So what? Causing someone financial damages isn't illegal. Your boss causes you financial damages when they fire you. Your competitor causes you financial damages when they offer a discount.
If Micay was a 50% owner, sounds like he didn't do anything illegal. Immature maybe, which simply puts him at parity with the other party involved.
Yeah, that’s the issue. I don’t want people who behave immaturely, impulsively, or vindictively, having a key role in something as important as my phone os. I want stability, maturity, and thoughtfulness.
«In 2018, matters between Micay and Donaldson came to a head over Donaldson’s desire to pursue business deals with criminal organizations, and his attempts to compromise the security of CopperheadOS, including by proposing license enforcement and remote updating systems that would allow third-parties to have access to users’ phones. As part of this process, Donaldson began to demand that Micay provide Donaldson with the “signing keys” - i.e. the credentials required to verify the authenticity of releases of CopperheadOS. Donaldson advised that, in order to secure certain new business, potential customers required access to the Keys.»
Micay is rightfully paranoia, just having a GOS phone makes some government agencies quite mad. There are many ways a project like GOS could die, disinformation could certainly kill it. Other projects don't help the case if they throw mud at it. Rather, they should focus on their real technical shortcomings, but such articles aren't written somehow. https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
EDIT
> Should I make my own fork?
They were able to improve. I don't think many of the often negative and ad-hominem critics would be able to endure such a pressure as they had in the past.
So you'd be willing to give up Linux because Linus cannot stop verbally abusing people to this day? Because that's what I did. I decided that any project where the main dev(s) openly abuse people in public, is the line I draw.
I know that is an extremely controversial choice that many people will disagree with, but it's my choice to make and I don't regret it.
While I appreciate the second line and think it's generally the right answer with FOSS projects, your speculation poisons the well.
That quotation is from another comment in this discussion. Sadly, it is the sort of personal attack on his mental state that has been commonplace here at HN and elsewhere for a long time. I caution all to avoid such commentary. My long experience in tech r&d has firmly convinced me that mental health and wellness challenges are widespread, and should not be weaponized. I hope that clarifies my comment for you.
If you prevent your grandparent from getting scammed, you've caused financial damages to the scammer.
Intelligence wanted in, and Donaldson seemingly would have been happy to oblige.
> From Wired:
> We understand that Daniel's recollection was not that James wanted to know more information about how the signing keys were stored, but that he wanted direct access to them.
> Did you suspect his request was tied to a deal he was brokering with a large defense contractor? Did you believe this would put the entirety of CopperheadOS’ user base at risk?
> Yes and yes.
Forking and building a separate build isnt dual signing, its just forking. You can do that right now with GrapheneOS and its build guide if you want.
Im not sure what you mean by the last part, GrapheneOS has been quite upfront with all of this from the start.
Reddit and IRC/etc logs from the period are illuminating, too.
According to the linked responses, the keys were not deleted because of disagreement over financial share, but over how the keys were to be used (in particular, in potentially dangerous security-wise ways), for which he did not want personal responsibility over (the keys belonged and used by him even before that project)
>Donaldson tried to make a deal with Phantom Secure, which ultimately didnt work out. Micay suspected other counterparties were linked to organized crime, but we cannot confirm those identities or ties on short notice. Donaldson began pursuing such deals before Micay left and continued afterward.
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/34369-original-grapheneos-r...
You can't believe someone who has constantly claimed things without receipts.
/e/OS (recipient of EU funding) and iodéOS are European projects that have not been singled out by the French government in smearing despite them having the similar self-professed goals to GrapheneOS. That they had any influence at all on the French government directly is speculated but not asserted.
CalyxOS/Techlore are blamed for being complicit in escalating the animosity and furore around what were initially low-key fallouts/disagreements. This led to GrapheneOS/Micay escalating to defend themselves which unchecked fuelled a spiral of influencer content, vile spamming of CSAM in GrapheneOS rooms (I can personally attest these were some of the biggest on Matrix at the time and led to the team giving up on Matrix moderation and self-protection capabilities), intense public speculation/accusations about Micay's character/mental health etc. which eventually resulted in the swatting attempts.
F-Droid project members have publicly aired their dislike of Daniel as a result of direct or indirect disagreements and did have a software quirk that caused an issue for GrapheneOS/possibly other custom OSes' users due to their added permission (which the two parties again disagreed on). Conspires is loaded wording.
But I do not think it is productive for me to dredge up posts and potentially cause more misunderstandings as a complete outsider for something that is directly affecting someone's life like this. They (Micay/GrapheneOS) have posted detailed contextual snippets and information about what has happened so please contact them directly for reference to the original posts and discuss if you really wish to find out more.
I had never actually visited Kiwifarms before today so I knew virtually nothing firsthand of what's actually going on there, other than hearing it repeatedly invoked in these discussions by supporters and detractors alike. A brief, cursory look turned up a dox thread thanking @larossmann for providing information.
It also turned up comments from some like, "Daniel Micay is a low-functioning cancer who should have been beaten and/or raped to death by a drunken father."
If anything, Micay appears to have been underselling things.
To be fair, it appears the project also has some supporters in that thread, and I'd have to delve further to figure out whether it's a 4chan-esque deliberate toxicity to keep the unwashed masses out, but it's not difficult to see how Micay isn't interested in dealing with Rossman. Rossman spends a lot of time knocking Micay online, but I'm not finding much in the way of even-handed coverage by Rossman from his considerable YouTube pulpit. Rossman also appears to be active on there recently. A few minutes of researching indicates a non-trivial possibility he has a role in all this and has zero desire to separate himself from it.
Many reasonable people would have zero interest engaging with someone like that, especially after they've donated money and then attached post-hoc strings to the donation.
I also saw firsthand Nick Merrill's chat behavior re: Daniel and GOS, and as one who used to contribute to both projects, I had zero qualms after that pulling all support from Calyx, which still makes me sad, as Nick at his finest was a pretty wonderful force for good.
If this sort of thing doesn't at least somewhat moderate the consistent position you've held here every time GOS comes up, I don't see a way to assume good faith on your part in these threads. A number of people in these threads consistently adopt the form of making unsupported claims they could easily research before posting, and when presented with evidence to the contrary then move on to claim to be given unsatisfactory responses to their original questions and/or move the goalposts. When others eventually stop engaging claim the project supporters are unable to answer even their most basic questions (which have already been addressed numerous times, with citations).
It's against HN guidelines and its a pretty ignoble way to exist.
So why should we believe you over Micay, or are you willing to change your view after seeing evidence
It was not a disagreement about shares, it was a hostile takeover. Someone who never owned the project sought to steal it.
CopperheadOS was always's Micay's project and used his own signing key. The key never belonged to Copperhead the company afaik.
Question 17: Did your and Donaldson values begin to diverge? Was Donaldson more concerned with making money than you were?
Answer: [...] In 2018, matters between Micay and Donaldson came to a head over Donaldson’s desire to pursue business deals with criminal organizations, and his attempts to compromise the security of CopperheadOS, including by proposing license enforcement and remote updating systems that would allow third-parties to have access to users’ phones. As part of this process, Donaldson began to demand that Micay provide Donaldson with the “signing keys” - i.e. the credentials required to verify the authenticity of releases of CopperheadOS. Donaldson advised that, in order to secure certain new business, potential customers required access to the Keys.
The keys had been in continuous use by Micay, in his personal capacity, since before the incorporation of Copperhead. However, more importantly, any party with the keys could mark malicious software as “authentic”, and thereby infiltrate devices using CopperheadOS.
Micay was unwilling to participate in that kind of security breach. Since Donaldson had control over certain infrastructure for the open source project, he would be able to incorporate (or hire others to incorporate) the privacy-damaging features described above for all future releases of CopperheadOS. Micay therefore deleted the keys permanently and severed ties with Copperhead and Donaldson.
Question 25: Did things between you and Donaldson devolve when he approached you about a compliance audit? Did he tell you that he needed to know how the signing keys were stored?
From Wired:
We understand that Daniel's recollection was not that James wanted to know more information about how the signing keys were stored, but that he wanted direct access to them.
Question 26: Did you suspect his request was tied to a deal he was brokering with a large defense contractor? Did you believe this would put the entirety of CopperheadOS’ user base at risk?
Answer: Yes and yes.
The large defense contractor in question was Raytheon. The decision to destroy the signing keys was not based on a financial disagreement, but an existential one. Every single CopperheadOS user back then would have been compromised otherwise. It's of course a big deal given the implications, but it acted as a last resort for Daniel to stop a hostile takeover attempt fueled by greed, which he ultimately took because there was no other way out.
Or is it just that Raytheon went against what he thought CopperheadOS stood for?
As a response, Micay decided to destroy the update signing keys for all the CopperheadOS devices out in the wild. Resulting in financial damages to Donaldson.
Hardly a level-headed response, even if you disagree about the financial share of something.