Ian Jackson is a longtime
free software author and
Debian developer. Jackson wrote
dpkg[1][2][3] (replacing a more primitive Perl tool with the same name), SAUCE (Software Against Unsolicited Commercial Email), userv and
debbugs. He used to maintain the
Linux FAQ. He runs
chiark.greenend.org.uk, a Linux system which is home to
PuTTY among other things.
Jackson became
Debian Project Leader in January 1998, before Wichert Akkerman took his place in 1999.[11][2] Debian GNU/Linux 2.0 (hamm) was released during his term. During that time he was also a vice-president and then president of
Software in the Public Interest in 1998 and 1999.
Jackson was a member of the Debian Technical Committee[12] until November 2014 when he resigned[13] as a result of controversies around the proposed use of
systemd in Debian.[14]
^Jackson, Ian (19 November 2014).
"Resignation". Debian Mailing List. Retrieved 19 November 2014. I am resigning from the Technical Committee with immediate effect. While it is important that the views of the 30-40% of the project who agree with me should continue to be represented on the TC, I myself am clearly too controversial a figure at this point to do so. I should step aside to try to reduce the extent to which conversations about the project's governance are personalised.