It's worth actually reading the linked post. Relevant segment:
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.
Me? I was a CopperheadOS user from the 2021 rebuild era before GrapheneOS existed in its state. All I've seen from GrapheneOS and Micay are claims without evidence and over-moderation of points they don't agree with.
These things are not mutually exclusive:
You can make a great technical product while being friendly. You can make a great technical product while not being friendly.
You can make a compromised or flawed technical product while being friendly. You can make a compromised or flawed technical product while being unfriendly.
This comes up pretty often in other HN threads, unrelated to Graphene. There's this weird personality type who insists that they aren't legally obligated to be friendly or nice or pleasant, therefore it's fine for them to be unfriendly or jerks or unpleasant.
Going it alone is that nineties libertarian romanticism, a persistent self-destructive tendency that in present market conditions is unsustainable
Their allies seem securely in place.
Their popularity and project support have never been stronger…
and they’re partnering with a (popular!) hardware manufacturer.
https://motorolanews.com/motorola-three-new-b2b-solutions-at...
Respectfully, what are you talking about?
GrapheneOS has multiple people helping out. Many developers as well as people who help out with non-development work. It's a big claim to say that the whole team is unstable.
I'd suggest reading the article again. Considering the situation, the party about deleting the keys should be a good sign for anyone reading it. It shows that the project's leadership cares about doing things the right way. Members of the team are similarly dedicated to helping build and support an OS that improves people's privacy and device security, not to scam users by making a flashy product and rake in cash. Or, in Donaldson's case, work with shady companies and even possibly criminals.
Privacy and security projects like GrapheneOS are important considering the political landscape these days. People really need to stop repeating inaccurate claims about us, like that we're criminals, unstable, crazy, etc.
I didn’t claim the whole team was unstable.
> only works in favor of people or organizations that don't like us or want to damage GrapheneOS.
Then I’d suggest stop shooting yourselves in the foot with personal rants published as public communications. If you genuinely feel you’re doing important work, then why wouldn’t you take your public communications seriously and behave maturely, as an organization?
As another comment in this thread put it:
> It's not about friendliness, it's about trust.
Still a user though.
It may be the case that Daniel and the project are so under siege that they need to take a hostile attitude toward some of the people they interact with as a matter of self preservation. They may have no other option. But taking this posture while also being fair to all of the people around them (i.e. some people who aren't actually attacking them) may be difficult or even impossible. I can see this behavior in myself sometimes. I just don't have the energy to be fair. "F U".
I wouldn't want to see friendly corporate slop either. I appreciate how down to nuts and bolts the communiques are on Mastodon and how deadly serious they take everything. That part of the communication style makes me trust them more.
I think a good step in the right direction might be acknowledging that being defensive necessarily leads to erring on the side of assuming bad faith rather than good, which leads to some mis-judgements. So far you said that GrapheneOS is open to all criticisms, which (though I haven't followed the space very recently so my memory on specifics is hazy) just does not seem to match my interpretation. I think that if we were having this conversation on Twitter or Mastodon, Daniel would have blocked me by now (if he hadn't already blocked me years ago).
Take your reply as an example, the GrapheneOS accounts are managed by multiple people, so the fixation on one specific project member may not even be accurate to the discussion. Having ones character attacked is immensely harmful on its own, but being attacked for something one may not even be doing is also immensely harmful.
The unfortunate reality is that people tend to believe the first thing they read, and without something countering it, will roll with it, intentionally or otherwise. So countering misinfo efficiently and quickly is vital.
There's many examples of people being unfriendly and still coming across as someone of character, Linus Torvalds comes to mind.
For contrast, Signal is a very secure messenger which also wants to be user friendly so as to get the largest user base they can, which leads to all kinds of compromises - everything that’s come out that looks like a vulnerability in Signal originates in some feature or capability added to make the product more user friendly. Graphene will not make those trades.
Neither approach is de facto right - they spring from fundamentally different philosophies on how to maximize user safety, and both have been extremely successful in their missions, but you’ve gotta recognize what you’re looking at when you look at Graphene.