~ / desktops / charter

Secure Desktops Mailing List Charter

0.1 Charter

0.1.1 What is Secure Desktops?

Secure Desktops is a mailing list for the discussion of security and privacy challenges in open source desktop computing systems. It is also meant to serve as a forum for collaboration between projects and developers working towards the goal of building secure and trustworthy desktop operating systems and applications.

0.1.2 What is appropriate content?

Guidelines on what kind of discussion is acceptable on the Secure Desktops list:

• Engineering challenges in building secure desktop computing environments
• UX challenges
• Privacy challenges
• Announcements of open source projects related to these challenges
• Related technical white papers
• Announcements or updates for open source projects
• Collaboration between developers working on different open source projects
• Building secure computing environments for mobile devices

0.1.3 What is inappropriate content?

• Announcements or papers about the claims of non-open source projects, vendors, or products
• Marketing content related to non-open source projects, vendors, or products

0.1.4 Posting guidelines

• The primary language of the list is English
• Please adhere to general netiquette
• Quoting should not exceed what is necessary for contextual understanding - messages posted to the list are archived on the web
• HTML email is discouraged
• Attachments may be included if necessary (PGP/MIME, code, etc.)
• Please configure out-of-office responders to exclude the list

0.1.5 Is the list moderated?

Yes, for non-members. If there is a spam problem then general moderation may be enabled.

0.1.6 Who is the moderator?

David Mirza Ahmad of Subgraph (dma at subgraph.com), as named in the charter.

0.2 List management (historical)

The list was managed with GNU Mailman. Subscription ran through desktops-join@secure-os.org and the Mailman web interface; public archives were served under /pipermail/desktops/. Those archive URLs now redirect to the heritage page, which summarizes the list's notable threads.

Why this charter still matters

The charter captures a definition of desktop security that has aged remarkably well: open source as a precondition for trust, collaboration across projects rather than competition, and an explicit refusal of closed-source marketing. Our guides to Qubes OS, Tails, Whonix and hardened Linux are written in the spirit of this document.

Source: secure-os.org/desktops/charter/, as archived by the Internet Archive (snapshot 2016-04-02). Restored June 2026.