GrapheneOS has been the target of ongoing personal attacks against the former lead dev. None of the claims are true. GOS devs have been swatted and harassed on multiple occasions.
I suggest you examine the baseless claims against the (former) lead dev more closely - they are fabrication.
(He has been harassed so much, with death threats and the like, that he has recently stepped down as lead dev).
I use GrapheneOS, and I've donated to its development. To say that "None of the claims are true" and that they are "baseless" is incorrect.
Louis Rossman was a supporter of the project until he and Daniel had a failing out in which Daniel behaved inappropriately [1], all over a Youtube comment. There's proof for that and other claims [2, 4, 5].
Daniel can be a talented developer, privacy advocate and asshole at the same time.
It's sad to see him (and others, like yourself) say stuff like "examine the baseless claims", without providing any sources.
After all the drama with Calyxos, Techlore, Louis Rossmann etc, at some point one has to notice a pattern of behavior.
Think about all the products you purchase. Do you really think that in each case, the CEO of the company behind that product has a "pattern of behaviour" we approve of? [I really doubt it.] But here we are concerned about personality quirks of a guy developing a valuable free product.
I think you are engaging in Whataboutism [1]. This does not make for a constructive discussion.
But lets take what you said in good faith.
I imagine most products I buy have a not so amazing CEO. That does not prevent me from criticizing one of the products I use most often. Furthermore, as the (former) lead developer, he had or has control of the signing keys, simply deleting (as he has done in the past) them would cause significant damage.
If I had the time, knowledge and money. Which I don't.
So, I rely and support others that do to ensure I have a functioning and constantly running system without much maintenance work, except donating one a year.
> But I am thoroughly on his side when it comes to the CalyxOS and Techlore drama.
Sure, that could be argued either way. To be honest, it's too complicated for me to really care about. I think GrapheneOS is a solid project, currently.
My biggest problem is that Daniel refuses to apologize or even acknowledge these issues. I try to judge people not by their mistakes, but by their responses to these mistakes.
My worry with GrapheneOS is that the same thing to Copperhead might happen to it. I don't know or care who was right/wrong in that situation. But the end result was that Daniel deleted the signing keys, so I am worried that if Daniel is pressured form either real or imaginary attacks, he might do the same to GrapheneOS.
I want the project to go on for as long as possible, and part of that requires honest reflection.
> My biggest problem is that Daniel refuses to apologize or even acknowledge these issues. I try to judge people not by their mistakes, but by their responses to these mistakes.
I think this is very fair, and very unfortunate as well.
The issue with Copperhead was that they wanted to make it proprietary against Daniel's will (an oversimplification). I'm on Daniel's side on this issue.
The way they're currently in the process of setting up a "GrapheneOS Foundation" to ensure it stays open and not-for-profit _should_ ensure this never happens again. But the issue they are having is that a public figurehead is likely to get harassed and Doxed by malicious parties like what's happened to Daniel - but a real name is required to be on paper legally (also an oversimplification).
> I want the project to go on for as long as possible, and part of that requires honest reflection.
I agree. And I think this is very hard to discuss in official graphene circles with official graphene members+devs because they always always always shy away from discussing meta-issues and comment threads, forum threads, etc are removed once conversations go too far into it. I see both sides - they want to focus on development and the project itself - but also, these discussions need to be had.
From a friend who used to use GrapheneOS and flashed back.
You want that guy pushing code to your phone?