Martin Michlmayr is a Debian developer and PhD student working on quality and release management in free software both in practice and as a research topic. Michlmayr became a member of the Debian project in 2000 and soon began work as an Application Manager for membership (New Maintainer) applications. He subsequently worked as a member of the Front Desk which coordinates the New Maintainer process.

Anthony Towns (born June 21, 1978, Melbourne, Australia) is a computer programmer who was a long-time Debian release manager, "ftpmaster" team member and later the Debian Project Leader (from April 17, 2006 until April 17, 2007). He is also the secretary of Linux Australia and has been an active member of HUMBUG since the late 1990s in his home town of Brisbane, Queensland, where he has resided since 1990.

Steve McIntyre is a software engineer and a long-time Debian developer. His best known contributions have been in the field of creating Debian CD/DVD images; he is the "debian-cd" team leader and is responsible for generating the official images. McIntyre ran for the post of Debian Project Leader in 2006 but was defeated by Anthony Towns by only six effective votes. In 2006-2007, he was named "Second in charge", a post created for him by Towns.

G. Branden Robinson is a Debian developer, known for his contributions to the packaging of the X Window System, and his tenure as the Debian Project Leader in 2005.

Samuel “Sam” Hocevar is a French programmer, and has been the Debian Project Leader since April 17,2007. In 2005-2006 he was a WikiMedia France board member. Hocevar is best known for his contributions to the Debian and VideoLAN projects. He has made large contributions to almost all software of the VideoLAN project, especially to VLC media player, since 1998 and he is the author of various software programs, such as zzuf, a data fuzzer, and libcaca, …

Bruce Perens is a former Debian GNU/Linux Project Leader, the primary author of the Open Source Definition, a founder of Software in the Public Interest, founder and first project leader of the Linux Standard Base project, the initial author of BusyBox, a founder of the UserLinux project, and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Perens also has a book series with Prentice Hall PTR called the Bruce Perens' Open Source Series.

Bdale Garbee is a computer specialist who works with Linux, particularly Debian GNU/Linux. He is currently the Linux CTO at Hewlett-Packard, and the current President of Software in the Public Interest. Bdale Garbee has been a Debian developer since the earliest days of the project in the mid-1990s, and he set up the original developer machine named "master.debian.org" in 1995. He has later served as a Debian Project Leader for one year (2002-2003).

Ian Murdock is the founder of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution and the commercial Linux distributor Progeny. He currently works for Sun Microsystems "head[ing] up operating system platform strategy" ; previously he served as the Chief Technology Officer of the Linux Foundation and is chair of the Linux Standard Base, the Linux platform interoperability standard. He lives in Indiana, USA. He wrote the Debian Manifesto in 1993 while a student at Purdue University, …

Wichert Akkerman is a Dutch computer programmer, best known for his contributions to Debian, dpkg, plone and strace. He was elected for two terms as the Debian Project Leader and served from January 1999 to March 2001. He was succeeded in that role by Ben Collins. He has also served as the Secretary to Software in the Public Interest. He currently lives in Leiden.

Ben Collins is a former NASA engineer and was the Debian Project Leader from April 2001 to April 2002. He was succeeded in that role by Bdale Garbee. He currently works for Canonical Ltd. as the Linux kernel team leader for Ubuntu. He is married with 3 sons.

Ian W. Jackson is a long time Free Software author and Debian developer. Jackson wrote dpkg, SAUCE, userv and debbugs. He used to maintain the Linux FAQ. He runs chiark.greenend.org.uk, a popular server, home to PuTTY among other things. Jackson has a PhD from Cambridge University and he currently works for Canonical Ltd; he used to work for nCipher Corporation. He became Debian Project Leader in January 1998. Debian GNU/Linux 2.0 (hamm) was released during this time.