List of Debian project leaders

This is a chronological list of Debian project leaders. Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License, developed by a group of individuals known as the Debian project. The Project Leader is a role defined in the Debian Constitution, and is elected once per year by the Debian developers.

Ian Murdock, the first Debian project leader and the "ian" in "Debian", was an American software engineer. He founded the Debian project in August 1993, naming it after his then-girlfriend and later wife Debra Lynn, and himself (Deb and Ian). He later started Progeny Linux Systems, a commercial Linux company. He was the Chief Technology Officer of the Free Standards Group and elected chair of the Linux Standard Base workgroup, CTO of the Linux Foundation when the group was formed from the merger of the Free Standards Group and Open Source Development Labs. He left the Linux Foundation to join Sun Microsystems leading the Project Indiana making OpenSolaris distribution with GNU userland. From 2011 until 2015 Murdock was Vice President of Platform and Developer Community at Salesforce Marketing Cloud. From November 2015 until his death Murdock was working for Docker, Inc.

Bruce Perens is an American computer programmer and advocate in the free software movement and author of BusyBox. He created The Open Source Definition and published the first formal announcement and manifesto of open source. He co-founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI) with Eric S. Raymond and Software in the Public Interest. He represented Open Source at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society, at the invitation of the United Nations Development Programme in 2005. He was the Debian Project Leader from April 1996 to December 1997, replacing Ian Murdock.

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