Organization
The Debian Project is governed by the Debian Constitution and the Social Contract which set out the governance structure of the project and explicitly states that the goal of the project is the development of a free operating system. Debian is developed by over three thousand volunteers from around the world and supported by donations through several nonprofit organizations around the world. Most important of these is Software in the Public Interest, the owner of the Debian trademark and umbrella organization for various other community free software projects.
Thus, the Debian Project is an independent decentralized organization; it is not backed by a company like Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, and Mandriva. The cost of developing all the packages included in Debian 5.0 lenny (323 million lines of code), using the COCOMO model, has been estimated to be about US$ 8 billion. Ohloh estimates that the codebase (54 million lines of code), using the COCOMO model, would cost about US$ 1 billion to develop.
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Famous quotes containing the word organization:
“I will never accept that I got a free ride. It wasn’t free at all. My ancestors were brought here against their will. They were made to work and help build the country. I worked in the cotton fields from the age of seven. I worked in the laundry for twenty- three years. I worked for the national organization for nine years. I just retired from city government after twelve-and-a- half years.”
—Johnnie Tillmon (b. 1926)
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—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
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—Mother Jones (1830–1930)