Thread

1. mmooss · 1790974594 · focus · HN ↗

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   1. armadyl · 1790981304 · focus · HN ↗

      > GOS can just talk about the upside, their solution to this problem. That's great work. But they often choose to denigrate others, which is destructive, damages relationships…

      Sorry, but no. This sentiment isn’t too different from politics in the US right now where the politicians that “call it like it is” are significantly more popular than the “traditional take the high road speech” candidates. It’s a lame thought process.

      I appreciate GrapheneOS telling it like it is, and their language highlights the failings of Google. It’s unacceptable that the maintainer of Android/AOSP is performing like this.

      > I'd think Motorola, who now has money and reputation depending on GOS's success, would tell GOS to zip it. If I were in that industry and looking to partner, I might love GOS's technology but their behavior would be hard to overcome.

      This has little to no effect on Motorola. They didn’t even promote their partnership with GOS and mostly only GOS users and tech enthusiasts are even aware of this partnership. People who need / want GOS don’t care about the attitude of the developers as long as they deliver beneficial things and don’t go off the fascist/racist/socially unacceptable deep end (and even that is debatable just look at Omarchy and it’s sponsors as well as Brave). The average consumer could not care less and will continue to be unaware of GOS at best, and at worst view it as negatively as the press tries to portray it when the government tries to attack someone’s digital civil liberties.

      1. mmooss · 1790982052 · focus · HN ↗

         > This sentiment isn’t too different from politics in the US right now

         That's a pretty big stretch; the stakes and actors differ vastly.

         > I appreciate GrapheneOS telling it like it is,

         You may like it but it may hurt GOS's prospects. It deters others from working with GOS (I expect, based on common sense of the professional world), and Google has tremendous power over GOS.

         Is the trade-off worth it? Is hearing what you want worth risking GOS's future, and possibly reducing its resources, distribution, and reputation?

         The scrappy newcomer can say what they want - indeed, it gets attention. But once you have something worth protecting - a product and a reputation - you have competing interests: say what you want or further your product and name?

         1. HybridStatAnim8 · 1791051939 · focus · HN ↗

            GrapheneOS is not interested in silencing themselves for the sake of greed and optics. Their image is built on explicitly not doing that.

            You are making a false dichotomy, and suggesting they give into sanitized, corporate slop approaches rather than stick to their mission. GrapheneOS has gained the resources and relationships they have because they tell it like it is, not because they bend to the will of others out of fear.

         2. grapheneos · 1791058134 · focus · HN ↗

            Google has been increasingly hostile towards GrapheneOS over the past several years despite our substantial contributions upstream. We've spent years helping Google with vulnerability reports, improvements submitted upstream and multiple proposals for security protections which were implemented for both Android and Pixels. We've been treated incredibly poorly by Google despite our contributions.

            They're trying to limit how many devices can be sold with GrapheneOS by Android OEMs, reduced the number of AOSP releases from 12 to 2 per year with 10 of those now being Pixel exclusive, removed Pixel support from AOSP, unsuccessfully tried to cut us off from early access to security patches which are now allowed to be shipped early by OEMs while under embargo (which we do), are trying to convince app developers to ban using GrapheneOS via the Play Integrity API and even recently funded an AI slop paper with misinformation about GrapheneOS falsely claiming it missed security patches that it did not based on an entirely false premise that it has diverged from AOSP in a way that it hasn't and has to port patches to a diverged fork of the OS which isn't how it works.

            Many of the things Google has done to hinder open source projects based on Android are illegal and they continue doubling down on it despite a lot of regulatory and legal actions already taken against them.

            More info at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;edit?id=49946698">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;edit?id=49946698.

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