Acknowledgments

PAI stands on the shoulders of giants. Every project listed below is credited under its own license; PAI does not relicense any of them. Where a project is bundled in the PAI distribution, its full license text travels with the binary it applies to.

CREDITS.md is an accepted alias for this file. This file (ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.md) is the canonical one — if both exist, prefer this.

Upstream projects

Base OS

• Debian — the foundational GNU/Linux distribution PAI is assembled on. License: various (mostly GPL/LGPL/BSD/MIT). https://www.debian.org/

Desktop

• Sway — Wayland compositor providing the default PAI desktop session. License: MIT. https://swaywm.org/
• wlroots — modular Wayland compositor library powering Sway. License: MIT. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots
• Waybar — status bar used by the PAI desktop. License: MIT. https://github.com/Alexays/Waybar

AI

• Ollama — local LLM runtime PAI ships for offline inference. License: MIT. https://ollama.com/
• llama.cpp — inference engine underpinning much of the local model stack. License: MIT. https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp
• Hugging Face model authors — the creators of the open-weights models PAI optionally downloads. Licenses vary per model. https://huggingface.co/

Privacy

• The Tor Project — anonymity network used by PAI's optional Tor integration. License: BSD 3-Clause. https://www.torproject.org/
• UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) — default firewall front-end. License: GPL-3.0. https://launchpad.net/ufw
• macchanger — MAC address randomization utility. License: GPL-2.0. https://github.com/alobbs/macchanger

Crypto

• Bitcoin Core — reference Bitcoin node and wallet. License: MIT. https://bitcoincore.org/
• Monero — privacy-preserving cryptocurrency node and wallet. License: BSD 3-Clause. https://www.getmonero.org/
• Electrum — lightweight Bitcoin wallet. License: MIT. https://electrum.org/

Build

• debootstrap — bootstraps the Debian base used to assemble PAI. License: GPL-2.0. https://wiki.debian.org/Debootstrap
• squashfs-tools — builds the compressed root filesystem for the ISO. License: GPL-2.0. https://github.com/plougher/squashfs-tools
• xorriso — authors the bootable ISO image. License: GPL-3.0. https://www.gnu.org/software/xorriso/
• minisign — signs and verifies release artifacts. License: ISC. https://jedisct1.github.io/minisign/

Website

• Astro — framework powering the PAI website. License: MIT. https://astro.build/
• Tailwind CSS — utility-first styling used across the site. License: MIT. https://tailwindcss.com/

Inspiration

These projects shaped how PAI thinks about privacy-focused operating systems. PAI does not include their code, but owes them intellectual debt.

• Tails — https://tails.net/
• Qubes OS — https://www.qubes-os.org/
• GrapheneOS — https://grapheneos.org/
• Kodachi — https://www.digi77.com/linux-kodachi/

Financial sponsors

None yet. If you are interested in sponsoring PAI, please open an issue.

Individual thanks

Placeholder for individuals who contributed design, legal, or moral support outside the commit history.