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.
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).
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.
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.
We want to produce Tails in a way that encourages participation, which requires publicly documenting what can be improved.As Tailsis created in such a transparent manner, anyone is encouraged to participate, review it and point out problems.
We will always do our best to create secure and usable tools. We will never willingly include backdoors or malicious software nor will we cooperate with any entity wanting us to harm our users.
