Comment by ponorin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ponorin | Hacker News Reader

GrapheneOS lost me on PR. For every updates they post on their social media there's guaranteed to be a rant about how other projects are doing things Wrong. They talk down on any and every security- and privacy-related projects (or open-source projects in general) if they align even slightly out of line according to their idea of security and privacy, regardless of their own merit. Dig even deeper they also like throwing around the word "slander" and "attack" without backing it up. In fact I am certain I will be greeted with a friendly wall of text by somebody from GOS in this very thread sooner rather than later.

GrapheneOS is the most secure, arguably most private, hell the most feature-complete, user-friendly custom ROM (but they also hate the word "custom ROM") out there. I've imported a Pixel, because it wasn't available in my country, just to use GOS. So it is deeply frustrating that they are doing things the way they do. Hubris is their longest-standing, "wontfix"-labelled vulnerability.

FWIW I think its good to elaborate on how other projects are doing things incorrectly (though I agree the GOS people could use some diplomacy and decorum). For example, with the fairphones for the longest time the only answer you could get on why grapheneos doesn't support it is that the phone is not secure. That answer doesn't leave me informed, all it leaves me with is "someone on the internet told me it wasn't secure". For the newest fairphone 6 they actually elaborated and covered things like the lack of a secure element. That leaves me informed, so now I can look up what a secure element is, why I want it, and then make an informed decision for my next cellphone purchase.

I looked it up (as in spent a last few weeks going through the forum and PRs) and when they say "slander", it's backed up.

When they say other projects are insecure, this is for example because of the claims /e/OS based on the utterly insecure hardware and two major versions of AOSP, unpatched, is touting itself as a leading project in the privacy landscape.

I don't think they talk down any security - related project and I've never seen the generalised "they talk down on (...) open-source projects in general" - this is what I would myself call slander, because tbh it's dogs bollocks.

"Slander" or "attack" is said when there are baseless accusations (like above about attacking, quote, "any and every security-- and privacy-related project") because they don't have outlets or big money behind them which would simply state the facts and call out the accusations.

If you have examples of theese words "thrown" without basis (ie without sustained prior attacks on GOS), I'm sure every interested person would like to see it. If you wanted to show the examples of the innumerable privacy- or security-related projects that are _attacked_ by GOS, please share examples.

There are multiple so-called privacy and security related projects which are known for the sustained and baseless bad messages, and these don't get a pass, because it's clear it's intentional and in the bad faith.

Valuable projects and services are promoted and recommended based on merit and not favours (eg: they can argue based on facts why installing apps from accrescent or Google play store is generally safer than from the F-droid).

They don't hate the "custom ROM", they explain why it's a misnomer - and you using it here after saying they hate it (and either not knowing or not caring why it's wrong) is clearly an act in the bad faith :)

I struggle to see an attempt in the factual reporting in your post. The only thing I could connect over is their attitude in certain situations, but..... the rest of your post is just.... incorrect?

I don't need PR from my free mobile OS developer. I just need regular secure updates, which they seem to do a good job providing.

I'm a happy CalyxOS user for precisely this reason.

"I would use a thing but they were mean" doesnt seem like the amazing argument you might have thought it was.

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