Contributing to the project
We need an enormous amount of help to make Awala realise its full potential. Read on to learn how you can help us get there.
We recommend that prospective contributors familiarise themselves with the code of conduct and the Awala Way.
Current priority areas
As we’re getting ready to test the network and launch the VPN, the number one priority is to spread the word about Awala, especially amongst diaspora communities. We’d really appreciate any help getting the word out!
We’d also welcome any help with:
- Testing Letro and Awala on Android, and giving us feedback on the forum.
- Small bug fixes and documentation improvements.
Upcoming priority areas
Please bear with us whilst we pave the way for people to contribute to the items below:
- Build or prototype desktop apps.
- Translate the apps to your native language(s).
Code contributions
Please refer to our documentation for contributors on GitHub.
Protocol and code reviews
An earlier version of the protocol suite was independently assessed and we’ll arrange for the initial implementation of Awala to be independently audited too. However, we want Awala to be throughly reviewed before we put it in front of at-risk users, so please:
- If you have a background in cryptography and/or networking, consider reviewing the specs, and the apps and libraries we’ve built so far — in particular:
- The core Awala libraries for Node.js and the JVM.
- Awala Gateway for Android.
- Awala-Internet Gateway (Node.js, Google Cloud Platform).
- If you’re an SRE or SecDevOps engineer, consider reviewing the cloud infrastructure for the Awala-Internet Gateway instances operated by Relaycorp.
Please refer to our security policy if you find a security vulnerability.
Partnerships
If you’re an organisation interested in contributing to Awala, please contact Relaycorp.
Ancillary projects
We’d love to start the following projects, but they’re not within the scope of Awala strictly speaking and our resources are extremely limited, so it’s unlikely we’ll do so any time soon. We’d be willing to participate if someone else were to take the lead.
- Add 25519/448 support to PKI.js — at least X25519/X448 (RFC 8418) — so that we can use it.
- Research and document User Experience best practices in Delay-Tolerant Networking.
- Research and document practical implementations of steganography at scale, so that we can eventually use them. We’re particularly interested in approaches that wouldn’t turn into a whack-a-mole game with censors.