List of Debian project leaders

This is a chronological list of Debian project leaders. Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License,[1] developed by a group of individuals known as the Debian project. The Project Leader is a role defined in the Debian Constitution, and is elected once per year by the Debian developers.

Leaders

Ian Murdock

Main article: Ian Murdock
Ian Murdock

Ian Murdock was an American software engineer. He founded the Debian project in August 1993. He later started Progeny Linux Systems, a commercial Linux company.

Bruce Perens

Main article: Bruce Perens

Ian Jackson

Main article: Ian Jackson

Wichert Akkerman

Wichert Akkerman is a Dutch computer programmer who contributed to Debian, dpkg, Plone and strace. He was elected for two terms as the Debian Project Leader and served from January 1999 to March 2001, and was succeeded by Ben Collins. He has also served as the Secretary to Software in the Public Interest.

Ben Collins

Ben Collins is an American programmer, Linux developer and system administrator. From April 2001 to April 2002[2][3][4] Collins acted as the Debian Project Leader. During his tenure he specialised on the UltraSPARC port and advocated for proactive security and testing policies.[5][6] Collins had stood for Debian Project Leader two times prior to being elected. When he took up the role he commented that when he joined the project Ian Jackson, who was at the end of his term as Debian Project Leader, was "very inactive". Jackson was followed by Wichert Akkerman for two terms, and according to Collins "did an excellent job keeping Debian going". Once elected Collins declared his intent to get Debian moving and during his tenure he sought to provide strategic leadership to build the Debian movement.[5][6] Collins was succeeded as Debian Project Leader by Bdale Garbee.

Bdale Garbee

Main article: Bdale Garbee

Martin Michlmayr

Main article: Martin Michlmayr

Branden Robinson

G. Branden Robinson is known for his contributions to the packaging of the X Window System, and his tenure as the Debian Project Leader from April 2005 to April 2006.[7][8] He has contributed to Debian since 1998. His most visible contribution is his long-time maintenance of the X Window System packages, which he took over from Mark W. Eichin by uploading the 3.3.2 release of the XFree86 packages on 1998-03-25. Robinson was elected by his fellow developers in 2005, after running for the position five times between 2001 and 2005. He succeeded Martin Michlmayr, who had been elected project leader in 2003 and 2004. During Branden Robinson's term as a leader, the project achieved some incremental successes, such as a stable point release of stable by new release managers for that distribution, having AMD64 added to testing, and the inclusion of modular X in unstable.

Anthony Towns

Anthony Towns (born 21 June 1978) is a computer programmer who was a long-time Debian release manager, ftpmaster team member and later the Debian Project Leader (from 17 April 2006 until 17 April 2007). He ran for the position of DPL in 2005, but was defeated by Branden Robinson by a margin of 23 effective votes.[9] He ran again in 2006, and was elected as the new Debian Project Leader on 9 April 2006, beginning his term on 19 April 2006.[10] Towns was elected by the second-narrowest ever margin[11] and was the first DPL ever to face a recall vote while in office.[12] Towns was also the first DPL ever whose support by Debian Developers was reaffirmed through a General Resolution.[13] Since a great deal of Debian work takes place in Europe, Towns created the post of "Debian Second in Charge" (2IC) to lead discussion, support developers, and represent the project in locations which could more easily be reached by the runner-up candidate, Steve McIntyre, than himself.[11]

In September 2006, the Dunc-tank project started a fund-raising programme to help Debian release its next distribution, Etch, on the scheduled date of 4 December 2006.[14] Towns's involvement with Dunc-Tank came under severe criticism, including hitherto-unseen calls to end his Debian project leadership to make clear that the Dunc-Tank project was not officially supported by Debian project members. Some developers slowed down their unpaid work on Debian in response to the programme. Debian "Etch" was not released in December 2006 as hoped; instead its release happened in April 2007. Nonetheless, Towns views the outcome of the Dunc Tank project as positive,[15] highlighting that Dunc-Tank opposition helped to improve quality of Debian Etch.

Sam Hocevar

Main article: Sam Hocevar

Steve McIntyre

Steve McIntyre is a software engineer and a long-time Debian developer, known for his contributions in the field of creating Debian CD/DVD images; he is the debian-cd team leader and is responsible for generating the official images. McIntyre ran for the post of Debian Project Leader in 2006 and 2007 but was defeated. During the 2006 term, he acted as "Second in charge" of the Debian Project.[11] In 2008 he was elected the Debian Project Leader,[16] and was re-elected in 2009.[17] He chose not to run in the 2010 election; that election was won by Stefano Zacchiroli.[18]

Stefano Zacchiroli

Main article: Stefano Zacchiroli

Lucas Nussbaum

Lucas Nussbaum is a French computer science engineer and assistant professor at University of Lorraine, researcher at LORIA laboratory. Nussbaum was elected leader of the Debian project in April 2013.[19] He has been a Debian Developer since 2007.[20] Since then, he has been active, amongst other things, as a Debian Ruby packager, with the Universal Debian Database or the full rebuilds of the Debian Archive.[21] During the 2012 election, outgoing leader Stefano Zacchiroli announced that this would be the last term for which he would run; thus, in the 2013 election, the election did not include the incumbent. Nussbaum ran for the first time, opposite Gergely Nagy and Moray Allan. His term started on April 17, 2013.[19] He was re-elected on April 14, 2014.[22]

Neil McGovern

Neil McGovern, an English engineering manager at Collabora, was elected in April 2015,[23] after running for second time in a row.[24]

Mehdi Dogguy

The current DPL is Mehdi Dogguy, a Tunisian-French technical manager at Électricité de France.[25] He was elected in April 2016,[26] running without opponents.

Comparison

Leader First year Total years Age at first term Leadership style
Murdock, Ian 1993 3 a 20 Technical manager[27]
Perens, Bruce 1996 2 b 38 Autocratic leader[27]
Jackson, Ian 1998 1 c
Akkerman, Wichert 1999 2
Collins, Ben 2001 1
Garbee, Bdale 2002 1
Michlmayr, Martin 2003 2
Robinson, Branden 2005 1
Towns, Anthony 2006 1
Hocevar, Sam 2007 1
McIntyre, Steve 2008 2
Zacchiroli, Stefano 2010 3
Nussbaum, Lucas 2013 2
McGovern, Neil 2015 1
Dogguy, Mehdi 2016 current

References

  1. ↑ "What Does Free Mean? or What do you mean by Free Software?". official Debian site. The Debian Project. Retrieved 2009-12-01.
  2. ↑ Zacchiroli, Stefano (2011-03-21). "Since then — 12 Debian Project Leaders (DPL)" (slides). Debian: 17 years of Free Software, "do-ocracy", and democracy. Taipei. p. 7. Retrieved 2012-02-11.
  3. ↑ Bretton, A.J. (2001-04-02). "Debian Gets New Chef". Client Server News (G2 Computer Intelligence). Archived from the original on 2009. Retrieved 2012-02-11.
  4. ↑ Debian Documentation Team (2005-08-10). "Leadership" (slides). A Brief History of Debian. 2.5.
  5. 1 2 "Interview with Ben Collins, the new Debian Project Leader". Linux Gazette (66). May 2001.
  6. 1 2 "Ben Collins". Corporate Information. SwissDisk. 2011. Retrieved 2012-02-11.
  7. ↑ "Debian Project Leader Elections 2005". Retrieved 2011-11-27.
  8. ↑ Krafft, Martin F. (2005). The Debian system: concepts and techniques. No Starch Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-1-59327-069-8. Retrieved 16 June 2011.
  9. ↑ "Debian Project Leader Elections 2005". Debian.org. 2005-04-17. Retrieved 2011-12-10.
  10. ↑ "Debian Project Leader Elections 2006". Debian.org. 2006-04-17. Retrieved 2011-12-10.
  11. 1 2 3 Towns, Anthony (2006-04-23). "Bits from the DPL".
  12. ↑ Barbier, Denis. "General Resolution: Recall the project leader". Archived from the original on 5 February 2007. Retrieved 2007-02-23.
  13. ↑ "General Resolution: Re-affirm support to the Debian Project Leader". Debian.org. Retrieved 2011-12-10.
  14. ↑ "Announcement of Dunc-Tank.org". Archived from the original on 2 March 2007. Retrieved 2007-02-23.
  15. ↑ Tay, Liz. "Dunc-Tank: Success or failure?". Computerworld (Australia). Retrieved 2007-02-23.
  16. ↑ "Debian Project Leader Election 2008 Results". Retrieved 2011-11-26.
  17. ↑ "Debian Project Leader Elections 2009". 2009-04-17. Retrieved 2011-11-26.
  18. ↑ "Debian Project Leader Election 2010 Results". Retrieved 2010-04-19.
  19. 1 2 "Results for Debian Project Leader 2013 Election". 2013-04-14. Retrieved 2013-04-14.
  20. ↑ "New Member page for Lucas Nussbaum". 2013-04-14.
  21. ↑ Nussbaum, Lucas (2013-03-18). "DPL Platform for Lucas Nussbaum". Retrieved 2013-04-14.
  22. ↑ "Results for the 2014 Debian Project Leader election".
  23. ↑ "Debian Project Leader Elections 2015".
  24. ↑ McGovern, Neil. "DPL Platform for Neil McGovern".
  25. ↑ Dogguy, Mehdi. "DPL Platform for Mehdi Dogguy".
  26. ↑ "Debian Project Leader Elections 2016".
  27. 1 2 O'Mahony, Siobhán; Ferraro, Fabrizio (2007). "The Emergence of Governance in an Open Source Community" (PDF). University of Alberta School of Business. p. 51. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-05-29. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
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