SecuredDrop has learnt so much from engaging with the localization community, most recently in Valencia and from there to Rome, the feedback and people continue to foster innovation.
The SecureDrop project is part of a community helping individuals and organizations protect their privacy and anonymity:
Tor, Tails, EFF, SecureDrop, OnionShare, Guardian Project, F-Droid, Riseup, Onion Browser etc. They all need to be localized in a sustainable way. For many years, and for many of them, Localizationlab has been instrumental in helping localization needs, bringing together a world of localizers and developers, bridging the gap between cultures. Last week in Rome these projects met and collectively agreed it was time to go one step further:
A user friendly Libre Software localization platform, where localizers and developers efficiently work together and communicate. GlobaLeaks also joined in on the effort. Hans-Christoph Steiner from the Guardian project will put together an OTF funding request to make progress in this direction, so that paid people on various projects means they have the time to migrate away from the centralized proprietary platform most of them use today. The funds will also be used to make inroads on user friendliness, and ease the transition. It will be a few months before this comes into fruition, and the SecureDrop project fully supports and participates in this initiative.
Simulatenously, the SecureDrop project now launches a fundraising campaign, so that individuals can finance baby steps toward the same ideal. It will be spent by volunteers to address the most pressing issues identified by the UX Team. The long term goal of this ongoing fundraising is to work from the angle of decentrilization towards enabling a horizontal community of volunteers providing localization based on Libre Software infrastructure. SecureDrop is commited to move towards this goal by implementing baby steps justified by solid user research.
SecureDrop has already made the move onto a copyleft translation platform, Weblate. An achievement in its entirety, made possible solely through a one-person volunteer effort. Weblate is a great tool of great importance. Contributing back is a way to show gratitude. One of our UX team members has kept busy trying to improve the source strings in it. With the attention and labour put in by volunteer translators on our own platform, we want to use what time we have left over to extend a hand in joining forces and communities.
We own the tools we use by making them ours, detailing needs, writing bug reports, and in turn fixing them. The process will be documented, and you can read about it here on the blog in the coming months.
If you would like to give of your monetary resources, please pitch in at https://liberapay.com/SecureDrop Liberapay is a new Libre Software service that makes it possible to fund community intiative.
Contributing to SecureDrop there makes it possible to fund development of needed localization features. Part of this initiative is finding those issues, detailing them, and making ends meet by having money to spend on others.
We want to give back to the great community of translation volunteers that SecureDrop relies on, it makes things much smoother to have a fund to put to good use when problems arise or a solution means putting aside a lot of time for someone.
