Debian Project Adopts a Constitution

December 12th, 1998

The Debian Project adopted a constitution which can be viewed at https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution. The highlights of the constitution include the creation of the Technical Committee, the Project Leader position, the Project Secretary position, Leader Delegate positions and a voting procedure. The constitution was proposed in September 1998, and after a discussion period the vote took place in December 1998. It was virtually unanimously in favor with 86 valid votes.

The discussion about the constitution began in early 1998 and was carried out on the Debian mailing lists. Most of the discussion can be found in the archives of the debian-devel mailing list at https://lists.debian.org/. Details of the vote can be found at https://www.debian.org/vote/1999/vote_0000.

The constitution describes the organisational structure for formal decisionmaking within the Debian Project. As Debian continues to grow, this will be a valuable document to ensure that Debian continues to evolve and grow with the input and contributions from its membership.