DebConf26, the 27th edition of the Debian conference is taking place at the Facultad de Ingeniería en Ciencias Hídricas of the Universidad Nacional del Litoral, in Santa Fe, Argentina. We appreciate the organizers for their hard work, and hope this event will be highly beneficial for those who attend in person as well as online.

This event would not be possible without the help from our generous sponsors. We would like to warmly welcome the sponsors of DebConf26, and introduce them to you.

We have two Platinum sponsors.

• Our first Platinum sponsor is Proxmox. Proxmox develops powerful, yet easy-to-use open-source server solutions. The comprehensive open-source ecosystem is designed to manage divers IT landscapes, from single servers to large-scale distributed data centers. Our unified platform integrates server virtualization, easy backup, and rock-solid email security ensuring seamless interoperability across the entire portfolio. With the Proxmox Datacenter Manager, the ecosystem also offers a "single pane of glass" for centralized management across different locations. Since 2005, all Proxmox solutions have been built on the rock-solid Debian platform. We are proud to return to DebConf26 as a sponsor because the Debian community provides the foundation that makes our work possible. We believe in keeping IT simple, open, and under your control.

• Infomaniak is the second Platinum sponsor. Infomaniak is an independent, employee-owned Swiss technology company that designs, develops, and operates its own cloud infrastructure and digital services entirely in Switzerland. With over 300 employees — more than 70% engineers and developers — the company reinvests all profits into R&D. Its public cloud is built on OpenStack, with managed Kubernetes, Database as a Service, object storage, and sovereign AI services accessible via OpenAI- compatible APIs, all running on its own Swiss infrastructure. Infomaniak also develops a sovereign collaborative suite — messaging, email, storage, online office tools, videoconferencing, and a built-in AI assistant — developed in- house and as a privacy-respecting solution to proprietary platforms. Open source is central to how Infomaniak operates. Its latest data center (D4) runs on 100% renewable energy and uses no traditional cooling: all the heat generated by its servers is captured and fed into Geneva's district heating network, supplying up to 6,000 homes in winter and hot water year-round. The entire project has been documented and open-sourced at d4project.org.

Our Gold sponsors are:

• Freexian, Freexian specializes in Free Software with a particular focus on Debian GNU/Linux. Freexian can assist with consulting, training, technical support, packaging, or software development on projects involving use or development of Free software. All of Freexian's employees and partners are well-known contributors in the Free Software community, a choice that is integral to Freexian's business model.

• Viridien an advanced technology, digital and Earth data company that pushes the boundaries of science for a more prosperous and sustainable future. Viridien has been using Debian-based systems to power most of its HPC infrastructure and its cloud platform since 2009 and currently employs two active Debian Project Members.

Our Silver sponsors are:

• Arm: leading technology provider of processor IP, Arm powered solutions have been supporting innovation for more than 30 years and are deployed in over 280 billion chips to date.
• Pexip brings the ease of commercial video platforms to secure and sovereign environments without compromising control or performance.
• The Bern University of Applied Sciences with around 7,959 students enrolled, located in the Swiss capital.
• Ubuntu, the Operating System delivered by Canonical.
• OS-Sci, Open Source Science is a world-leading institution dedicated to teaching computer science through Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).
• gcoop, a free software development company with over 19 years of market experience, organized as a worker cooperative, promoting best practices in software development.
• Qualcomm Technologies, one of the world's leading companies in field of mobile technology, sponsors and contributes to Open Source developer communities that drive collaboration.
• Civil Infrastructure Platform, a collaborative project hosted by the Linux Foundation, establishing an open source “base layer” of industrial grade software.
• Siemens is a technology company focused on industry, infrastructure and transport.
• Collabora, a global consultancy delivering Open Source software solutions to the commercial world.
• NERDEARLA, the largest free tech event in the Spanish-speaking world.

Bronze sponsors:

• Loongson,
• credativ,
• Google,
• SpacemiT,

And finally, our Supporter level sponsors:

• Altus Metrum,
• Loongson Hobbyists Community,
• Secretaría de Tecnologías para la Gestión de la Provincia de Santa Fe

A special thanks to the Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Hídricas - FICH UNL, our Venue Partner!

Thanks to all our sponsors for their support! Their contributions enable a diverse global community of Debian developers and maintainers to collaborate, support one another, and share knowledge at DebConf26.

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• Vivek K J (vivek)
• Benjamin Somers (bensmrs)
• Colin King (colinianking)
• Nadzeya Hutsko (nadzeya)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

• Pieter Lenaerts
• Syed Shahrukh Hussain
• Ural Tunaboyu

Congratulations!

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• Filip Strömbäck (fstromback)
• Arthur Diniz (arthurbd)
• Manuel Traut (manut)
• Xiyue Deng (manphiz)
• kpcyrd (kpcyrd)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

• Chris Talbot
• Gabriel Filion
• Mate Kukri

Congratulations!

We are very excited to announce that Debian has been assigned seven contributors to work under mentorship on a variety of projects with us during the Google Summer of Code.

Here is a list of the projects and contributors, along with details of the tasks to be performed.

Project: Automated Debian Packaging with debianize

• Contributor: Anurag Nayak

Deliverables of the project: Debianize is a tool that aims to automatically create debian packages from scratch from upstream source trees. As for the current version, it works for some of the packages but it is not reliable. This project aims at making it production ready such that it can work with most of the projects. Along with that improving its reliability, coverage, integration with the broader ecosystem and other enhancements.

Project: Linux Livepatching

• Contributor: Aryan Karamtoth

Deliverables of the project: Linux Kernel Livepatching is the process of replacing functions in the kernel code affected by CVEs with the patch-applied functions during system runtime. It's basically a method to apply security kernel patches to a running system.

Project: DebNet: Visualising the Bus Factor – Graph Analysis of Debian's Infrastructure

• Contributor: Fabio Ruhland

Deliverables of the project: DebNet models the Debian archive as a graph to identify critical packages maintained by too few people. Using data from the Ultimate Debian Database (UDD), it builds a package dependency graph and a maintainer-package graph to compute practical metrics like the Bus Factor, Fragility Score, and Dependency Impact for every source package.

Project: Attack of the Clones: Fight Back Using Code Duplication Detection From Security Patches

• Contributor: Gajendra Nath Soren

Deliverables of the project: This project aims to detect vulnerable code clones in the Debian archive by automatically extracting signatures from security patches. Using a two-signal approach that separates vulnerable patterns from fix patterns, the system generates high-specificity queries to search the entire archive via Debian CodeSearch.

Project: Debusine: debuginfod server

• Contributor: Jugal59

Deliverables of the project: This project implements a debuginfod-compatible server within Debusine to provide automated debug symbol resolution for Debian developers.

Project: Debian-LSP: Improve File Format Support

• Contributor: Lucas Ly Ba

Deliverables of the project: The Debian LSP Language Server currently provides only basic features—field completion, parse-error diagnostics, and simple quick fixes—leaving Debian maintainers without the rich IDE experience available in other ecosystems.

Project: Debusine: live log streaming

• Contributor: mo-ashraf

Deliverables of the project: Debusine currently only shows task logs after a task has fully completed. This means developers working with long-running jobs (such as package builds or test pipelines) have no way to monitor progress in real time or catch failures early. This project adds live log streaming to Debusine.

Congratulations and welcome to all the contributors!

The Google Summer of Code program is possible in Debian thanks to the efforts of Debian Developers and Debian Contributors that dedicate part of their free time to mentor contributors and outreach tasks.

Join us and help extend Debian! You can follow the contributors' weekly reports on the debian-outreach mailing-list, chat with us on our IRC channel or reach out to the individual projects' team mailing lists.

The voting period and tally of votes for the Debian Project Leader election has just concluded, and the winner is Sruthi Chandran. Congratulations!

347 out of 1,039 Developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the results of the voting is available on the Debian Project Leader Elections 2026 page.

Many thanks to Sruthi Chandran for her campaign, to our Developers for their votes, and to Andreas Tille for his service as DPL over the past two years!

The new term for the project leader will start on April 21, 2026 and expire on April 20, 2027.