Air Project Charter

Founding document — Version 1.0

Air is a Linux desktop environment whose foundational quality will determine the trust that users and developers place in it. The Charter sets out the values that guide the project, distinct from technical choices (recorded in the ADRs) and from engineering methodology (recorded in the Engineering Principles). Five principles constitute Air’s identity as a project.

Principle 1 — Credible rather than extraordinary

Air does not aim to be the best, the most beautiful, the fastest, or the most secure in absolute terms. Air aims to be credible: a system one can trust for daily use, that does its job without noise or display. Credibility is built through consistency and care, not through marketing.

This posture stands against the temptation, frequent in both free and commercial software, to seek distinction through superlative claims. Air rejects this path: better a reliable and slightly dull environment than a spectacular and fragile one. Technical work is directed toward robustness, predictability, and durability.

Principle 2 — Productive day to day

Air is a working tool, not a technology showcase. Design choices privilege what makes the user productive: fast startup, applications that launch quickly, smooth navigation between applications, efficient window management, powerful keyboard shortcuts, coherent integration between applications.

No unnecessary friction. No lengthy animations that look nice but slow things down. No intrusive notifications. The operating system serves the user, never the other way around.

This requirement informs the design of interface frameworks and the selection of default behaviours. An Air application should be launched and usable quickly even on modest hardware. A user interaction should reach a tangible result as soon as possible.

Principle 3 — Trust by default

Users should be able to trust Air without having to keep an eye on it. We know that user data is actively sought, monetised, and exfiltrated by default in most commercial ecosystems. Air is built not to do this, ever.

No user telemetry. No mandatory accounts. No forced cloud. No data sharing by default. Capability-based application sandboxing protects apps from each other and protects user data from all of them. The system is designed so that a cautious user can keep their data truly on their machine.

This trust is materialised technically by the architectural choices (strict sandboxing, capabilities, telemetry strictly opt-in and limited to developer tooling) and by transparency (fully free code, open governance, auditable data schemas).

Principle 4 — Longevity of hardware

Air is designed to run on machines for a long time. No “this hardware is no longer supported after 4 years”. No planned obsolescence driven by the growing weight of new versions. A 2015 Intel MacBook, a mid-range 2018 PC, a Raspberry Pi 4, must remain fully usable under Air in 2030 and beyond.

This constraint orients design: we optimise for fluidity on modest hardware, not for maximum exploitation of high-end machines. Air’s Engineering Principles (upfront validation, optimisation after measurement, modest and varied hardware targets) serve this objective as well.

This commitment has a technical corollary: long-term kernel support for the target architectures, a commitment not to raise minimum hardware requirements from one major version to the next, and continuous validation of Air on the reference machines of the certified hardware catalogue.

Principle 5 — Independence and institutional durability

Air is governed by a non-profit foundation (to be established), independent of any single commercial actor. The code is fully open source under the MPL 2.0 licence. The funding model is diversified to avoid any critical dependence on a single sponsor. The “Air” trade mark is intended to become the property of the foundation and protected against hostile appropriation.

This is not an ideological posture: it is a condition of long-term user trust. A system whose governance can be bought is not a system one can entrust with one’s data.

Governance evolves with the project (BDFL during the incubation phase, Technical Committee as the community grows, Foundation at maturity) along a documented path. The progressive transmission of the project to established Linux distributors is part of the plan: Air aims to become a credible desktop environment, distributable by the Linux actors that already exist, without seeking to replace them.

Status and evolution

These five principles are immutable. Air’s ADRs and technical specifications conform to them by construction. Any evolution of the Charter would require exceptional community consensus, formalised through a dedicated RFC and adopted by the governance mechanism in force.

When a technical choice arises with several options, we decide by checking whether any option violates a Charter principle. If so, it is excluded.

Document licence: MPL 2.0 Status: Founding document, immutable.