The Debian Project receives Funding

August 13th, 2005

The Debian project is pleased to announce that it is funded by the LinuxFund with $500 per month for an entire year. The Linux-oriented credit card organisation will be disbursing $6,000 in total. This money will be given to the project as part of the mission of LinuxFund to support Free Software projects.

This funding is greatly appreciated by the project and will be used prudentially to continue building the universal operating system, improve the distribution and foster Free Software. The Debian project's expenses include hardware acquisition and sponsorship of its developers' attendance at numerous technical conferences, including the sixth annual Debian Developers' Conference in Espoo, Finland, last month.

The Debian project maintains over forty machines that are used for developing the distribution, maintaining the project's infrastructure and providing both internal and external services.

Project Leader Branden Robinson observes that "this funding will not only help us to be more flexible and reactive when dealing with the inevitable hardware failures that crop up, but it should also enable us to do a bit more forward planning. Debian runs entirely on donations -- we sell no products or services -- and a steady, predictable flow of revenue should help us feel comfortable with some more long-range resource planning. LinuxFund deserves not just our thanks, but credit for pioneering new funding models for the Free Software community. They've set a great example, and I look forward to seeing others follow it."

"LinuxFund funds projects of interest to the open source community," David Mandel, Executive Director, said. Mandel also praised the Debian project as important project that is dedicated to openness.

About Debian

The Debian project is an organisation of many developers and contributors who volunteer their time and effort, collaborating via the Internet. Their tasks include the maintenance and evolution of Debian GNU/Linux, which is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. Debian's dedication to Free Software, its non-profit nature, and its independence from corporate control, and its open development model make it unique among GNU/Linux distributions.

About LinuxFund

The Linux Fund was founded in 1999 at the peak of the high-tech boom. The basic idea was to market a Linux Fund credit card with a picture of Tux, the Linux Penguin, and to use the proceeds to fund Free Software.

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the Debian web pages at https://www.debian.org/ or send mail to <press@debian.org>.

For information on donating to Debian please see the donation page or contact <treasurer@spi-inc.org>.