Debian developers have various responsibilities, and as official project members, they have great influence on the direction the project takes. A Debian developer is generally responsible for at least one package, but according to their available time and desire, they are free to become involved in numerous teams, acquiring, thus, more responsibilities within the project.

Package maintenance is a relatively regimented activity, very documented or even regulated. It must, in effect, comply with all the standards established by the Debian Policy. Fortunately, there are many tools that facilitate the maintainer's work. The developer can, thus, focus on the specifics of their package and on more complex tasks, such as squashing bugs.

The Policy, an essential element of the Debian Project, establishes the norms ensuring both the quality of the packages and perfect interoperability of the distribution. Thanks to this Policy, Debian remains consistent despite its gigantic size. This Policy is not fixed in stone, but continuously evolves thanks to proposals formulated on the debian-policy@lists.debian.org mailing list. Amendments that are agreed upon by all interested parties are accepted and applied to the text by a small group of maintainers who have no editorial responsibility (they only include the modifications agreed upon by the Debian developers that are members of the above-mentioned list). You can read current amendment proposals on the bug tracking system:

The Policy provides considerable cover of the technical aspects of packaging. The size of the project also raises organizational problems; these are dealt with by the Debian Constitution, which establishes a structure and means for decision making. In other words, a formal governance system.

This constitution defines a certain number of roles and positions, plus responsibilities and authorities for each. It is particularly worth noting that Debian developers always have ultimate decision making authority by a vote of general resolution, wherein a qualified majority of three quarters (75%) of votes is required for significant alterations to be made (such as those with an impact on the Foundation Documents). However, developers annually elect a “leader” to represent them in meetings, and ensure internal coordination between varying teams. This election is always a period of intense discussions. This leader's role is not formally defined by any document: candidates for this post usually propose their own definition of the position. In practice, the leader's roles include serving as a representative to the media, coordinating between “internal” teams, and providing overall guidance to the project, within which the developers can relate: the views of the DPL are implicitly approved by the majority of project members.

Specifically, the leader has real authority; their vote resolves tie votes; they can make any decision which is not already under the authority of someone else and can delegate part of their responsibilities.

Since its inception, the project has been successively led by Ian Murdock, Bruce Perens, Ian Jackson, Wichert Akkerman, Ben Collins, Bdale Garbee, Martin Michlmayr, Branden Robinson, Anthony Towns, Sam Hocevar, Steve McIntyre, Stefano Zacchiroli, Lucas Nussbaum, Mehdi Dogguy and Chris Lamb.

The constitution also defines a “technical committee”. This committee's essential role is to decide on technical matters when the developers involved have not reached an agreement between themselves. Otherwise, this committee plays an advisory role for any developer who fails to make a decision for which they are responsible. It is important to note that they only get involved when invited to do so by one of the parties in question.

Finally, the constitution defines the position of “project secretary”, who is in charge of the organization of votes related to the various elections and general resolutions.

The “general resolution” procedure is fully detailed in the constitution, from the initial discussion period to the final counting of votes. The most interesting aspect of that process is that when it comes to an actual vote, developers have to rank the different ballot options between them and the winner is selected with a Condorcet method (more specifically, the Schulze method). For further details see:

Even if this constitution establishes a semblance of democracy, the daily reality is quite different: Debian naturally follows the free software rules of the do-ocracy: the one who does things gets to decide how to do them. A lot of time can be wasted debating the respective merits of various ways to approach a problem; the chosen solution will be the first one that is both functional and satisfying… which will come out of the time that a competent person did put into it.

This is the only way to earn one's stripes: do something useful and show that one has worked well. Many Debian “administrative” teams operate by co-optation, preferring volunteers who have already effectively contributed and proved their competence. The public nature of the work of those teams makes it possible for new contributors to observe and start helping without any special privilege. This is why Debian is often described as a “meritocracy”.

This effective operational method guarantees the quality of contributors in the “key” Debian teams. This method is by no means perfect and occasionally there are those who do not accept this way of operating. The selection of developers accepted in the teams may appear a bit arbitrary, or even unfair. Furthermore, not everybody has the same definition of the service expected from these teams. For some, it is unacceptable to have to wait eight days for inclusion of a new Debian package, while others will wait patiently for three weeks without a problem. As such, there are regular complaints from the disgruntled about the “quality of service” from some teams.

One might wonder if it is relevant to mention the users among those who work within the Debian project, but the answer is a definite yes: they play a critical role in the project. Far from being “passive”, some users run development versions of Debian and regularly file bug reports to indicate problems. Others go even further and submit ideas for improvements, by filing a bug report with a severity level of “wishlist”, or even submit corrections to the source code, called “patches” (see sidebar BACK TO BASICS Patch, the way to send a fix).

Additionally, numerous satisfied users of the service offered by Debian like to make a contribution of their own to the project. As not everyone has appropriate levels of expertise in programming, they may choose to assist with the translation and review of documentation. There are language-specific mailing lists to coordinate this work.

$ diff -u file.old file.new >file.patch

$ patch -p0 file.old <file.patch

All of these contribution mechanisms are made more efficient by users' behavior. Far from being a collection of isolated persons, users are a true community within which numerous exchanges take place. We especially note the impressive activity on the user discussion mailing list, debian-user@lists.debian.org (Cap. 7, Solving Problems and Finding Relevant Information discusses this in greater detail).

Not only do users help themselves (and others) on technical issues that directly affect them, but they also discuss the best ways to contribute to the Debian project and help it move forward — discussions that frequently result in suggestions for improvements.

Since Debian does not expend funds on any self-promoting marketing campaigns, its users play an essential role in its diffusion, ensuring its fame via word-of-mouth.

This method functions quite well, since Debian fans are found at all levels of the free software community: from install parties (workshops where seasoned users assist newcomers to install the system) organized by local LUGs or “Linux User Groups”, to association booths at large tech conventions dealing with Linux, etc.

Volunteers make posters, brochures, stickers, and other useful promotional materials for the project, which they make available to everyone, and which Debian provides freely on its website and on its wiki:

Debian has been organized, right from the start, around the concept of source packages, each with its maintainer or group of maintainers. Many work teams have emerged over time, ensuring administration of the infrastructure, management of tasks not specific to any package in particular (quality assurance, Debian Policy, installer, etc.), with the latest series of teams growing up around sub-projects.