A Brief History of Debian

# A Brief History of Debian

version: 14.1 (2026-08-12)

Copyright © 1999-2020 Debian Documentation Team `<debian-doc@lists.debian.org>`

Copyright © 2023 Debian Publicity Team `<debian-publicity@lists.debian.org>`

### Debian Publicity Team

`<debian-publicity@lists.debian.org>`

This document may be freely redistributed or modified in any form provided your changes are clearly documented.

This document may be redistributed for fee or free, and may be modified (including translation from one type of media or file format to another or from one spoken language to another) provided that all changes from the original are clearly marked as such.

Significant contributions were made to this document by

- Javier Fernández-Sanguino `<jfs@debian.org>`

- Bdale Garbee `<bdale@debian.org>`

- Hartmut Koptein `<koptein@debian.org>`

- Nils Lohner `<lohner@debian.org>`

- Will Lowe `<lowe@debian.org>`

- Bill Mitchell `<Bill.Mitchell@pobox.com>`

- Ian Murdock

- Martin Schulze `<joey@debian.org>`

- Craig Small `<csmall@debian.org>`

Abstract

This document describes the history and goals of the Debian project.

|  | Chapter 1. Introduction -- What is the Debian Project?