A new Debian project leader has been elected for 2026
Posted by somerandomxander@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 77 comments
Posted by somerandomxander@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 77 comments
donut4ever21@reddit
You mean the only candidate?
BenTheTechGuy@reddit
The other candidate was "none of the above" which would restart the election and allow new people to nominate themselves.
KrazyKirby99999@reddit
Hopefully this will be done in a way that is wholesome and non-discriminatory against any group.
mattiasso@reddit
I only care about merits, not quotas.
lightmatter501@reddit
From a country the size of India, especially one with a strong footprint in tech, only having two women does seem like it should spark a “what’s going on here?” investigation.
LOLatKetards@reddit
What's going on is obvious, women aren't as interested in things, on average, they're more interested in people. This is especially true in places where they haven't been brainwashed to hate children and men yet, like India.
OratioFidelis@reddit
Comments like this are exactly why diversity initiatives are necessary
Existing-Tough-6517@reddit
Debian isn't Reddit
ekufi@reddit
"Women are more interested about people", could this, or rahher the lack of, be a reason why we still haven't gor our year of the linux desktop. Because, men aren't as interested in people, and that's why some things such as user friendliness suck at linux?
Indolent_Bard@reddit
Engineers just suck at people in general. People with actual souls don't code, unfortunately. They can do ui or ux design, but not code it.
Niarbeht@reddit
Sure, buddy.
negatrom@reddit
Trust me, the barrier to entry to be a maintainer in Debian is only technical knowledge. There is no evil Aryan denying the Indian women entry. What is happening is just that most people are not interested in this thankless job.
needworkyouknow@reddit
See, the problem is that you think people can only get systematically excluded from leadership positions if there's an "evil aryan council" at play.
That is just factually untrue. Actually, establishing diverse organizations requires work because many of the factors that create demographic discrepancies are outside the direct control of any one organization. Debian (or any other FOSS project) is not single-handedly responsible for decades of discrimination against women in tech, or statistical trends of women getting less credit and compensation for their labor. These factors all play into women, especially women of color, being underrepresented in tech organizations. The actual conclusion to draw from this is that all large software development organizations need to be aware of such discrepancies and actively work to change them.
"Trust me, Debian contribution is completely free from any demographic bias" just reeks of pure complacency. Trust you? Who even are you? On what grounds are you claiming that Debian is free of the systematic biases that lead to the (proportional) exclusion of women, and people of color, from tech projects?
Existing-Tough-6517@reddit
Nobody needs to prove such bias doesn't exist or indeed prove any such negative you need to prove it does
do-un-to@reddit
That's the cause of the gender disproportion?
negatrom@reddit
It's a matter of incentives and dirty work. Historically, gender balance is rarely a priority in roles that are physically or mentally taxing but offer zero social prestige or financial reward. Think of infrastructure maintenance, sanitation, or deep-level kernel debugging.
Maintaining a project like Debian is "digital janitorial work." It's thankless and invisible. Most people, regardless of gender, who have a choice will naturally gravitate toward roles that offer visibility, advocacy, or high-level design rather than the figurative coal mining of fixing broken binaries on obscure architectures due to a borked update.
The disproportion isn't necessarily about 'exclusion,' but about who is willing (or feels pressured) to do the unglamorous, behind-the-scenes labor that keeps the world running. When a role becomes about 'status' (like leadership), everyone wants in. When it's about fixing bugs at 3 AM for free, the line is much shorter.
And being sadly honest... You don't see women queuing up for coal mining or sewer cleaning. It pretty much accepted that men are the ones supposed to do the dirty jobs.
theinvertedform@reddit
if this is all true then it just confirms that "merit," utter bullshit in any context, is not a relevant factor and the institution needs an explicit policy to support diversity.
Existing-Tough-6517@reddit
An institution that cannot find the minimum number of people to do the work required to do the pre-requisite work is probably interested in diversity only insofar as it needs to be as welcoming and principled as possible to avoid missing out on helpers who might otherwise be put off and insofar as underrepresented demographics may be untapped pools of knowledge workers.
Eg are we lacking Indian women because they don't feel they are welcome even if no actual discrimination exists there may be benefits to improving communication.
destraht@reddit
More reading comprehension, less ideology.
Indolent_Bard@reddit
They finally clarified that they meant the only people who are even interested in this position started like 20 years ago when there weren't any women in tech.
do-un-to@reddit
So you mean to say, more specifically, something like "What is happening is just that women are less interested in this thankless voluntary job."
negatrom@reddit
More like:
No one is interested in this thankless voluntary job except for 50-year-old men who began doing it over 2 decades ago, because back then there really were practically no women in computing, and can't stop now due to there being no substitutes.
do-un-to@reddit
Ah, I think I finally understand your explanation for the sex disparity: the interested demographic is from an era when women were virtually absent from compute.
I'd been finding it hard to untangle your explanation for the disparity.
moose_kayak@reddit
In my experience with not coding volunteer jobs, the degree to which a thankless volunteer job is thankless is hugely gendered
Existing-Tough-6517@reddit
No no it does not. It's an unpaid second job in a male dominated field in which people are already expected to put in more than full time hours on top of the fact that women are expected to do an unfair portion of the child rearing and household work.
Why aren't more of the minority of women devs doing 55 hours at work 40 hours at home and then doing Debian? The answer is sleep deprivation.
Classic_Mud_51@reddit
Or maybe women just aren’t interested in tech, let alone Linux, especially in India (a much less developed country) India doesn’t have a strong footprint in tech in terms of being leaders of innovation… there’s just a lot of cheap outsourced labor.
mattiasso@reddit
Yes sure, but you assign a graduate to that project, it can’t be all she’s bringing to the table
HippityHoppityBoop@reddit
Yeah that’s why people from the largest population groups are underrepresented right?
Titdirt69420@reddit
Choose the best person for the job. Whomever is most qualified.
One of the qualifiers should not be based on skin color or race. That is discrimination.
negatrom@reddit
those policies feel like a fantastic waste of energy, and a quick way to throw away talent.
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
Debian's contributor base is shrinking. If it keeps shirnking there wont' be more packages or stable packages.
loxiw@reddit
That's literally impossible
Sirusho_Yunyan@reddit
Unlikely.. “DPL elections is an important activity in our project and I plan to bring up the topic of diversity for discussion every election till we have a non-(cis)male DPL.”
anh0516@reddit
inb4 people screaming WOOOOOOOOOOOKE at the top of their lungs
I like how people are focusing on her diversity commitment and skipping over the fact that she is indeed qualified, based on her multiple years of experience and involvement with the Debian project.
crazedizzled@reddit
She might be qualified, but that doesn't mean future positions are. If her goal is to "be diverse", then she's likely going to skip over people who are more qualified but less diverse, for people who are less qualified but more diverse.
I'd prefer we just have the best people for the job. If that ends up being all middle aged white dudes, then that's what it is.
SunlightScribe@reddit
Only women showing up would be an improvement over the current situation, which is no one showing up at all. I find it very hard to take complaints about possibly unfair hiring practices seriously when they are having trouble finding even a single person who wants the job.
They are having trouble filling most positions and this single candidate election was par for the course.
crazedizzled@reddit
Fair enough!
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
that's funny, because the real problem is not enough enough candidates to skip over all.
DuendeInexistente@reddit
Yeah it's a huge self report when people complain about that while operating on the assumption being a woman is the only reason she could be picked.
negatrom@reddit
to not even read the valid worries from some of the users here is just as bad as screaming "woke bad"
SunlightScribe@reddit
Regardless of how it turned out, the actual people who she would be working with voted for her. Actual qualified people voting to continue working with her in a new role is about as good an indicator as you're going to get.
Now it could obviously go side ways, but I'll believe them over random users. They have an actual stake in the outcome and have the most to lose.
negatrom@reddit
I would agree... if she wasn't the only candidate.
From the possible 1039 votes from the current DDs, she only got 289 votes for. 50 voted against, and the rest just didn't vote. That's not approval, that's resignation.
Indolent_Bard@reddit
Does anyone actually care about a crisis of representation? I mean two-thirds absentee sounds like what happened with the 2024 presidential election.
SunlightScribe@reddit
I'm tired of giving non-voters that kind of wiggle room. They had a chance to run or vote and chose neither. It's the same as automatically voting for the winner.
They only have themselves to blame if it goes wrong. The only people who have room to complain are those that bothered to vote against.
negatrom@reddit
it's an unfortunate side effect of a uninterested voting body. It's easy to achieve a majority of valid votes with just a small but dedicated group of voters.
To win the highest post in Debian with only 27% approval is a sign of fragmentation, I think.
SunlightScribe@reddit
Which is exceptionally stupid seeing as how she was the only person willing to even step up. If they cared so much they should've put in the work and run against her during the election.
Imagine complaining about the only candidate willing to run getting elected.
dragon-mom@reddit
That's basically the entire thread, they're just being coy. It's extremely embarrassing but not unexpected from Reddit.
negatrom@reddit
The "stability" we value so much in Debian doesn't come from discussions about India's demographics; it comes from people testing architecture and fixing binaries.
I worry about Debian becoming like the Mozilla Foundation. We all saw that happen: to ensure diversity "in each and every aspect of the project," committees, reviews, and processes are created that make the act of contributing slower and more bureaucratic.
oln@reddit
debian is run democratically by the people working on debian. The Mozilla foundation is run by a board appointed by itself, the situations are very different. The person elected here is also someone that has been an active contributor, not some random manager hire.
If anything, this election shows that debian is looking like it's not heading down the road mozilla is. Maybe mozilla should take some lessons here and ideally be ran more democratically by developers, like debian is rather than by a board that is only accountable to itself.
negatrom@reddit
Your comment tranquilizes me greatly, thank you very much
Indolent_Bard@reddit
That's an interesting use of the word tranquilize. Was that a typo or is this the actual meaning of the word?
SunlightScribe@reddit
Where were those people during this election? The worries about diversity and activists taking over are misplaced in a reality where nobody except a single person cared enough to "sign up" and run as a candidate.
Debian clearly has much bigger problems. They're going to be desperate for new blood in a few years and are going to be taking anyone and everyone, activist or otherwise.
negatrom@reddit
I suppose they were busy with day jobs and package maintenance to care about politics. You know the same passive behavior from the democrats that elected trump in his first mandate.
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
without pushing for more constributors, the project is going to die.
BinkReddit@reddit
Beautifully written and succinct. This should be the top comment.
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
too bad it's wrong
grathontolarsdatarod@reddit
Found a copy pasta
You hit every area that needed it, and hit it head on.
StillCell848@reddit
I use artix btw
mmmboppe@reddit
Pedaling on diversity to build a bureaucratic career was the thing ten, maybe five years ago. Most adequate tech geeks yawned and went back to their hacking. Nowadays the hot potato is the mandatory age verification in Linux. Does she have an explicitly stated stance on this?
needworkyouknow@reddit
Nope. The actual state of affairs ten years ago was said "tech geeks" running harassment campaigns against women and other marginalized people for the perceived slight of bringing up very basic discussion points about discrimination in tech and media. (Yes, GamerGate in particular was focused on board games, but you are fooling yourself if you believe that its impact was contained to that industry alone.)
Here's the thing about politics: It influences software development (and bureaucracy) whether you like it or not. You're trying to pretend that FOSS devleopment is somehow above this, which gives you no credibility whatsoever on the subject.
Witext@reddit
Incredibly disingenuous to call a woman wanting to bring more women into a field she’s interested in ”pedaling” like she’s doing it for no reason other than self gain
MrWeirdoFace@reddit
Did you see white smoke coming out of the window?
Hopeful-Ad-607@reddit
I feel like in a post-trump world these "woke vs non-woke" discussions feel like people have detached themselves from reality. And I mean both of the sides of people in this thread. Surreal seeing people having pre-2016 style arguments about fucking gender equality in open source software . I couldn't give less of shit about any of this. Why is this "polemic"? Why do you people still have strong opinions about a topic that's dead as fuck.
nevertalktomeEver@reddit
Because it's important.
centoequatro@reddit
In my view, I see this as a waste of time, at least in my country. I hardly see any women in computer science or related fields; it's usually 10 or more men for every 1 woman.Furthermore, contributing to open source projects has no clear return and is seen as ungrateful.Before anyone sees me as sexist or labels computers as a man's thing, I'm just portraying my reality; I don't even know exactly why this happens.
Other_Fly_4408@reddit
I would vote for anyone who legally mandates "in my country" people to specify which country they are talking about.
centoequatro@reddit
Any developing country should work
nevertalktomeEver@reddit
*proceeds to still not clarify what country and assuming that experience still applies to developing countries*
centoequatro@reddit
You're looking for trouble lol, I live in a developing country, I'm not assuming this applies to developing countries.
nevertalktomeEver@reddit
And you would know, since you're very familiar of all of these developing countries and observed the same behaviors.
centoequatro@reddit
Are you going to say that what I said is a lie?
nevertalktomeEver@reddit
I'm just saying it's a rather broad statement to make based only on anecdotal evidence rather than something substantial.
centoequatro@reddit
That's why I avoid commenting online; I'm very bad at communicating.I have difficulty clearly expressing a more controversial viewpoint, and people on the internet are more malicious, bruh.
nerdy_diver@reddit
Her hope is not to improve stability, security, build/testing process etc of the distribution, but to improve diversity. So tired of these woke morons, a person is taking on a very responsible job but they care the most about what engineers have between their legs or what color is their ass.
nevertalktomeEver@reddit
That's a rather shallow view of what she was saying. Unsurprising that these supposed "woke morons" are really getting under your skin.
LurkingDevloper@reddit
There's non-democratic BDFLs out there that haven't coded in 30 years. From her background, she seems like she'll do a good job.
ManNamedJade@reddit
The platform reads like satire. Very cool!