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Prefazione

Debian è un sistema operativo di grande successo, la cui presenza nella vita digitale di ognuno di noi è maggiore di quanto spesso ci si immagini o si conosca. Per chiarire questo punto basta dire alcuni dati. Al momento della stesura di questo documento Debian è la variante GNU/Linux più popolare tra i server web: secondo W3Techs, più del 10% del web è basato su Debian. Pensiamo a questo: quanti siti web oggi ci saremmo persi senza Debian? Riguardo utilizzi più affascinanti, Debian è il sistema operativo prescelto nella Stazione Spaziale Internazionale (ISS). Avete seguito il lavoro degli astronauti dell'ISS, magari attraverso la presenza della NASA o di qualche altra organizzazione internazionale nei social network? Sia il lavoro stesso, sia la sua comunicazione sono stati resi possibili da Debian. Innumerevoli aziende, università e amministrazioni pubbliche si basano su Debian per il loro funzionamento quotidiano, fornendo servizi a milioni di utenti in tutto il mondo... e nella sua orbita!
But Debian is much more than an operating system, no matter how complex, featureful, and reliable such a system could be. Debian is a vision of the freedoms that people should enjoy in a world where more and more of our daily activities depend on software. Debian is born from the cardinal Free Software idea that people should be in control of their computers, and not the other way around. People with enough software knowledge should be able to dismantle, modify, reassemble and share with others all the software that matters to them. It doesn't matter if the software is used for frivolous activities like posting pictures of kittens on the Web, or for potentially life-threatening tasks such as driving our cars and powering the medical devices which cure us — and Debian is used in all of the above scenarios; you should control it. People without in-depth software knowledge should enjoy those freedoms too: they should be able to delegate to people of their choice, people they trust, the audit or modification of software-based devices on their behalf.
In the quest for the control of people over machines, Free operating systems play a fundamental role: you cannot be in full control of a computer device if you do not control its operating system. This is where Debian's main ambition comes from: producing the best, entirely Free operating system. For more than 20 years now, Debian has both developed a Free operating system and promoted a vision of Free Software around it. In so doing, Debian has set a very high bar for software freedom advocates around the world. Debian's decisions on matters of software licensing, for example, are routinely looked to by international standard organizations, governments, and other Free Software projects, when deciding if something should be considered “free enough” or not.
But this political vision is not yet enough to explain Debian's uniqueness. Debian is also a very peculiar social experiment, strongly attached to its independence. Think for a moment of other mainstream Free Software distributions, or even of popular proprietary operating systems. Chances are that you can associate each of them with a large company that is either the main development force behind the project, or at the very least the steward of all its non-development activities. Debian is different. Within the Debian Project volunteers pack on themselves the responsibilities of all the activities that are needed to keep Debian alive and kicking. The variety of those activities is stunning: from translations to system administration, from marketing to management, from conference organization to artwork design, from bookkeeping to legal issues... not to mention software packaging and development! Debian contributors take care of all of these.
Come prima conseguenza di questa forma radicale di indipendenza, Debian ha bisogno e si basa su una comunità molto eterogenea di volontari. Qualsiasi competenza in una qualsiasi delle aree elencate, o in ogni altra che si possa immaginare, può essere investita in Debian e verrà usata per migliorare il progetto. Una seconda conseguenza dell'indipendenza di Debian è che si può stare certi che le scelte di Debian non siano guidate da interessi commerciali di specifiche aziende: interessi per i quali non c'è alcuna garanzia che siano allineati con l'obiettivo di promuovere il controllo delle persone sulle macchine, come testimoniano troppi esempi recenti nelle notizie che riguardano il mondo tecnologico.
One last aspect contributes to Debian's uniqueness: the way in which the social experiment is run. Despite the folklore of being bureaucratic, decision making in Debian is in fact highly distributed. There exist clearly defined areas of responsibility within the project. People in charge of those areas are free to drive their own boat. As long as they keep up with the quality requirements agreed upon by the community, no one can tell them what to do or how to do their job. If you want to have a say on how something is done in Debian, you need to put yourself on the line and be ready to take the job on your shoulders. This peculiar form of meritocracy — which we sometimes call do-ocracy — is very empowering for contributors. Anyone with enough skills, time, and motivation can have a real impact on the direction the project is taking. This is testified by a population of about 1 000 official members of the Debian Project, and several thousands of contributors world-wide. It is no wonder that Debian is often credited as the largest community-driven Free Software project in existence.
Debian è perciò piuttosto unica. Siamo i soli a notarlo? Decisamente no. Secondo DistroWatch ci sono circa 300 distribuzioni di software libero attive in giro. La metà di esse (circa 140) sono derivate da Debian. Ciò significa che partono da Debian, la cambiano per adattarla alle necessità dei propri utenti, solitamente aggiungendo, modificando e ricompilando pacchetti, e rilasciano il prodotto risultante. In sostanza le derivate applicano le libertà garantite dal software libero di modifica e ridistribuzione di copie non solo ai singoli pezzi di software, ma a una distribuzione nel suo complesso. Il potenziale di raggiungere nuovi utenti e contributori del software libero attraverso le distribuzioni derivate è enorme. Crediamo che sia principalmente grazie a quell'ecosistema in fermento che il software libero è oggi finalmente in grado di rivaleggiare con il software proprietario in campi che erano storicamente considerati difficili da conquistare, come grandi installazioni desktop. Debian sta alla radice del più vasto ecosistema di distribuzioni di software libero esistente: anche se non si usa Debian direttamente, e anche se il proprio distributore non lo ha comunicato, è probabile che si stia traendo beneficio in questo stesso istante dal lavoro della comunità Debian.
But Debian's uniqueness sometimes comes with unexpected consequences. A consequence of Debian's vision on digital freedoms has been the need of redefining what we mean by software. The Debian Project has since long realized that, as part of an operating system, you need to distribute a lot of non-software material: music, images, documentation, raw data, firmware, etc. But how do you apply software freedoms to that material? Should we have different requirements or should all material be held up to the same high standard of freedom? The Debian Project has decided for the latter: all material shipped as part of Debian should offer the same freedoms to its users. Such a radical philosophical position has far reaching effects. It means we cannot distribute non-free firmware, or artwork not meant to be used in commercial settings, or books that cannot be modified in order to avoid tarnishing (as book publishers folklore goes) the author's/publisher's reputation.
The book you have in your hands is different. It's a free as in freedom book, a book which is up to Debian freedom standards for every aspect of your digital life. For a very long time, the scarce availability of books like this one has been a significant shortcoming of Debian. It meant that there was little reading material that helped to spread Debian and its values, while at the same time embodying those values and showing off their advantages. But it also meant, ironically, that we had little such material that we could distribute as part of Debian itself. This is the first reputable book to address this shortcoming. You can apt install this book, you can redistribute it, you can fork this book or, better, submit bug reports and patches for it, so that others in the future can benefit from your contributions. The “maintainers” of this book — who are also its authors — are longstanding members of the Debian Project, who grok the freedom ethos that permeates every aspect of Debian and know first-hand what it means to take on the responsibility for important parts of Debian. By releasing this Free book they are doing, once more, such a wonderful service to the Debian community.
Speriamo che vi godrete questa pietra miliare della libertà di lettura in Debian tanto quanto abbiamo fatto noi.
October 2015
Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian Project Leader 2010-2013), Lucas Nussbaum (Debian Project Leader 2013-2015) and Neil McGovern (Debian Project Leader 2015-incumbent)