Congratulations to Debian Project Leader (DPL) Andreas Tille
THE "de" in Debian is still "Deb" or "Deborah" (the partner of the founder, "Ian"), but one might joke it is now .de for Deutschland (Germany).
The Debian Project has elected a Technical Project Leader, not just a Debian Project Leader. His voting record shows he did not participate in a lynch mob. That's reassuring. "Debian has been a significant part of about half of my life," he said last month. "While contributing packages has been the primary part of my involvement, I feel compelled to give back more to my friends and the community."
Debian volunteers come and go. Years ago our site was hosted on a server of a former Debian Developer and our hypervisor was also owned by a former Debian Developer since 2018. We actually completed the migration to that hypervisor less than a week after my wife and I had returned from Germany.
Mr. Tille, the new DPL, must remember that former Debian Developers are volunteers. They're fully entitled to and eligible for freedom of expression, even if some of that expression hurts some people's feelings (but is not unlawful).
When Carter was elected DPL I exchanged some E-mail with him. It was amicable. He sadly missed the opportunity to undo the damage two of his predecessors had done. There was potential or a window of opportunity for mediation.
Our hypervisor changed last September and we run this site under Debian. Our IRC server runs Debian. Our Git server runs Debian. Our sister site runs Debian. Its Gemini server runs Debian. So does the Gemini Edition of Techrights. Quite a few Germans are associated with this site. The founder of Debian grew up (not for long) in Germany.
Trying to call us "anti-Debian" would be ludicrous as I am typing this article on Debian 11 and my wife uses Debian 100% of the time. She loves the platform and has used it since pre-pandemic days (no need to reinstall it since; it still works fine!).
Freedom (and liberty per se) involves tolerance of those whose views or words you don't agree with. If you try to silence them, what prevents them from silencing you?
It would not be insincere to say that Debian has issues and those issues need to be tackled, eventually. If nobody is allowed to even speak about these issues, they will never be tackled. █
