[Tails-dev] Contributing to Tails: our experience

We realize how difficult it is to get feedback from our own users so we
decided that it was important that we share our experience contributing
to Tails.

We love Tails and were eager to contribute. When the call for help with
ticket 11198 was posted to the Tails home page, we jumped in.

Within a couple of weeks, we had converted a number of scripts. Although our
only feedback was from sajoida who let us know that the git structure was
correct, we continued to convert scripts as time allowed. By the end of June,
we had converted all but 1 of the scripts over 30 lines in /usr/local/bin
and /usr/local/sbin plus the associated libraries.

>From our viewpoint the nightmare scenario is that the translation introduces
a serious security bug. Of course we've checked and written rudimentary
tests, but we're human. It's just good security for someone other than us to
look at the code.

It has now been more than 6 months and the original ticket has been split
into multiple tickets. Sajoida keeps suggesting action, but the target slips
from one version to the next. Because of the delays, it's very likely that
much of our work will have to be re-done to accommodate new changes to the
bash scripts. One possible path is to replace one script at a time, starting
with the least critical.

There are bumps in any software development. But this experience won't
encourage volunteers.

Tails is crucial for many people including us. Hopefully this feedback helps
Tails become even better.


GoodCrypto - Warning: Anyone could have read this message. Use encryption, it works.