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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_Software Foundation'S statemen
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 t0 accomplish this
developers write programs tO
earn more about computers; different architectures; and programming languages 
Some
developers contribute to say "thank you" for all the great free software theyve received from others_
Many people in academia create free software to share the results of their research_
Companies also help maintaining free software
to influence how applications develop or to implement new features quickly:
course;
most Debian developers participate
because they think it's great fun!
Although we believe in free software
we respect that people sometimes have t0 install non-free software on their machines
whether they want tO or not
We have decided to support these users, whenever possible. There is
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 aroundthe
We are committed to Free Software and
world: A project of this size needs
carefully organized structure_
So, if you wonder how the Debian
we have formalized that commitment in a
project works and whether the Debian community has rules and
guidelines,
have
ook at the
document: our Social Contract
followina statements:
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