The Debian Democracy

Written By
KH
Ken Hess
Apr 20, 2010

[ Thanks to Ken Hess
for this link. ]

“Do you consider yourself to be fairly familiar with
the Debian Linux distribution? I thought I was familiar with it
enough to know its origin and history, how its name was derived and
that Richard Stallman, the Father of the Free Software movement,
uses a Debian derivative (gNewSense) for his own personal computer.
There’s one significant piece of the Debian puzzle that I didn’t
know about: Its Constitution.

“It has a Constitution and well-defined leadership roles. It
also has well thought out rules of engagement, problem resolution
and overall structure. I sincerely applaud the creators and
successors who’ve pushed Debian into the mainstream for the past 17
years. Yes, 17 years–can you believe it?

“When I first heard about Debian, I was working in a small IT
support group for about 400 developers and their support staff. I
ran an early version of Red Hat Linux on a clandestinely obtained
computer in my cubicle. About three dozen of the organization’s
hardcore developers had access to it. They did some of their
development with it and requested, through their management, that I
construct and deploy some real server hardware for them using
Linux. Red Hat was OK with them but one java developer preferred
something called Debian.”

Complete
Story

KH

Ken Hess

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.