all joined me for Debconf
in Edinburgh, and my daughter Elizabeth also attended in Caceres
and New York.

“I joined Debian in 1994. I’ve been responsible for a number of
packages essential to our base system continuously since that time.
But I’ve also contributed to the project in many other ways over
the years. I ran the first server that was fully dedicated to
Debian. Ideas of mine influenced the development of project
infrastructure, from the early design of our mirror network to
structuring the archive around a ‘package pool’. I started or made
significant early contributions to 5 ports of Debian to non-i386
architectures. I served as Debian Project Leader (DPL) in
2002-2003, was acting Secretary for a while, and have served on the
Technical Committee for a number of years.”


Complete Story

Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

Linux Today Logo

LinuxToday is a trusted, contributor-driven news resource supporting all types of Linux users. Our thriving international community engages with us through social media and frequent content contributions aimed at solving problems ranging from personal computing to enterprise-level IT operations. LinuxToday serves as a home for a community that struggles to find comparable information elsewhere on the web.

Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2026 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.