You may be slow at releases, slow to check out new whizz bang thingies, but heck, you're not getting paid for it, and you're doing it out of your own time, and with the laudable goal of stability.

In hindsight, there are always

(a) Good decisions

(b) Bad decisions

(c) Safe decisions

I think you should be applauded for mainly doing (c).

And yes, I run Debian stable. I admit I am not good enough to roll my own linux and satisfy myself with its stability.

But possibly, and probably like most other people who run Debian, I also run something else for messing. Lolz.

Best of both worlds, really

Why do these individuals want to be Debian developers so much anyway? It's surprising that even when so many obstacles are put in their way, people still want to do these thankless jobs, which don't pay money and don't seem very interesting.

@BKB:

I've heard it said that the least popular part of a project is the documentation, but I've worked in my spare time for a small software company and have always enjoyed that part. Now I've got 2 kids I don't have any spare time, but when (if) I get that spare time back again I'd like to do some work for an OS project I use. I've used Debian on my server and Ubuntu on my desktop for years now and would genuinely like to give something back (I have already made a couple of donations to Canonical).

And if I like doing something that no-one else does, then all the better.

Some well placed ads explaining the benefits of Debian in the general press could do all of us some good.

These could be paid for by hardare vendors paying for certification.

For example, IBM and HP are big advocates of Linux therefore we buy their servers. However, we're never perfectly sure if Debian will install on all machines. Sure, Debian goes straight on to the low end servers but what about the ones over $10,000?

So if Debian will install straight away HP/IBM could put an official copyrighted sticker on it saying 'Debian Certified'. The Debian organisation could charge for these stickers.

Now for those ads.

Most company bosses don't know anything about software. They have a Microsoft based laptop and think that MS is the only software company around.

Some well placed ads in the Financial Times, New York Times, etc explaining the benefits of Debian could make them realise that they're paying megabucks for a poor quality product. The downtime and general failure of Microsoft products is terrible for their bottom lines.

Let's face it - when I tell clients that we've got servers which haven't evern been rebooted for years they are surprised and impressed. Imagine how the stats would look. Google runs on Linux - Debian is one of the best Linuxes! List all the top CGI based films - all rendered on Linux etc etc etc

It's actually been slightly easier recently. The two most recent projects have specified that NO Microsoft software should be used. One of those was because the company's new Vista laptops had been a disaster - and the upgrade to Office 2007 had broken their in house Access based CRM application.

The second one was because the company did not want to be tied into a proprietry product.

debian makes the world a better place. debian volunteers are an example to us all