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<!-- Note for translators: Starting from here the content is a copy of the Social Contract. -->

This is a promise from our contributors community to the rest of the world, affirming a commitment to our beliefs.

1. By creating Tails we try to provide usable tools for anonymity and privacy

We believe that privacy, the free exchange of ideas, and equal access to information are essential to free and open societies. Through our community standards and the tools we create, we provide means that empower all people to protect and advance these ideals.

2. Tails is and will remain free software

Equal access to information includes the free availability of our code and documentation as well as the transparency of our decision making processes.

All the components of Tails that we create ourselves are, and will be, licensed in a manner consistent with the [Debian Free Software Guidelines](https://www.debian.org/social_contract).

Tails will always be free to use, remix, adapt and distribute. As the only exceptions to this rule, Tails includes:

a minor part of non-free firmware in order to work on as much hardware as possible;

a few pieces of software whose source code is public but not compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines; they are needed to support important use cases.

3. We will give back to the Free Software community

Tails is a privacy-oriented [Debian Derivative](https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives).

We want usable security and privacy-oriented tools to become a standard for the Free Software community as a whole.

Bug fixes, code improvements, Debian packaging, as well as work on usability issues will be sent upstream whenever possible. This way, our modifications will benefit others and can be improved upon further by a wider audience of people.

4. We encourage participation and transparency

We want to produce Tails in a way that encourages participation, which requires publicly documenting what can be improved. As Tails is created in such a transparent manner, anyone is encouraged to participate, review it and point out problems.

5. We will never harm our users intentionally