There are many ways you can contribute to Tails. No effort is too small and whatever you bring to this community will be appreciated. So read on to find out how you can make a difference in Tails.

Ways to contribute

Share your experience

Every user can help others or provide developers with useful information.

• Report errors
• Test experimental Tails images
• Provide input to developers
• Help other Tails users

Donate

Donating speeds up the development of Tails.

Donate

Contribute your language skills

Writer

Good writers can make Tails accessible to more people.

• Improve our documentation

Translator

Translators can allow more people around the world to use Tails.

• Improve Tails in your own language

Speaker

Speakers can advocate Tails to all kinds of public.

• Outreach material: logo, leaflets, stickers, etc.

Contribute your computer skills

Developer or maintainer

Software people with very diverse skills can improve Tails.

• Work on the source code
• Improve Tails by working on Debian

System administrator

System administrators can contribute to the infrastructure behind Tails.

• Run a HTTP mirror
• Improve Tails infrastructure

Designer

Designers can make Tails easier to use and more appealing.

• Improve the website
• Design graphics
• Improve the Tails user experience

Reference documents

• Mission and values

• Design documents

• Blueprints to help structuring ideas for future improvements

• Merge policy

• Logo

• Personas

• Security issue response policy

Tools for contributors

• Source code: Git repositories

• GitLab source code and bug tracker

• Starter tasks for new contributors

• Building a Tails image

  • Build a local copy of the website

  • Customize Tails

  • Nightly Tails image builds

  • Jenkins CI

• Debian packages

  • APT repository, to store our custom Debian packages

  • How we manage and upgrade the Linux kernel.

  • How we manage and upgrade tor.

• Tips to develop and debug Tor Connection

• Tips to develop Persistent Storage

• Glossary for contributors

Release cycle

• Release schedule

• Release process

  • Manual test suite

  • Automated test suite

  • Verification JavaScript

Relationship with upstream and derivatives

• Relationship with upstream

• Improve Tails by working on Debian

• About creating Tails derivatives

Collective process

• Calendar of releases

• Code of conduct

• Social contract

• People

• Marking a task as Starter

• Document progress

• Teams and roles

  • Tails Team (formerly known as: Foundations Team)

  • Release manager

  • Technical writers

  • Translation platform maintainers

  • UX designers

• Interfaces between roles and teams

  • Developers and Release Managers

Getting credits

We're ok with people getting credits for whatever contribution they did to Tails. Sometimes this is publicly available (for example: in issues, git history, etc.), in which case this is enough for us.

In some cases such info might not be publicly visible (for example: facilitation work done for meetings or data that was deleted for some reason). In this case, if the contributor so wish, we're ok with adding explicit public credit somewhere they can link to. If that's your case, please contact us.

Contact us

To talk to other Tails contributors, subscribe to the relevant mailing lists.