Who are the next generation of Debianists? Are they all still coming to us out of different OS backgrounds, or do we now have the significant beginnings of a home grown generation, born and raised in Debian-using families and now making their voices heard?
I hope that Debian Jr. will encourage this kind of generational growth of the project. When recently I rewrote the guiding principles of Debian Jr., my vision was a Debian that children would identify as their own. I expect they will be eager to add their own ideas as they grow up with it. It was pointed out to me today that there is some evidence that this is already happening (thanks for the link, Matthew Wilcox).
As for my own kids, ages 16, 15, 12, 9 and 5, only the oldest have ever used some system at home other than Debian1. They all comfortably use our Debian systems daily, discussing regularly with me what they need. This leads to filing bugs and patches on their behalf2, and inspires further development of the Debian Jr. project.
So, in at least this sense, the children of Debian are already contributing members of Debian, if not voting members. The ideas of families are improving Debian for everyone. As the project grows, I expect the ways in which families will change Debian will be more significant, not only technically but also in Debian’s character.
1 Before we started using Debian in 1995, the family system was a VT-420 terminal connected to the Solaris system running our community freenet. At that time our kids would sit in my lap and play at typing into pico for their amusement.
2 For instance, I was pleased to discover the other day that my egoboo patch was accepted. That was a direct result of my kids asking me to make it work for them.