<p>A big thank you to all of you!</p>
<p><blockquote type="cite">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: "Alexander Reichle-Schmehl" <<a href="mailto:tolimar@debian.org">tolimar@debian.org</a>><br>Date: Aug 16, 2011 2:36 PM<br>Subject: Debian Community celebrates its 18th birthday<br>
To: <<a href="mailto:debian-news@lists.debian.org">debian-news@lists.debian.org</a>><br><br>-------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
The Debian Project <a href="http://www.debian.org/" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/</a><br>
Debian Community celebrates its 18th birthday <a href="mailto:press@debian.org">press@debian.org</a><br>
July 29th, 2011 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110730" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110730</a><br>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>
Debian Community celebrates its 18th birthday<br>
<br>
The Debian Project is pleased to mark the 18th anniversary of Ian<br>
Murdoch's founding announcement [1]. Quoting from the official project<br>
history [2]: "The Debian Project was officially founded by Ian Murdock<br>
on August 16th, 1993. At that time, the whole concept of a 'distribution'<br>
of Linux was new. Ian intended Debian to be a distribution which would be<br>
made openly, in the spirit of Linux and GNU."<br>
<br>
1: <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.development/msg/a32d4e2ef3bcdcc6" target="_blank">http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.development/msg/a32d4e2ef3bcdcc6</a><br>
2: <a href="http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-intro.en.html" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-intro.en.html</a><br>
<br>
<br>
A lot has happened to the project and its community in the past eighteen<br>
years. There have been eleven releases - most recently Debian 6.0<br>
"Squeeze" [3] in February 2011 - and a huge amount of free software<br>
packaged. The current "unstable" branch consists of more than 35,000<br>
binary packages for the amd64 architecture alone - over 44GB of<br>
Free/Libre Software! Throughout this history Debian has maintained its<br>
goals of technical excellence, accountability, and above all freedom.<br>
<br>
<br>
3: <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110205a" target="_blank">http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110205a</a><br>
<br>
Of course that wouldn't be possible without the strong community which<br>
has developed around Debian. Besides more than 1,000 Debian Developers<br>
and Maintainers from all over the globe, there are in excess of 11,000<br>
registered accounts for the Alioth collaboration platform, and that<br>
doesn't even include all those people contributing with translations or<br>
bug reports (and sometimes patches for them) and all those users helping<br>
others via our mailing lists, forums and IRC channels.<br>
<br>
4: <a href="http://alioth.debian.org/" target="_blank">http://alioth.debian.org/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
As a project, we would also like to take this opportunity to thank all<br>
our users and contributors, and of course also our upstream developers.<br>
All of them help to making Debian a great experience and a great project!<br>
<br>
<br>
Across the world today, Debian Developers, Maintainers, Contributors and<br>
Users celebrate our birthday [5] with small conferences, with virtual<br>
parties, and even with parties in real life. This celebration is<br>
organised by the community, and it's not too late to start a party in<br>
your own city!<br>
<br>
5: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDay2011" target="_blank">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDay2011</a><br>
<br>
Users can also use the web platform at <a href="http://thank-you.debian.net" target="_blank">http://thank-you.debian.net</a> to<br>
express their thanks, and share pictures of their own Debian birthday<br>
celebrations. If you post on Twitter or Identi.ca please use the hashtag<br>
#thxdebian</tt>.<br>
<br>
<br>
The Debian Project continues to welcome contributions in all forms,<br>
from everyone, encouraging people to download, use, modify,<br>
and distribute its source code in the hopes that it is useful.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
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