ITWire

Debian is the only free software project which holds an election to select its leader each year; the project produces what is arguably the best GNU/Linux distribution and one that caters to the most platforms.

Incumbent leader Stefano Zacchiroli has thrown his hat into the ring for a third time, mainly, he says, to complete the tasks that he outlined in his first run for the job.

The other candidates are Wouter Verhelst and Gergely Nagy.

Verhelst has been a developer since 2011 and says that he wants to run in order to bring about change; in his platform statement he says that Zacchiroli has treated the office of leader merely as an administrative job.

In his platform statement, Verhelst makes reference to the changes that Anthony Towns introduced in 2006-07 when he used some of the funds from the project to pay select developers in order to speed up a release.

This caused quite a bit of controversy in the project ranks and as a result the number of candidates rose to eight in 2007. Verhelst was one of them and he says his vision hasn't changed since then - "I still think we need to make sure Debian is and remains a welcoming place to work on free software."