Hi!
2.5 years ago we added the Electrum lightweight Bitcoin client
to Tails. It's hard to tell for sure how popular this feature is, but
the fact is that at least a few people (who either are already using
Electrum in Tails, or would like to) are very vocal about their needs.
It's good because it helps us know what they need. But we're
maintaining this feature on a best effort basis: we fix serious
regressions when we can but we can't put lots of efforts into
big improvements.
For example, a number of people have requested that we upgrade
Electrum to a newer version, e.g. to fix some bug or to add support
for offline signing and specific hardware wallet (sometimes they just
want the last version but are not able to tell why, which is not
actionable so let's ignore those). This is not something we can do
right now, and we need help to satisfy those needs.
If someone here particularly cares about Electrum support in Tails,
here's what you can do:
- wrt. bringing new features to Tails: get involved in the Debian
package maintenance and maintain Electrum in stable backports
(currently: stretch-backports)
- wrt. fixing bugs (if no good backport is actively maintained): get
involved in the Debian package maintenance and fix in Debian
*stable* any important bugs and issues that make the version
included in there irrelevant/obsolete
- in any case:
* track upstream development closely, in order to pick the best
versions for Debian unstable/testing and stable backports,
or to identify bugs that shall be fixed in Debian stable;
* act as a liaison with Tails developers to let us know when we
should upgrade to which version (e.g. "there's now
a well-maintained backport, please ship it").
Thanks in advance!
Cheers,
--
intrigeri
