The Debian GNU/Linux project has begun voting for a leader to head the project for 2024-25. Voting began on 6 April and is expected to wind up on 19 April.
Two developers — Andreas Tille and Sruthi Chandran — have put up their hands to contest the post. The departing leader, South African Jonathan Carter, has led the project for the last four years.
This is the third bid by Chandran, a developer from India, to lead the project; she ran in 2020 and again in 2021, but lost on both occasions to Carter.
She wrote that her main focus, if elected, would be on diversity. "Inspite of spending a good amount of money on diversity, we seem to not get the expected outcome. My first task as DPL would be to revisit the existing spending pattern to analyse why and where we are going wrong," she wrote.
{loadposition sam08}A second focus for Chandran is outreach. "I have been working with the Debian-outreach team for more than three years now," she explained. "I feel outreach is one important activity which often does not get its due importance. Our outreach team end up being just co-ordinators for GSoC and Outreachy. I have a couple of ideas planned out for outreach."
Other plans she has include a simpler way of accounting for the project's assets, exploring the possibility of registering the project, minimising the incidence of flame wars and miscommunication and the inclusion of new ideas which could improve the project.
In his platform statement, Tille, who hails from Germany, said it had taken him more than 25 years to aspire to the leadership of the project. Debian is the only free software project to have elections where the leader is voted in by the developers.
Tille, unusually, does not use a smartphone. Of this, he wrote: "For me, among other things, freedom means not being available at all times. That's why I decided against owning a smartphone, for instance.
"Therefore, it is important for you to know that as your potential DPL, there may be times when I am offline and cannot be reached. I value freedom deeply, and I am grateful for the privilege of making choices that are sound with my values.
Among his objectives he listed ensuring Debian stayed relevant in a changing operating-source ecosystem, improving the work of the infrastructure and packaging teams, outreach and fostering a friendly environment within the project and embracing feedback for growth and success.
Debian produces what is arguably the best community Linux distribution since its founding in 1993 and supports the most archiitectures.