Search Blog Micronews Planet debian Our Philosophy: Why we do it and how we do it Our Mission: Creating Free Operating System Our Values: How the Debian Community works Our Mission: Creating a Free Operating System The Debian Project is an association of individuals, sharing common goal: We want tO create free operating system; freely available for everyone. Now; when we use the word "free we re not talking about money; instead, we are referring tO software freedom: Qur Definition of Free_Sofware Read the_Free_Softare Foundation'S statement Maybe you're wondering why so many people choose to spend lots of hours of their own time writing software_ carefully packaging and maintaining it, just to give it all away without charging for it? Well, there are plenty of reasons here are some of them: Some people simply like to help others, and contributing to free software project is great way to accomplish this Many developers write programs to learn more about computers, different architectures and programming languages Some developers contribute to say "thank you" for all the great free software they've received from others_ people in academia create free software t0 share the results of their research: Companies also help maintaining free software= to influence how applications develop or to implement new features quickly: Of course, most Debian developers participate because they think it's great fun! Although we believe in free software we respect that people sometimes have to install non-free software on their machines whether they want to or not. We have decided t0 support these users; whenever possible There is a growing number of packages which install non-free software on Debian system: Our Values: How the Community works The Debian project has more than thousand active developers and contributors spread around the_world: A project of this size needs carefully We are committed to Free Software and we have formalized organized structure_ So, if you wonder how the Debian project works and whether the Debian community has rules and Iguidelines; have look at that commitment in a document: our Social Contract the following statements: Many -