[tor-reports] Tails report for August, 2012

Tails folks tails at boum.org
Thu Sep 6 20:53:34 UTC 2012 

Here is the report of the many things that happened around Tails in
August, 2012.

Tails has been started and successfully connected to the Tor network
around 64.000 times in August. That makes a boot every 41 seconds on
average. We know this since Tails checks if a new release is available
once the network is connected each boot.

Releases
========

Version 0.13 is coming! We have released the first
release candidate, along with a call for testing:
<https://tails.boum.org/news/test_0.13-rc1/>

Unless something nasty happens, Tails 0.13 should be released on
September 11th.

Tails summit
============

Seven mighty Tails developers gathered for a ten-day summit, including a
day trip to the sea. The meeting was exhausting, inspiring and
productive. We have tied up some discussions that had a year long
history, made plans for the future, and worked on a few annoying bug
fixes and cool hacks.

So, what happened during Tails summit? (Not in any relevant order.)

* Had an 'About us' go-around.
* Done a 2D barometer about 'Tails in 3 years', with some questions on
  the future of Tails.
* Shared knowledge about what has been done on automated testing so far.
* Tried to use a forked version of memtest86+ to wipe memory.
* Started a 'wipe_memory' module for GRUB.
* Decided to go for OSQA to replace the forum.
* Rewrote the documentation for new translators.
* Clarified our roadmap, at least until the 1.0 release.
* Worked on WhisperBack 1.6, which uses an external, dedicated
  GnuPG keyring.
* Finalized the hardware configuration of our future server, lizard, and
  discussed the basics of the sysadmin work.
* Finalized and merged the `bugfix/remove_ttdnsd_from_the_loop` branch.
* Merged the `feature/wireless-regulation` branch.
* Merged the `feature/precompiled-locales` branch.
* Started a `feature/do-not-build-the-forum` branch and got it merged.
* Labelled a bunch of tasks and bugs as "broken windows".
* Designed an amazing release plan.
* Wrote documentation about "Tails does no boot" and created a "Known
  issues" page.
* Pinged Jake about disabling firewire and the likes.
* Tried to define meaningful/efficient organisation methods.
* Created an internal private chatroom for emergencies.
* Finished some ooold work:
  - `feature/firewall_lockdown`
  - `feature/assymetric_gpgApplet` [sic!]
* Killed some bugs:
  - `todo/hide_FoxyProxy_unreachable_proxy_message`.
  - the unusable 'TailsData' volume is now hidden in Nautilus.
* Done some initial work on `todo/persistence_preset_-_NM_connections`.
* Created an internal document repository for private stuff.
* More or less defined our target userbase.
* Prepared a new contract proposal for sponsor Bravo.
* Thought through our initial strategy with respect to Tor stream
  isolation.
* Drafted a plan for VPN support.
* Calculated statistics on the state of translations on the website.
* Created a Twitter account.
* Designed a plan for advertising test images to more people.
* Decided to use torbrowser, and have rough plan for the next things
  to do.
* Crippled a laptop due to coffee.
* Outlined what Tails needs from a task manager application.
* Benchmarked several task managers.
* Handled conspiranoia about our website.
* Clarified our position and priorities regarding Tails' network
  fingerprint, both on the "local" side (ISP, local router) and "remote"
  side (Exit node, web server).
* Decided to accept Bitcoin donations (stay tuned!) but we still do not
  have the resources to accept cash or Paypal donations.
* Tried to send a postcard to jvoisin but missed a postal address,
  *sigh*.
* Suffered and went to the dentist and suffered again. Now pending.
* We had a "food master challenge".
* We generated new GnuPG keys and signatures.
* We tried with limited success to use hardware GnuPG cards.
* We reported bugs in Vidalia.
* Did not upload any package to Debian.
* Researched how to properly fix a minor bug in Vidalia's AppArmor
  policy. Proposed a plan to upstream AppArmor.
* Published our Puppet modules.
* Extracted some more package sources from our Git repository
  for our future APT repositories.
* Wrote a collaboration proposal to Reporters without Borders.
* Answered conspiranoiac forum posts.
* Saw the years-old Metacity bug fixed in Wheezy.
* No one got hurt.
* Did not drink that much, thanks to antibiotics (at least for
  some of us).
* We agreed on calling our sponsors 'Alpha', 'Bravo' and so on.
* We have some preliminary fillings for the next round of the grant
  proposal from sponsor Charlie.
* We refined how changes were incorporated into Tails.
* Decided to switch to a time-based release schedule.
  Some details have to be sorted out, still.
* Thought of a plan to improve the tails-greeter GUI and user
  experience.
* Discussed tools used for user support, how we handle the workload,
  how we will.
* Discussed how we can make paid workers and volunteers (who sometimes
  are the same persons, really) work together happily.
* Clarified loooads of development processes so that we avoid the need
  for a project manager, and know better how to get changes into Tails.
  Expect us to fill the contribute section of the Tails website with
  that.
* Designed "Release Managers" and "Welcome and Annoying Nitpicker"
  roles, and scheduled the first shifts.
* Discussed possibly moving to the `tails.is` domain.
* Have a list of people to reach for each existing language team or
  language requests.
* Wrote a list of what we have done.
* Wrote that we wrote a list of what we have done.
* We eventually shut up and went `$HOME`.
* After some serious drifts we decided not writing anything anymore on
  the "done during the summit" list.

Outreach and support
====================

As we would like to get more people to test our release candidates, we
decided to experiment with relaying our news on Twitter. You can follow
the project at <https://twitter.com/Tails_live>.

We acknowledge that Twitter is inferior in terms of freedom to many
other Internet protocols and tools. But the content is public and will
be reserved for announcements. It feels like an acceptable trade-off to
spread our information where people read it.

Again, please note this is not a channel to contact us. We also have no
intents to spread on other medias that are dangerous in terms of
privacy, control, centralization and censorship. If you want to
contact us and hope to get a response, please use the proper
communication channels:

 * public discussions: <https://tails.boum.org/contribute/talk/>
 * private contacts: <https://tails.boum.org/support/talk/>

We have received 40 reports sent using WhisperBack. Our receiving relay
was regularly offline this month due to hardware issue.

The forum received 639 new messages, 73 of them signed by "Tails".

Code
====

The following branches that had pending reviews were merged:
 * Using precompiled locales.
 * Incremental updates.
 * Support for live-boot 3.x.
 * WhisperBack 1.6 (see details bellow).

Misc fixes and improvements that will show up in 0.13:
 * Fix the System Monitor applet by adding gnome-system-monitor.
 * Remove unused variables in htpdate.
 * Remove residual DHCP DNS settings from resolvconf.
 * Properly handle wireless per-country frequency regulation.
 * Hide the unusable 'TailsData' volume from Nautilus.
 * ttdnsd is now out of the default name resolution loop. This
   should fix hard to track resolution errors.
 * I2P has been updated to 0.9.1.

The ikiwiki forum is not anymore in the bundled static website. This
results in an important build speed improvement.

A little more progress has been made on building Tails for the next
upcoming Debian release (codename Wheezy):
<http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/wheezy>

Started work on including Tor 0.2.3. This is targeted at 0.14:
<http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature/Tor_0.2.3>

There is a possible fix for the pause during the boot process that
probably appeared with Tails 0.12:
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-August/001524.html>

Some more sorting has been made in order to retrofit our custom packages
in our future APT repositories and remove them from our Git repository.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/APT_repository/>
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/split_Git/>

WhisperBack, our encrypted bug reporting application got a lot of
improvements:
 * Load help from the config file instead of hardcoding it
 * Sanitize debugging info
 * L10n: import translations for Arabic, Czech Spanish, Euskera, French,
   Dutch, Polish, Portuguese and Russian
 * Improve UI especially for small screens
 * Use a dedicated GnuPG keyring

On-going discussions
====================

Deactivate PCMCIA, ExpressCard and Firewire?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-August/001444.html>

How to deal with roadmap and broken windows?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-August/001453.html>

Allow to access other systems in the local network?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-August/001487.html>

Disabling the 'PC speaker'?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-August/001504.html>

Call for review of plans for stream isolation:
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-August/001532.html>

Documentation and website
=========================

Pages in the 'Documentation' section now link from one page to the next
inside a same section, thanks to the new trail plugin for Ikiwiki.

Update the Windows documentation to use MD5 Reborned Hasher instead of
the obsolete CheckIt:
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-August/001407.html>

Many improvements to the guide for translators:
<https://tails.boum.org/contribute/how/translate/>

Clarify some steps in the release process. Document better how to
release Tails custom packages:
<https://tails.boum.org/contribute/release_process/>

Update the roadmap page:
<https://tails.boum.org/contribute/roadmap/>

Translations
============

Some important work was done to translate more of our website to
Portuguese, 16% more of its strings got translated during this month.

We also received many patches for our custom programs in Russian,
Arabic, and Farsi.

Funding
=======

We sent a proposal to sponsor Bravo about funding developers for October
and November to work on our user support channels, documentation and
hardware support.

-- 
Tails folks

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