It's again that time of the year for the Debian Project: the elections of its Project Leader! Starting on March 31st, and during the following two weeks, the Debian Developers will vote to choose the person who will guide the project for one year.

Among this year's candidates there is the current DPL, Lucas Nussbaum, who admits that "the workload involved in being the DPL is just huge," and motivates his nomination with the need for stability in the project in this release cycle, especially after the difficult decision about the default init system. In his platform, Lucas speaks of technical and social steps to improve the project: from reproducible builds for a more secure archive to a renewed effort to run Debian on new platforms (especially smartphone and tablets); from a more welcoming approach to prospective contributors to an easier collaboration with organizations.

The only other candidate left after Gergely Nagy withdrew his nomination, is former Release Manager Neil McGovern. Neil's platform focuses mainly on the need to "ensure that we cater to our users, and there's millions of them. From those running the latest software in unstable, to people who simply want a rock solid core release." In his opinion "the size of Debian is increasing, and will reach a point where we're unable to guarantee basic compatibility with other packages, or the length of time it takes to do so becomes exponentially longer, unless something changes." To fix this problem, Neil proposes the implementation of PPAs (Personal Package Archives), the modernisation of the current build and infrastructure system as well as generally supporting the various teams.

The campaigning period will last until March 30th: the candidates are already engaged in debates and discussions on the debian-vote mailing list where they'll reply to questions from users and contributors.