<div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Francesca Ciceri</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:madamezou@debian.org">madamezou@debian.org</a>></span><br>Date: Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 3:43 PM<br>
Subject: Debian Community celebrates its 19th birthday<br>To: <a href="mailto:debian-news@lists.debian.org">debian-news@lists.debian.org</a><br><br><br>------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
The Debian Project <a href="http://www.debian.org/" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/</a><br>
Debian Community celebrates its 19th birthday <a href="mailto:press@lists.debian.org">press@lists.debian.org</a><br>
August 16th, 2012 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120816" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120816</a><br>
------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>
<br>
The Debian community is pleased to celebrate its 19th birthday since<br>
Ian Murdock's original founding announcement [1]. Quoting from the<br>
official project history [2]: "The Debian Project was officially<br>
founded by Ian Murdock on August 16th, 1993. At that time, the whole<br>
concept of a 'distribution' of Linux was new. Ian intended Debian to be<br>
a distribution which would be made openly, in the spirit of Linux and<br>
GNU."<br>
<br>
1 : <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.development/msg/a32d4e2ef3bcdcc6" target="_blank">http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.development/msg/a32d4e2ef3bcdcc6</a><br>
2 : <a href="http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-intro.en.html" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-intro.en.html</a><br>
<br>
A lot has happened to the project and its community in the past<br>
nineteen years. There have been eleven releases - most recently Debian<br>
6.0 "Squeeze" [3] in February 2011 - and a huge amount of free software<br>
packaged. The current "unstable" branch consists of more than 37,000<br>
binary packages for the amd64 architecture alone - over 46 GB of<br>
Free/Libre Software! Since last year's birthday new steps to<br>
portability have been made; 11 official ports [4] are now available,<br>
amongst which Debian/kFreeBSD deserves a special mention for<br>
successfully integrating a non-Linux kernel within the project.<br>
<br>
3 : <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110205a" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110205a</a><br>
4 : <a href="http://www.debian.org/ports/" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/ports/</a><br>
<br>
Debian 7.0, codenamed Wheezy, was frozen in July 2012, following a<br>
time-based freeze policy, and currently the main activity throughout<br>
the project is squashing the remaining RC bugs. Again, Debian will<br>
strive to maintain its goals of technical excellence, accountability,<br>
and above all, freedom.<br>
<br>
This has been made possible by the efforts of the strong community<br>
developed around Debian. Besides more than 1,000 Debian Developers and<br>
Maintainers from all over the globe, there are in excess of 12,000<br>
registered accounts for the Alioth collaboration platform [5], and that<br>
doesn't even include all those people contributing with<br>
translations [6] or bug reports [7] (and sometimes patches for them)<br>
and all those users helping others via our mailing lists [8],<br>
forums [9] and IRC channels [10].<br>
<br>
5 : <a href="http://alioth.debian.org/" target="_blank">http://alioth.debian.org/</a><br>
6 : <a href="http://i18n.debian.org/" target="_blank">http://i18n.debian.org/</a><br>
7 : <a href="http://www.debian.org/Bugs/" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/Bugs/</a><br>
8 : <a href="http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/</a><br>
9 : <a href="http://forums.debian.net/" target="_blank">http://forums.debian.net/</a><br>
10 : <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/IRC/" target="_blank">http://wiki.debian.org/IRC/</a><br>
<br>
As a project, we would also like to take this opportunity to thank all<br>
our users and contributors, and of course our upstream developers. All<br>
of them are helping to make Debian a great experience and a great<br>
project!<br>
<br>
The Debian Project continues to welcome contributions [11] in all<br>
forms, from everyone, encouraging people to download, use, modify and<br>
distribute its source code hoping that it will prove useful.<br>
<br>
11 : <a href="http://www.debian.org/intro/help" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/intro/help</a><br>
<br>
<br>
Contact Information<br>
-------------------<br>
<br>
For further information, please visit the Debian web pages at<br>
<a href="http://www.debian.org/" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/</a> [12] or send mail to <<a href="mailto:press@debian.org">press@debian.org</a>>.<br>
<br>
12 : <a href="http://www.debian.org/" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
</div><br>