[Tails-news] Results of the 2020 donation campaign

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Author: Tails - News
Date:  
To: amnesia-news
Subject: [Tails-news] Results of the 2020 donation campaign
Thank you so much, on behalf of our entire team, to everyone who donated
during our end-of-year campaign!

We raised $132 750 from 2 799 donors. That's an amazing 40% more than last
year and 30% of our yearly budget. These excellent numbers mean more
sustainability for Tails and ultimately better tools for you and all our
users.

Here is what we did since October with your help:

* From the number of automatic upgrades, we know that Tails was used 20% more in 2020 than in 2019. It's our biggest increase since 2016.

* **We designed and tested usability improvements to the Persistent Storage and the connection to Tor.**

We know from previous surveys and usability research that these are 2 critical
aspects to improve the usability of Tails, especially for less technical users
and people experiencing heavy online censorship, for example in Asia.

Your donations will help us implement as many of these improvements as
possible during 2021. You can already have a look at the new designs in our
blueprints on the [Persistent
Storage](https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/blueprints/-/wikis/Persistent-
Storage-redesign) and the [connection to
Tor](https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/blueprints/-/wikis/network_connection).

We always test the usability of major features with users before releasing
them. It was particularly exciting this time because we tested our design
remotely using [paper prototyping](https://simplysecure.org/blog/formative-
testing) with people in Greece, Mexico, Italy, Uganda, Germany, Ireland, and
Malaysia!

* **We simplified the verification procedure on our download page** by [replacing the _Tails Verification_ extension](https://tails.boum.org/news/verification_extension_deprecation/index.en.html) with similar JavaScript code that runs [directly on the download page](https://tails.boum.org/install/download/index.en.html).

This simple usability improvement had a huge impact and 60% more downloads are
verified and secure now than with the verification extension.

* **We automated the most time-consuming parts of our release process.**

We estimate that we divided roughly by 2 the amount of time, work, and stress
needed for us to publish a new version of Tails.

For you, this means a quicker response time in case of important security
vulnerability and more time available for us to work on new features and
improvements.

* **We hired a new core developer, boyska.**

boyska has very strong experience in the technical aspects of operating
systems and software development, and also in the social implications of
technology, Free Software, and privacy.

boyska will be key to bringing more improvements to Tails more quickly.

Thanks again for supporting Tails!



URL: https://tails.boum.org/news/donations_2020/index.en.html
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