Call for participation!

Are you into GNOME development and want to participate to Tails? Do you want to improve your GTK or GNOME Shell theming skills while supporting users needing privacy and stealth? Consider porting the "Windows camouflage" of Tails to GNOME 3.14.

What is the Windows camouflage?

Tails documentation reads "if you are using a computer in public you may want to avoid attracting unwanted attention by changing the way Tails looks into something that resembles Microsoft Windows 8." This is what we call the "Windows camouflage".

Why is it useful?

We got reports that users have been arrested while using a privacy-enhancing distribution because their screen looked very different from others, which raised suspicion. It's why a Windows camouflage has been added to Tails.

What should be done?

Current Tails is based on GNOME 3.8 in "Fallback" mode. We are currently upgrading Tails on top of the upcoming version on Debian ("Jessie") which is based on GNOME 3.14. The Windows camouflage should be upgraded to the last version of GTK and ported from GNOME Panel to GNOME shell. That includes GTK and GNOME Shell theming through CSS as well as writing a custom GNOME Shell extension.

Why do we need you?

The team currently working on Tails is very busy and decided to focus on the core or the upgrade rather than on the Windows camouflage. We currently plan to go ahead with the initial Tails Jessie release even if the Windows camouflage is missing. However, we would love to ship a proper Windows camouflage and think it's a good occasion for you to give a hand. We'll provide support to anybody volunteering and work together on integrating the new theme to upcoming Tails Jessie snapshots.

Where should you start?

Please read update camouflage for jessie, then write to tails-dev@boum.org. This is a public mailing list. Please subscribe!