I went ahead and officially retired from Debian today. It’s something I probably ought to have done a while ago, but have been putting off. I’ve had some great times with Debian and met a lot of good people. Debian is also where I really got my start with free software. For me, and others, Debian is something of a stepping stone: it’s fairly easy to start packaging up some program, and before you know it, you’re hooked on the whole open source thing. These days I mostly use Ubuntu, but hold Debian in very high regard in terms of the technical quality. And I’m also glad that they’ve held the line on free software over the years: with a Debian CD, I know I can make as many copies as I want for anyone, and use it both myself and for whatever commercial applications my clients need. How cool is that?