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Why do you work on Debian?

That's a question I've been asked (by myself and others) lots of times over the years I've been involved. Especially over the last few months while I've been wandering around Europe on the BSP and party trail, I've also been asking other people to explain their motivations too. For myself, I must admit that I'm selfish:

• I want to have a good free operating system for me to use, and Debian certainly fits that need.
• I'm a bit of a control freak - to make sure that the OS matches what I need, I want to be able to contribute and help direct how things are done. Again, Debian fits that for me.
• I want to be able to trust the OS and the people working on it. Debian certainly meets that - I've met large numbers of DDs now, and almost without fail they're competent, friendly people who are good to work with and (probably just as importantly to me) good to meet up with and socialise with.
• I like stability too. There's a very large selection of software available for me to use, yet I can just install stable on my servers without having to worry personally about the security of all the random packages I may install. I can also rely on new stable releases coming along from time to time, with good support for upgrades and plenty of support for older releases so I can safely upgrade without surprises.

Obviously, there's also the fun of hacking on a variety of Free software programs. But that's something I could do on my own, or within a multitude of projects out there. But in very few of those would I be able to materially affect how I use my own computers every day.

So, my question for the other Debian people: what gets you working on Debian?

22:25 :: # :: /debian/misc :: 4 comments