One of the reasons I haven't switched to Graphene is this kind of drama. I wish there was more middle ground. I don't think the post is in any way constructive and will lead to fairphone to consider adding a secure element.
However, calling out on e/OS in the same post, seems to me very counter-productive. We need more OS vendors and less infighting. Calling all custom ROMs insecure and claiming to be the only one is IMHO 'drama'. Particular there are contributions of me microG that are helpful if you want to de-Google ones phone. Graphene has a different approach: fair. People will use GrapheneOS if they share their goals.
Fairphone is about sustainability and a bit about not supporting major tech like Google. I don't think this hurts. In an ideal world we could have both. But sustainability seems to be a non-goal of GrapheneOS.
In some ways /e/ and GOS are trying to achieve different things (/e/ is not hardened and does not claim to be), but /e/ is severely lacking security wise compared to AOSP.
This [0] is, in my opinion, a fair review that mentions many of the issues. That Fairphone is ok with these is telling about their position on privacy and security.
[0] https://www.kuketz-blog.de/e-datenschutzfreundlich-bedeutet-...
No, what it is is true. microG lets you de-Google a phone, but the resulting phone is provably less secure. If stating the truth causes "drama", the problem isn't the person or entity saying the true thing. If that truth shakes people, if it upsets them, they should look into the problem that truth has revealed (not created, as truth isn't something that exists only after someone speaks it) rather than blame those who are speaking it.
Can you provide evidence that GrapheneOS is less secure than LineageOS or other custom ROMs? Because GrapheneOS (and even leaked documentation from commercial adversarial phone hacking tools) provide a hell of a lot of evidence that it is, in fact, considerably more secure than just about every other phone OS in existence.
Because of that, instead of refuting the actual argument being made, discussion always swings towards their tone.
What it is, exactly, that is objectionable? Are there personal attacks being made? Yeah. Towards the GrapheneOS developers. It's something I've seen for myself and if you get into these threads on HN early, you can see how the comment deletions pile up. When they say they are the target of organized disinfo and targeted attacks by malignant third parties, it's pretty easy to believe them. It is in the best interests of many, many very powerful people that GrapheneOS is destroyed.
No one who takes infosec seriously cares about GOS' PR filling their communication with tummy rubs and head pats. Infosec is a nightmare, adversaries are everywhere, all anyone should want to know is whatever is as close to the truth as possible.
I want the open source desktop to succeed, but we can only make progress if we accept that there are a lot of security, UX, and UI issues and start tackling them.
When they say they are the target of organized disinfo and targeted attacks by malignant third parties, it's pretty easy to believe them. It is in the best interests of many, many very powerful people that GrapheneOS is destroyed.
Yeah. There it's clear that there is a lot of organized disinformation, probably by government actors and certainly by other open source and phone vendors that try to sell privacy/eurowashed phones (one Volla astroturfer outed themselves accidentally on Mastodon by sharing information only an employee could know).