Jonathan Carter is a South African based in Cape Town who works part-time for the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, where he does system administration work on the institutional network that it uses in its centers across Africa. He has served as the Debian Project Lead since April 2020 and was re-elected for another year.
Carter had only one opponent, Sruthi Chandran. She contested the elections in 2020 as well, but was unsuccessful that year too. Carter received 421 votes while Chandran was backed by 312 developers. The project has more than 1000 developers spread all over the globe.
The Debian Project Leader is the official representative of the Debian Project. They have two main functions, one internal and one external.
- In the external function, the Project Leader represents the Debian Project to others. This involves giving talks and presentations about Debian and attending trade shows, as well as building good relationships with other organizations and companies.
- Internally, the Project Leader manages the project and defines its vision. They should talk to other Debian developers, especially to the delegates, to see how they can assist their work. A main task of the Project Leader therefore involves coordination and communication.
Debian is the only free software project to have elections where the leader is voted in by the developers. Debian uses the Condorcet method for deciding its elections.
It is an election method that elects the candidate who wins a majority of the vote in every head-to-head election against each of the other candidates, that is, a candidate preferred by more voters than any others, whenever there is such a candidate.
