Debian Project Leader: Debian needs up to three times as many developers

Financially, Debian is in good shape, says Debian Project Leader Jonathan Carter. However, according to Carter, a doubling or tripling of the number of volunteer developers is needed for further growth and package maintenance.

Carter calls Debian a bottomless pit of problems in his Bits from the DPL presentation at DebConf20, but he adds that he means this in a positive sense. Because of the size of the project, just about every computer science problem affects Debian, he says. He says this attracts problem solvers, but at the same time he warns that volunteers can get too involved in the project and not spend enough time on other things.

According to current statistics, there are 975 uploading and 36 non-uploading developers, and 223 maintainers involved in development. In order to relieve the current volunteers, more developers are needed, also in view of the set goals to grow. Carter has calculated that it takes two to three times as many developers. Many of the current developers would take too much on their shoulders, feeling that no one else would do it.

The DPL points out that the project will have to maintain 100,000 packages in the archive, something that he thinks should be discussed. In 2009 there were only 22,000 packages in the Lenny release at the time, which was already seen as a lot. The DPL also mentions that there is too little diversity in the project and that large parts of the world are underrepresented.

In total, the Debian project has almost $ 900,000 to spend, so financially the project is looking good. According to Carter, it is clear that Debianites do not like to spend money, but they have to cut corners to grow Debian.

DebConf is Debian’s annual conference. This year the event was held online. An overview of all presentations can be found on the DebConf20 site. Debian is one of the oldest Linux distributions. The community project started in 1993.