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.
As of October 2021, he works for the Tor Project.[4][5] He has previously worked for Citrix,[6][7] Canonical,[8] and nCipher.[9]
Jackson became Debian Project Leader in January 1998, and Wichert Akkerman took his place in 1999.[10][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 received a PhD in Computer Science from Cambridge University in 1998. His PhD thesis was entitled Who goes here ? Confidentiality of location through anonymity.[11]
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]
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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.
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