Debian developers have various responsibilities, and as official project members, they have great influence on the direction the project takes. A Debian developer is traditionally generally responsible for at least one package, but according to their available time and desire, they are free to become involved in numerous teams and projects, thus acquiring 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 coverage 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. The Debian Project leader's (DPL) 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.

Как правило, у лидера имеется реальная власть; его голос разрешает ситуации с равным числом голосов; он может принимать любое решение, которое пока ещё не относится к полномочиям кого-либо ещё, а также может делегировать часть своей ответственности.

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, Neill McGovern, Mehdi Dogguy, Chris Lamb, Sam Hartman, Jonathan Carter, and Andreas Tille.

Также Конституция определяет «технический комитет». Основная роль комитета заключается в разрешении технических вопросов в том случае, когда участвующие в обсуждении разработчики не могут достичь согласия. Кроме того, этот комитет играет совещательную роль для любого разработчика, не способного самостоятельно принять решение по какому-то вопросу, за который он отвечает. Важно отметить, что комитет включается в работу только в том случае, когда его к этому приглашает одна из сторон дискуссии.

Наконец, Конституция определяет должность «секретаря проекта», который несёт ответственность за голосование в ходе различных выборов и общих решений.

The “general resolution” (GR) 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 puts into it.

Звёздочки можно заработать только одним способом: нужно сделать что-то полезное и показать, что оно хорошо работает. Многие «административные» команды Debian действуют методом кооптации, предпочитая добровольцев, которые уже внесли оптимальный вклад и доказали свою компетентность. Публичность работы таких команд позволяет новым участникам наблюдать за работой и начинать оказывать помощь без каких-либо специальных привилегий. Вот почему Debian часто описывается как «меритократия».

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 Раздел 1.3.2.3, «Sending fixes»).

$ diff -u старый.файл новый.файл >файл.заплаты

$ patch -p0 старый.файл <файл.заплаты

From the start, Debian has been organized 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 and blends.