They are either defending themselves against personal attacks / harassment (which was also present in this thread before moderation intervention) or correcting unintentional misinformation about GrapheneOS features. That misinformation is often made by drawing a wrong comparison between GrapheneOS and other OSes. Correcting that isn’t harassment, just like defending yourself against personal attacks isn’t harassment.

GrapheneOS still intends to support all the supported devices until EOL. The sideloading change doesn’t affect them. It won’t apply to GrapheneOS. It only applies to certified OSes and GrapheneOS is not certified because it doesn’t license Google Mobile Services. As per the rip out of the device trees for Pixels, that just makes Pixels like other phones. GrapheneOS has been able to expand it’s automation to build that device support themselves. For new devices, making the support will take longer than it did in the past though, but they will still support those Pixels, as long as they meet the hardware requirements and still allow third-party OS support with all security features intact. Besides that GrapheneOS is actively talking with a major Android OEM right now in order to help them reach the security requirements for a subset of their future devices. They are very optimistic about that.

Android is Linux of course since the Android kernel is a Linux kernel. I’m aware you are probablly referring to using traditional Linux OSes that are typically used on desktops on mobile phones. That would, however, be a significant regression for security. Android and iOS are both modern mobile OSes with an in-depth security model which includes a mandatory app sandbox with a sane permission model. This is not present on traditional desktop OSes. This is not meant to diss on those OSes, they are just children of their time, they were created much earlier, security practices have evolved. I can see why it would be a fun experience though to tinker with, it would just not be a secure experience and it’s unlikely to get there because the improvements in traditional Linux distros go much slower than they go on Android and Android is already massively ahead.

It won’t apply to GrapheneOS. It only applies to certified OSes and GrapheneOS is not certified because it doesn’t license Google Mobile Services.

They didn’t step away from GrapheneOS. They are the founder and were the lead developer. They only stepped away from the lead developer role because they couldn’t take the harassment anymore. They are now ex-lead developer but are still project member. They haven’t left the project and will not leave the project. They will not cave for harassers and bullies.

You can just read the requirements section on the FAQ page of their website. It explains the reasoning. It’s all based on technical reasons: https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-support

There is a lot of misinformation and harassment material circulating online about Daniel Micay. Notice that they are the victim of extensive online bullying which has spread all the way onto KiwiFarms. Would suggest not consuming that content because it won’t give you an accurate depiction at all.

I’m a community member of GrapheneOS and I’ve not had any bad experiences with the GrapheneOS team or Daniel Micay specifically. They maybe communicate a bit more directly than some other people do but they are not being toxic or aggressive at all. I’ve found them to be patient and understanding.

Note that the thing many people describe as “toxic behavior” refers to posts made by GrapheneOS social media accounts in response to harassment. Defending yourself against harassment is not toxic. It might not look good in isolation becuase the quality of those conversations often degrades very quickly, which will have an impact on the GrapheneOS responses, but you have to look at those messages in context.

GrapheneOS is not developed by a single individual. GrapheneOS has a team of around 10 full-time developers. They are not on bad terms with all other OSes, they say positive things about iOS regularly. They were also on positive terms with DivestOS before it was discontinued also mainly because it was being harassed by the same groups GrapheneOS is being harassed by.

The founder of GrapheneOS, to person you are referring to, is not mentally unstable. You are making this statement without any basis. You do not have access to their medical file. What you are saying is hugely inapprioriate and the behavior of a high school bully. Even if it were true (it isn’t), you are being an ableist, which just makes you a mean person.

GrapheneOS only runs on Google phones currently because only Pixels are able to meet the hardware requirmeents. The hardware requirements aren’t a very high bar, other OEMs just don’t prioritize security. GrapheneOS in active talks with a major Android OEM right now in order to help them meet the security requirements for a subset of their future devices. They are very optimistic about how that is going.

I think you underestimate the burden of misinformation being spread about you and your passion project online, and having a KiwiFarms thread about you on the internet. The harassment also has a real life impact because the founder has been swatted multiple times, endangering their lifes. So they can sadly do much more harm than just being a keyboard warrior. And besides that, it also has an impact on cooperation the project can do with other organisations and companies. GrapheneOS has asked whether other organisaties would want to share their Android partner access with them and they got replies stating that they would want to share the partner access but will refrain from sharing it becuase they were scared that if people found out they helped that they would also get harassed. Also, GrapheneOS had tried for many years to get a cooperation with a non-Google OEM to support other hardware than just Pixels and the harassment has also been an issue for things like that in the past. Luckily, GrapheneOS is currently in active talks with an OEM though who hasn’t taken any issue with it, so let’s hope for the best.

I looked for the posts once when they got post-spammed across all of Reddit and the Fediverse by the OP. Now I just get notifications for things happening in the replies. That’s how these social media things work, there are notification inboxes. As I said, I’m not Daniel you can verify it by looking in the Discord. I’m passionate about this project, I think having a positive passion towards something isn’t that strange. Being passionate about harassing a project and an open source developer, however, seems a bit stranger.

They are not Daniel. There just are multiple people disagreeing with you. Despite you being toxic and supporting harassment content, community members and GrapheneOS users replying here have stayed very mature and polite towards you. I would look in the mirror first of all, if I were you.

I’m not a GrapheneOS developer, nor part of the GrapheneOS team, I’m a GrapheneOS user and community member. I can’t go ship code. Agreed that open source development is a difficult work environment due to some people feeling heavily entitled and those people being very vocal. As to for the actual GrapheneOS team, they would love to waste less time with responding to attacks and false information. However, it’s a very normal, human response to not want misinformation about yourself and your project to thrive all across the internet. This also can hurt the project in many ways, it’s not an ego thing.

Cool, so this means we can dismiss your claim that we are all alts of Daniel?

I’ll try to help you with following the instructions from Skorp to verify that the article is completely false (the evidence):

• https://github.com/GrapheneOS
• https://github.com/maltfield

Where are the GrapheneOS contributions? Nowhere.

I’m a real person and long-time community member. I’m not an account created by Daniel. You can go to the GrapheneOS Discord and search for from: tranquil_cassowary and see that I have posts going way back in time, on Matrix I used to go by stackedbedrock@arcticfoxes.net and now also go by tranquil_cassowary@arcticfoxes.net. My style of writing is also not the same at all, as is my level of English. It’s probably easier for you though to assume that everyone who disagrees with you is one person, so that only one person would be disagreeing with you.

I’m not part of GrapheneOS. I’m a community member. I’m very active in the GrapheneOS chat rooms. I’m not a moderator, nor a developer nor do I have any other role in the GrapheneOS team. I’m passionate about the project, given that I use it a lot, see that there is misinformation being spread, and want to contribute to correcting that. You seem to not understand that there is a community and user base around GrapheneOS that cares about the project and is willing to help issue corrections about stuff in online discussions.

I doubt the OP had good intentions. The title is a complete lie, as I have explained in other comments. They got banned because of the way they kept pinging and tagging GrapheneOS project members on GitHub because their feature request was not considered and the issue got locked and deleted because there was too much spam on the issue. If they would’ve just stop doing that, in order to avoid the developers inboxes being flooded about one single issue, there would have been no conflict. if developers inboxes get flooded about one single issue, other more urgent issues might get burried under the noise, which is not good. It’s reasonable that the team decided to shut the discussion down.

I only have one account I’m using on shitjustworks, I also have unused accounts on lemmy.today, lemmy.ml and techncs.de. I use shitjustworks because I feel like the most posts from other instances are visible there. The name is always tranquil_cassowary. I don’t go by other names in the privacy and security communities.

They posted the same blog post in about 12 different threads on Lemmy. I want to join the discussion about it so I reply in multiple threads. If this was a centralized platform I wouldn’t have to do it like that. I would have preferred to reply one time but I feel like the explanation about what actually happened and about how it’s a falsehood (not a contributor, not banned from GrapheneOS …) should be seen by the people reading the post. Given that some people might only see the post on one of the lemmy instances where it got posted, I deemed it desirable to answer in mutliple threads.

The report would contain personal identifiable information like the address etc. Their address was already leaked of course because it was used for the SWATTing attacks but I don’t want to link it so directly on a public post. The events occured in April 2023. If you want information about it and also some more evidence about other harassment you can ask GrapheneOS or the community manager (matchboxbananasynergy) on social media whether they would want to DM you information. If you are in good faith they will send you some info, they also did for other people.

I’m in active community member in the GrapheneOS community. I go by the same name there as I’m using here. It became clear from the community chat that a lot of misinformation and lies are spread about GrapheneOS on social media. I’m passionate about the project, which I rely upon everyday so I want to do my part in helping to correct any misinformation out there. You can’t argue with the fact that the post that has been made is a complete lie. The title is a complete falsehood. They were not a contributor, nor are they banned from using GrapheneOS. The reason I’m active in multiple communities on Lemmy about this is because the OP has decided to spread his blogpost on multiple Lemmy instances, mtuliple subreddits, Mastodon, Linkedin, … If they spread in in multiple channels, users and community members who want to discuss GrapheneOS online will also show up in multiple channels to discuss it. I would prefer to only have to reply to one post, they decided to make 12 posts on Lemmy (if I counted correctly). And yes, I made my account yesterday. Am I not allowed? Do I have to wait 2 years and engage in random discussions not related to my interests before I join the threads about topics that I’m passionate about?

There is evidence of the swatting. You can look it up in the police records of Canada. The harassment is evidenced by many social media posts, including things that are said in this very thread. The project gets attacked a lot, so almost every day there will be a defensive reply, that’s true. If the harassers stop those replies will also stop. Easy.

Your blogpost is highly inaccurate and a heavy misportrayal of the events that occured. The title is completely wrong already. You did not get banned from GrapheneOS. GrapheneOS is a free and open source operating system, you can’t be banned from using it and the developers would also not wish to do so. You were instead banned from the OS issue tracker on GitHub because of spam and inapprioriate behavior. You were also blocked by multiple GrapheneOS developers on GitHub, not solely Daniel Micay, for continuing to mention them and sending notifications their way even via other repositories than the official GrapheneOS issue tracker. Also, you are not a contributor at all. You have never contributed to GrapheneOS, not a single line of code. Unless you will call issue tracker spam a contribution, but that’s a very big stretch.

Now, as to what actually happened. You wanted GrapheneOS to implement a certain feature, they did not deem it desirable. Instead of accepting this, you kept spamming the issue tracker. The issue got deleted because it caused too much spam from other accounts as well who kept saying they also wanted the feature instead of following the rules of the issue tracker that you should upvote a post if you agree. After getting banned, you forked the issue tracker and started pinging a bunch of GrapheneOS developers. This behavior is insanely inapprioriate in the FOSS world. GrapheneOS is free, yet you act insanely entitled, as if the GrapheneOS developers owe you anything. They also clearly explained to you on multiple occasions why the feature you proposed is undiserable.

If you disagree, the solution in open source is to fork GrapheneOS and make your own changes to the source code instead of endlessly complaining to the developers of the original project, who can’t be forced to follow your opinion. They had every right to ban you because you kept making a scene out of something minor like a non-accepted feature request. Many feature requests get rejected, yet you make this whole drama about it and continue to do so.

On top of all that, you link misinformation and harassment about the GrapheneOS project in your blog post. The videos you link from content creator containg bullying and fabrications about the project and the founder. They are also entirely unrelated to how they dealt with your issue on the issue tracker.