On 20/09/13 11:51, Bunz Karsten wrote:
> Dear Sirs and Madams,
>
> as a journalist of Germanys most successful monthly PC-magazine CHIP I
> am currently researching content for the enclosed DVD, which should
> contain branded Software. Because of this I would like to offer our
> readers Your free software “Tails” (if possible including upcoming
> versions) and distribute it as an additional service on any future
> CD/DVD, ISO-download and via CHIP-App-Tablet edition. Therefore I would
> be highly grateful if you would give me your approval.
Dear Karsten,
Thanks for your interest in Tails.
Tails is free software so you can include it in your magazine, as long
as you mention its credits and licensing terms.
A problem we see with distributing Tails already installed on a device,
either DVD or USB stick, is that the user cannot verify the integrity of
the operating system. We provide and insist a lot on people verifying
the integrity, and authenticity of the ISO image they download, see:
https://tails.boum.org/download/index.en.html#verify
But there is no way of doing that on a device that is already installed.
At least not for the moment. We believe that you should take that into
account not to give your reader a false sense of security while using a
software they cannot trust.
You can solve that either by:
- Stating clearly that the installed version can be used to try it
out but cannot not be trusted for serious use and anonymity.
- Maybe providing a plain ISO image and explaining how they can
verify it themselves.
- Possibly do both if you have enough space on your DVD.
If you are shipping a multiboot DVD with several operating systems on a
single DVD, also take into account that Tails has specific boot option
that needs to be respected to guarantee its security features.
Also take into account our release schedule not to distribute an
outdated version or a version which is reaching its end of life. Tails
is released every 6 weeks. Tails 0.20.1 came out on September 19, so
Tails 0.21 should be released around October 31, and the following one
around December 12.
