Re: [Tails-dev] Tails vs Electrum

sajolida wrote:
> intrigeri:
>> sajolida:
>>> I think the Foundation Team should follow up on this idea there.
>>
>> So far, Electrum hasn't been part of our mission but even if we don't
>> do the work ourselves, I agree we should at least provide guidance
>> wrt. what solution would be acceptable or not for Tails.
>>
>> I won't have time for this in March but I've added this topic
>> to the agenda for the upcoming Foundation Team sprint (early April).
>
> It sounds good to take a decision early April. If it helps I could join
> the discussion as well.
>
> If this discussion leads to a removal of Electrum from Tails, we should
> also discuss whether we want to document how to use the AppImage on our
> website (which is pretty easy).
>
>>> In terms of priorities for the project. I'm personally really not
>>> thrilled at the idea of spending a lot of time dealing with this
>>> situation.
>>
>> Yep. That's in line with our decision a couple years ago to remove
>> Electrum unless someone stepped up to maintain its integration in
>> Tails. And then s7r did step up! (thanks :)
>>
>>> But I also guess that Electrum users are a good share of our
>>> user base and removing Electrum might make us loose users. Bitcoin users
>>> are also traditionally good donors and removing Electrum might make use
>>> loose donations.
>>
>> Good point. Data coming from Help Desk suggests that we have quite
>> a few users of Electrum indeed, or at least, the ones we have are
>> particularly vocal :)
>
> During our donation campaign 27% of our donations were in bitcoins.
>
> These were maybe not all people who would stop using Tails if we remove
> Electrum, but at least people having bitcoins and interested in Tails.


Or, if there are any downsides that prevent us from using the AppImage,
(I hope there won't be any as it seams our easiest move here), we can
always sponsor the maintenance upstream (Debian level).

mithrandi is of course interested into continuing to maintain Electrum
in Debian and will do so, but we should find other people also to work
as a team so he doesn't become the single point of failure, like it
happened this time. Unfortunately, I personally don't know how to do it
all by myself, but I'm willing to help with monetary payments for the
hours spent on this as well as donate testing infrastructure.

The thing is, it's not just `electrum` and `python-electrum` packages,
there are also hardware wallet / qr scanner packages that need to be
maintained and some of them don't have an active upstream, so the
situation gets more and more complicated as we need to also become
upstreams for something we don't know much about.

python-zbar for example has been orphaned by the maintainer, because it
doesn't have an active upstream, and someone needs to become an upstream
for it. python3-zbar doesn't exist in Debian yet. These are of course
optionales, Electrum can work without them in Tails with the downside of
missing some features (in this particular example, QR code scanning with
the webcam)- just pointing them out.


Making an exception and using the AppImage only for this particular tool
(Electrum) might be a good move, given it's the upstream's recommended
way to use it under Linux as well as other benefits we talked about in
previous emails to this thread. It's more comfortable for users to have
Electrum AppImage directly shipped after they burn the Tails ISO as
opposite to having to install it themselves following a tutorial, so if
the AppImage doesn't bring huge downsides for Tails, I say it's a good
move to keep these users happy. Then again, more people have to comment
here so best decision is taken. Deciding in April sounds very good to me
as well. Looking forward to learn about the notes of that meeting
regarding this topic.

I'm available to answer any questions regarding this topic either on
mail list or on private/direct email and I'd like to continue to be the
"bridge" between Electrum upstream and Tails, so everything works out in
harmony for everyone.