Other resources

• other public doc
• private team wiki

Process

• responsibilities
• meetings
• roles
• onboarding
• Bug triaging
• Task management

Contact

If you already know which individual team member is the best placed to have the conversation you need, contact them directly. In doubt, contact the Team Lead.

If you need to get in touch with the entire Tails Team at once, you can:

• write to the foundations@tails.net Schleuder mailing list
  • You can encrypt your email with our OpenPGP key (details).
• mention @tails-team on GitLab: GitLab will send an email notification about it to every member of the Tails Team, and add it to their To-Do list.

Priorities

Priorities for 2025

MUST

• Remediate vulnerabilities identified by security audit and pick low-hanging fruits to avoid repeating past mistakes
• Converge workflows and tooling towards Tor's — MUST bundle
  • Hand over ticket gardening role to intrigeri (tails#20510)
  • Revisit Tails Team Lead / Project Manager arrangements for FY 2025-2026 (tails#20700 (closed))
• KTLO, including:
  • Release Tails 7.0 based on Debian 13 (Trixie)
  • Upgrade Tor Browser to new ESR
  • Upgrade Thunderbird to new ESR
  • Prototype and collaborate on using Arti
• Fix long-lasting usability issues (P165 C.1)
  • We'll determine which ones when we prioritize UX Debt issues.
• Act on feedback received by email and in-app tool, still with a focus on identifying high-impact work (P165 C.2)
  • We'll determine in Q1 if this work should have a particular focus in 2025 (in 2024 it was Persistent Storage & partitioning robustness).
• Improve test suite robustness, focusing on time sinks (P165 D.1)
• Research alternatives to Etcher for Windows; then, if there's a good enough candidate, switch to it
  • Goal: Improve the privacy of the Tails installation process
• Improve website navigation

SHOULD

• Bring the list of UX Debt down way more
  • Grant Tor Browser access to files as designated by the user (tails#10422 (closed))
  • Persistent language and keyboard (tails#5501)
  • Tor Connection bundle
  • Drop some issues of least priority
• Kickstart project to collect the metrics we need in a privacy-preserving manner: potentially a poor-person's version implemented; potentially, have plans e.g. an analysis to get grants with the rest of Tor (so this would happen >= 2026)
  • Goal: Enable ourselves to make decisions and evaluate progress based on usage data
• Talk with sysadmins about the future of Jenkins (tails#20774)
• Improve website onboarding
  • Make plans on the big issues (after having installed your first Tails)
  • Fix smaller issues
• Rename GitLab label: Foundations Team → Tails Team (tails#20746 (closed))
  • Goal: finish the migration to the new terminology, avoid confusion caused by using obsolete terminology.
• Start integrating our doc for contributors with Tor's, identifying other problems in this section along the way (tails#20768)
• Develop better interoperability with mobile messaging apps aka. Signal support (tails#14567)
• Improve story for Persistent Storage backups (tails#20194)
• Persistent Storage features (iff. specific crowdfunding)
  • https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/?sort=updated_desc&state=opened&label_name%5B%5D=C%3APersistence&search=Persistent%20Storage%20feature&first_page_size=100

MAY

• Finish the initial exploration and prototyping of the automatic verification of Tails downloads
• Define 5-years strategy for the Tails product & team in the Tor organization
• Converge workflows and tooling towards Tor's - MAY bundle
  • Migrate from Schleuder to Mailman
  • Migrate from XMPP to IRC (unless we build confidence that TPI will migrate away from IRC by the end of 2026)

Past priorities

• 2024
  • priorities were not set, beyond doing the work planned as part of S11
  • done in 2024
• 3-year strategy for 2023-2025

Roadmap

This is the big picture. For details about what's happening on the short term, see the board and filter with the current milestone.

Projects

Project 165

• Calendar: 2024-12-01 to 2025-11-30
• Wiki page with details
• Kanban Board

2025 Q3

• Frontdesk (@intrigeri)
• Upgrade to Debian 13 and release 7.0 (P165):
  • Coordination (@boyska)
  • Test the doc (@sajolida)
  • Organize RM'ing of 7.0~rcN releases in August and September (tails#21097 (closed), @boyska)
  • Release a RC (tails#20697 (closed), @boyska)
  • Process feedback
  • Fix blockers for 7.0 stable
  • Release 7.0
  • Doc upgrades (@sajolida)
• KTLO
  • Upgrade Tor Browser to ESR 140 (P165) (tails#20770, tails#20771) (@anonym)
• Converge workflows and tooling towards Tor's
  • Next steps on Contribute (tails#20768)
    • Finish developing a draft plan (@intrigeri)
    • Present the draft plan to Gus and emmapeel (@sajolida)
  • User support parity with other Tor products (tails#20773): kickstart the conversation (@intrigeri)
  • Talk with sysadmins about the future of Jenkins (tails#20774) (@intrigeri)
• Recurring P165 (OTF FOSS Sustainability Fund) work
  • A.2 Prototype and collaborate on using Arti (@boyska)
    • Monitor the work on Arti's RPC and make sure our needs are met (tails#20508)
  • B.1 Release management and smaller OS migrations
  • C.1 Fix long-lasting usability issues
    • Persistent language and keyboard (tails#5501) — stretch goal (@boyska)
  • C.2 Act on feedback received by email and in-app tool (candidates: tails#20785 (closed))
    • plans TBD if we have spare capacity later in Q3
  • D.1 Make the Tails development process more efficient (test suite) (@anonym)
    • Pattern coverage anti-test for user space proce... (tails#21012 - closed)
    • Test suite: remove MUC scenarios from pidgin.fe... (tails#21184 - closed)
    • Trixie: no-overview@fthx sometimes fails to clo... (tails#21030 - closed)
• Unplanned emergencies
  • Add WebTunnel support, cheap version (tails#20267 (closed)) (@boyska, @sajolida)
    • Ship something good enough in 6.18
      • Automated test suite: only test the configuration in the GUI is doable and is applied correctly, but don't test successful connection (unless it's cheap to use the actual Tor network for this specific scenario)
      • No big GUI revamp, use the simple design we already kind of have
    • Triage & prioritize UX issues spotted by sajolida (tails#21173) (@boyska, @sajolida)
• Support fundraising efforts
  • Draft a rough plan to switch to an offline about:tor homepage, in order to Make Tor's calls for donations visible to Tails users (tails#21003) (@intrigeri)

Boards:

• Tails Team in 2025Q3 with no milestone
• UX in 2025Q3 with no milestone
• UX Team Roadmap (to check sajolida's capacity for Tails)

2025 Q4

• Frontdesk
• Upgrade to Debian 13 and release 7.0 (P165):
  • Coordination (@boyska)
  • Post-release feedback & fixes
• KTLO
  • Upgrade Tor Browser to new ESR (P165) (tails#20771) (@anonym)
  • Upgrade Thunderbird to new ESR (P165) (tails#20772) (@anonym)
• Converge workflows and tooling towards Tor's
  • User support parity with other Tor products (tails#20773) (@intrigeri)
• Improve website onboarding (tails#20777) (@sajolida)
• Recurring P165 (OTF FOSS Sustainability Fund) work — until the end of November
  • A.2 Prototype and collaborate on using Arti
  • B.1 Release management and smaller OS migrations
  • C.1 Fix long-lasting usability issues
    • Update our UX Debt backlog (tails#20088)
    • Tor Connection bundle (@intrigeri some of it?)
  • C.2 Act on feedback received by email and in-app tool (candidates: tails#20785 (closed))
  • D.1 Make the Tails development process more efficient (test suite) (@anonym)
    • Test suite: dealing with polkit prompt while us... (tails#21062)
    • "The proxy server is refusing connections" afte... (tails#20297)
    • Long delay in Welcome Screen on Trixie for deve... (tails#21103)