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.
