Debian welcomes diversity

June 6th, 2012

The Debian Project is pleased to announce the availability of its diversity statement, approved by a large majority of the project members.

The technical side of the Debian Project is already committed to diversity: we don't accept discrimination against persons, groups or fields of endeavor in our software (Debian Free Software Guidelines, points 5 and 6). Now, the community part of the Debian Project explicitly welcomes and encourages participation by everyone.

The constructive and fruitful discussion that led to the current version of this statement was really encouraging, said Francesca Ciceri, who proposed the initial draft and took a lot of other opinions into account. I'd like to thank all the people who participated in the drafting process proposing changes and fixes, explaining different points of view and approving this initiative, Francesca added.

This statement marks a new stage in the process of welcoming contributors to our project, said Stefano Zacchiroli, Debian Project Leader. Community diversity goes hand in hand with community richness.

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. Thousands of volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software. Available in 70 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 https://www.debian.org/ or send mail to <press@debian.org>.