Debian developers have various responsibilities, and as official project members, they have great influence on the direction the project takes. A Debian developer is generally responsible for at least one package, but according to their available time and desire, they are free to become involved in numerous teams and projects, thus acquiring more responsibilities within the project.

Package maintenance is a relatively regimented activity, very documented or even regulated. It must, in effect, comply with all the standards established by the Debian Policy. Fortunately, there are many tools that facilitate the maintainer's work. The developer can, thus, focus on the specifics of their package and on more complex tasks, such as squashing bugs.

The Policy, an essential element of the Debian Project, establishes the norms ensuring both the quality of the packages and perfect interoperability of the distribution. Thanks to this Policy, Debian remains consistent despite its gigantic size. This Policy is not fixed in stone, but continuously evolves thanks to proposals formulated on the debian-policy@lists.debian.org mailing list. Amendments that are agreed upon by all interested parties are accepted and applied to the text by a small group of maintainers who have no editorial responsibility (they only include the modifications agreed upon by the Debian developers that are members of the above-mentioned list). You can read current amendment proposals on the bug tracking system:

The Policy provides considerable coverage of the technical aspects of packaging. The size of the project also raises organizational problems; these are dealt with by the Debian Constitution, which establishes a structure and means for decision making. In other words, a formal governance system.

This constitution defines a certain number of roles and positions, plus responsibilities and authorities for each. It is particularly worth noting that Debian developers always have ultimate decision making authority by a vote of general resolution, wherein a qualified majority of three quarters (75%) of votes is required for significant alterations to be made (such as those with an impact on the Foundation Documents). However, developers annually elect a “leader” to represent them in meetings, and ensure internal coordination between varying teams. This election is always a period of intense discussions. The Debian Project leader's (DPL) role is not formally defined by any document: candidates for this post usually propose their own definition of the position. In practice, the leader's roles include serving as a representative to the media, coordinating between “internal” teams, and providing overall guidance to the project, within which the developers can relate: the views of the DPL are implicitly approved by the majority of project members.

嚴格說來，領導人有絕對的權威；投票解決投票的問題；還沒有人負責的事都由領導人決定且可授權給他人。

Since its inception, the project has been successively led by Ian Murdock, Bruce Perens, Ian Jackson, Wichert Akkerman, Ben Collins, Bdale Garbee, Martin Michlmayr, Branden Robinson, Anthony Towns, Sam Hocevar, Steve McIntyre, Stefano Zacchiroli, Lucas Nussbaum, Neill McGovern, Mehdi Dogguy, Chris Lamb, Sam Hartman, and Jonathan Carter.

憲法也設立 '技術委員會'。發展者自身無法達成共識時由此委員會決策技術事宜。此外，當發展者無法解決自身職責所有的問題時，委員會就扮演顧問角色。祗有被爭議一方邀請後，才能涉入。

最後，憲法設立 '計畫秘書' 職位，負責各種選舉與爭議的投票事宜。

The “general resolution” (GR) procedure is fully detailed in the constitution, from the initial discussion period to the final counting of votes. The most interesting aspect of that process is that when it comes to an actual vote, developers have to rank the different ballot options between them and the winner is selected with a Condorcet method (more specifically, the Schulze method). For further details see:

Even if this constitution establishes a semblance of democracy, the daily reality is quite different: Debian naturally follows the free software rules of the do-ocracy: the one who does things gets to decide how to do them. A lot of time can be wasted debating the respective merits of various ways to approach a problem; the chosen solution will be the first one that is both functional and satisfying… which will come out of the time that a competent person put into it.

這就是升級的唯一方法：做有用的事且顯示把事情做好。Debian '管理' 團體以增選方式管理，採用已有效奉獻且證明其能力的志願者。新的奉獻者看到這些團隊做了具有公共利益性質的工作就會主動加入協助。這就是 Debian 常被稱為 '任人唯賢'。

這種有效的管理方法保證在 Debian '關鍵' 團隊奉獻者的品質。不見得是完美的且偶而凸搥。選擇被團隊接受的發展者是隨興的，甚至不公平的。而且，不是每個人對這些團隊服務的期望是一樣的。有些人受不了等8天才能收錄新的 Debian 套件，也有人耐心等待3週毫無怨言。所以，有些團隊對 '服務品質' 經常不滿。

One might wonder if it is relevant to mention the users among those who work within the Debian project, but the answer is a definite yes: they play a critical role in the project. Far from being “passive”, some users run development versions of Debian and regularly file bug reports to indicate problems. Others go even further and submit ideas for improvements, by filing a bug report with a severity level of “wishlist”, or even submit corrections to the source code, called “patches” (see 節 1.3.2.3, “Sending fixes”).

$ diff -u file.old file.new >file.patch

$ patch -p0 file.old <file.patch

From the start, Debian has been organized around the concept of source packages, each with its maintainer or group of maintainers. Many work teams have emerged over time, ensuring administration of the infrastructure, management of tasks not specific to any package in particular (quality assurance, Debian Policy, installer, etc.), with the latest series of teams growing up around sub-projects and blends.