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Comment by grapheneos | Hacker News Reader

An incredibly incomplete port without many of the core security features and decent updates is not GrapheneOS. It isn't possible to bring GrapheneOS to Fairphone devices.

> It's not as though we're talking about a device with hardware specs locked behind an NDA and drivers that only support outdated kernel versions.

Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life Linux kernel. Fairphone 6 is approaching the same fate. None of their devices keep up with the incomplete security backports to older releases, let alone the full security updates via new major releases. All of their devices are missing important hardware security features which should be standard. They're repeatedly said they don't consider any of this a significant issue and have no plans to significantly change it.

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Yes, I realize that the official stance is that it isn't grapheneos without the security features. That doesn't change the fact that someone who won't have the security features either way (and presumably doesn't care because otherwise he would switch to a different piece of hardware) might want the option of using a build of grapheneos that isn't officially condoned by the maintainers. (That's kind of the whole point of FOSS, right?)

I didn't realize fairphone was stuck on an EoL kernel. I guess that means that even if the build can be made to work right now (far from certain given an old kernel) it would likely break in the future.

> might want the option of using a build of grapheneos

An OS without the core features and updates of GrapheneOS clearly isn't GrapheneOS. It's not permitted to refer to it as such.

> That's kind of the whole point of FOSS, right?

No, the point of FOSS is that you can take all of our code and use it for other purposes. Calling an incomplete port to another device GrapheneOS is misleading users. It isn't GrapheneOS and must have a unique name.

No one was suggesting that your trademark should be infringed when marketing to users. If I do my own custom build of firefox referring to it as such in casual conversation is entirely separate from marketing it under that name for others to use (see ex icecat).

Honestly while grapheneos is a useful thing that I'm glad exists you're being absolutely insufferable.

an objective statement of fact should not be considered "absolutely insufferable"

As always, context is all important.

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