More collaboration among Debian-based distributions: the Derivatives Front Desk

June 29th, 2010

The Debian Project has been promoting software freedom and delivering Free Software to users via its releases since 1993, when it was one of the first GNU/Linux distributions ever. It has spawned several distributions which are nowadays based on the work done in Debian, as allowed and encouraged by Free Software customs. Such distributions are colloquially referred to as derivatives; according to DistroWatch, Debian currently enjoys more than 120 derivatives, including some of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions currently available.

The Debian Project encourages other distributions to base themselves on the volunteer work of Debian Developers and believes that it is through inter-distribution collaborative activities such as bug forwarding, joint maintenance teams, patch forwarding, etc. that Free Software is best served.

To that end, the Debian Project is happy to announce the opening of its Derivatives Front Desk, a forum where contributors to Debian-based distributions can meet and discuss the best ways to push their changes back to Debian or otherwise ask for help on how to interact with Debian development.

Developers of Debian-based distributions are hereby invited to join the debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org mailing list as the main discussion forum for derivatives. Additionally, the Debian Project encourages contributors of Debian-based distributions to mail inquiries about how to contribute back their changes to derivatives@debian.org.

About Debian

The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly free, community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of the largest and most influential open source projects. Over three thousand volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software. Translated into over 30 languages, and supporting a huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal operating system.

Contact Information

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