team
About us
Mission
Our mission is to empower people worldwide by giving out an operating system that protects against surveillance and censorship.
If you want to help, see https://tails.net/contribute/ :)
Team members
| name | role | Matrix/IRC | |
|---|---|---|---|
| intrigeri | Tails Team Lead | intrigeri at torproject dot org | intrigeri |
| anonym | Tails Developer | anonym at torproject dot org | anonym |
| boyska | Tails Developer | boyska at torproject dot org | boyska |
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-teamon GitLab: GitLab will send an email notification about it to every member of the Tails Team, and add it to their To-Do list.
Text-based chat
See https://tails.net/contribute/chat/.
How our team & work connect to the rest of Tor
The Tails product is built on top of other Tor products (among other things), so we collaborate regularly with the teams that build these products:
We constantly work with the UX Team, that helps us understand the needs of our users and make the Tails user experience a better fit for their needs.
Like all other teams at Tor, we also interface with internal structures and support teams, in particular TPA given our strong dependency on systems infrastructure.
We interact less frequently with other teams but we do appreciate their work!
Process
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)
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)
Priorities for 2026
TBD: tails/tails#20795+
Past priorities
- 2025
- 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 Q4
- Frontdesk (@boyska)
- Upgrade to Debian 13 and release 7.0 (P165):
-
Post-release feedback & fixes
-
- Team organization
-
Define Tails Team priorities & roadmap for 2026 (tails/tails#20795) (everyone, late October to mid-November sprint)
-
- KTLO & sustainability
-
Upgrade Tor Browser to new ESR (P165) (tails#20771) (@anonym) -
Upgrade Thunderbird to new ESR (P165) (tails#20772 (closed)) (@anonym) -
Remove support for BitTorrent download (tails#19275) -
Simplify sequence of wrappers to start Tor Browser (tails#21185) (@anonym) -
Upgrade Vagrant basebox to Debian Trixie (tails#20249) (@anonym) -
GitLab CI: use Debian 13 (Trixie) containers (tails#21018) (@intrigeri)
-
- Recurring P165 (OTF FOSS Sustainability Fund) work — until the end of November
- A.2 Prototype and collaborate on using Arti
-
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) (@boyska) -
Update our UX Debt backlog (tails#20088) (stretch goal) -
Cheapest bits of Tor Connection bundle (stretch goal) -
Improve website onboarding (tails#20777) (@sajolida)
-
- C.2 Act on feedback received by email and in-app tool
-
Explain better the administration password when asking for it (tails#15268 (closed)) (@boyska) -
Windows 11 fixes (@sajolida) -
New reset procedure (tails#21132) -
New start procedure (tails#21133)
-
-
Some more? (candidates: tails#20785 (closed)) (stretch goal)
-
- 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) -
Test suite: wait_for_ponytail sometimes fails i... (tails#21211) -
Test suite: after recent Chutney updates it som... (tails#21201)
-
- A.2 Prototype and collaborate on using Arti
- Support fundraising efforts
-
Switch to customized about:tor as the homepage of Tor Browser (tails#21222) -
Ship a first iteration (@sajolida, @anonym) - It's OK if worst case it's a non-customized
about:torfor 7.1.
- It's OK if worst case it's a non-customized
-
Upstream our about:tor customization (tails#21251) (@intrigeri)
-
-
Uplift VPN project to operations (tails#21190) (@intrigeri) -
Explore VPN browser with VPN managed by NetworkManager (tails#21189) (@boyska) -
Decide between "VPN Browser" and "System VPN + Tor Browser" (tails#19902)
-
-
Metrics (tails#19476) -
Ping to check the status (@boyska) -
Determine our next steps
-
-
- Converge workflows and tooling towards Tor's
-
Next steps on Contribute (tails#20768): -
Low-hanging fruits that we can do on our own, as planned initially for 2025? (@intrigeri) (stretch goal as cost/benefit is not amazing)
-
-
User support parity with other Tor products (tails#20773): kickstart the conversation (@intrigeri) -
Talk with sysadmins about the future of Jenkins (tails#20774) (@intrigeri)
-
Boards:
- Tails Team in 2025Q4 with no milestone
- UX in 2025Q4 with no milestone
- UX Team Roadmap (to check sajolida's capacity for Tails)