[usuallymatt]

I was tempted to use this but when I looked into the team behind it there seemed to be some issues as exposed by Louis Rossman here: https://youtu.be/Dl1x1Dy-ej4.

Instead, I installed CalyxOS and have been using it over a year now and I'm very happy with it. Check it out.

[mbananasynergy]

Hi there. GrapheneOS community manager here. It's a weird video to bring up without any context. Louis Rossmann made that video and leaked private conversations that were had fairly soon after the person in question was repeatedly swatted by someone who has a fan of the person Rossmann was voicing support for.

Unfortunately, Rossmann turned out to be very dishonest, which in retrospect makes sense, seeing as he has no issues with using Kiwi Farms. He's verified account there is named "larossmann". I suggest you look into it.

It's not just something he's done with GrapheneOS and the founder of the project. There are many videos, such as the one he did on Linus from Linus Tech Tips where he similarly misrepresented things and ascribed mental health labels on them.

Regarding CalyxOS, I would recommend people check out https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm as a third-party comparison for various projects, including GrapheneOS and CalyxOS. They're not similar projects.

[nicman23]

that comparison you are pasting in multiple replies has lineageos without micro-g.

[BLKNSLVR]

"Never meet your heroes". Also, the opening monologue to Tool's Third Eye[0].

The older I get the more examples I've come across of a person destroying their reputation by either self-over-exposure (social media) or just basic exposure via news of some outrageous or illegal behavior.

I don't have a problem with whatever line you choose to not cross, and I was once much more self-righteous, but I've more recently pretty much made the conscious decision to separate product from producer, art from artist, etc.

Theo Lengyel was recently arrested for murdering his girlfriend, and yet I will still listen to and enjoy Mr. Bungle's music.

Gary Glitter... I still like the song Rock n Roll Part Two.

J.K. Rowling has some controversial views on transsexual women, but that doesn't mean that the Harry Potter series is any less worthwhile reading than it was before.

ReiserFS

I still buy Nestle Quik occasionally

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, name almost any tech bro... (but not Steve Wozniak, he's a treasure)

Sports stars.

Musicians.

I wonder how many other things are worthy of protest if we knew all the facts about all the people who were involved in it's creation.

(I'm attempting to respond to the general concept of "he/she/they bad = it bad", not commenting on GrapheneOS vs CalyxOS or anyone's personal choice over where / what they choose to apply "he/she/they bad = it bad" to, other than saying that it should be a conscious decision not a reflexive reaction)

[0]: https://genius.com/Tool-third-eye-lyrics

[Scrubbed4426]

This a video where he openly bullies someone, live streams their private messages where they're getting upset with him bullying them and repeatedly, blatantly lies about them including falsely claiming they're insane, etc.

Rossman lied about stopping using GrapheneOS and has continued using it after that point.

The video was made to direct harassment towards the project and founder after the project refused to work with Rossman.

He has done similar things to others, labeling them as insane and delusional.

[bernoufakis]

> This a video where he openly bullies someone, live streams their private messages where they're getting upset with him bullying them and repeatedly, blatantly lies about them including falsely claiming they're insane, etc.

That is the most disingeneous take on the video. The claim this kind of commenters that freely carry water for the toxic GOS (ex-?) lead developer is the exact reason why Rossmann made the video. The evidence is all there for the public to see. Daniel does not get to essentially harass people he disagrees with after they have been asked to not contact them, threaten them to "publicly expose them" and get away scott free.

Being a genius at cyber security or autistic does not give one a free pass to treat other like garbage.

> The video was made to direct harassment towards the project and founder after the project refused to work with Rossman.

The video was made to expose the harassment of the project founder toward Rossmann, when the former contacted him out of the blue with frivolous accusations after they parted way a year earlier due to un-reconciliable disagreements.

> He has done similar things to others, labeling them as insane and delusional.

No evidence provided, as usual.

[onli]

You are exactly right. To summarise for those who do not want to watch a video, the video shows communications with Graphenes lead developer in which he was extremely hostile and threatened Rossman. It also goes into how said developers hallucinates being attacked by specific other sites, like a Linux YouTube channel that obviously did nothing to him. His goons then attack those projects.

You have to be aware that you give that person root when you use Graphene. All possible technical improvements aside this is a very big risk. He claimed he would step back after the video released, then called that a lie and continued with everything.

Calyx seems to be the best alternative right now without such a risk factor.

[bernoufakis]

I second this opinion, with some additional nuance.

While I don't think the developers necessarily hallucinates being attacked (i.e. given the nature of the project, I would expect them to be persons of interest, be it from surveillance agencies, or even state actors), the main issue with Rossmann is their claim that he is either personally directing harassment against GOS, or colluding with and encouraging other communities to harass (mainly Kiwifarms, Techlore, CalyxOS, and other Android related FOSS projects). This claim seems to originate then cascade from Rossmann leaving the comment "Informative, but unfortunate" on TechLore's video criticizing GOS's leadership. This is taken as explicit support of TechLore community's / KiwiFarms alleged harrassement on the lead GOS developer, and this has somehow been cascaded and blown out of proportions, and considered by GOS developers as evidence of Rossmann's wrong doing against them.

As mentioned somewhere else, I am using GrapheneOS since 2 or 3 years now, based on Rossmann recommendations. The software is very good, pretty much native Android experience, but without the extra alleged Google snooping / root access. Rossmann himself seemed to have stopped using it as his main device because of fear of retaliation given that the GOS devs could potentially target him. Better safe than sorry. I still use it because I am not that high profile of a person, and generally will use throwaway when it comes to discussing anything GOS related at this point. The overall leadership however, based on Rossmann's and later my personal interactions with them however, did leave a bad after taste.

[gf000]

Calyx has lackluster security practices, and even removes signature checking so they can sell microG as Google Play Store to apps. This is an objective statement, graphene OS is leagues ahead of anything on the market in terms of security, while calyx is basically just a custom ROM to tinker with.

As for the personal aspect, the lead developer is definitely not the best representative of the project from a communication perspective as he might not have that kind of social skills (based on his posts). [1]

But he (Micay) is an excellent security researcher, and has an excellent track record when it comes to prioritizing his users. There was a sponsorship in the beginning, where the legal entity, CopperheadOS tried to hijack the whole project. But Micay rather kill the project, than let the users' security suffer and revoked the signing keys. And I'm sure such a betrayal would cause anyone to lose a lot of faith in others' actions.

> Give that person root

Complete bullshit, what root?! And if anything, you are the one who are trying to discredit a project here, by sharing some dumb clickbait video.

[1] I see that there is now a project manager doing most of the communication, which is an excellent solution!

[gtsop]

Can you elaborate on why this is a risk factor? What do you mean by saying we're giving him root? If a person is paranoid of being chased i would expect them to put even more effort into the security of the OS he develops, not to add backdoors. But please expand your own reasoning.

[other8026]

There's way much more to it than what you said here.

> extremely hostile and threatened Rossman

At the time, he was very upset. You know, because he was swatted multiple times. Of course he was upset when Rossmann showed his true colors and was trying to talk to him. Rossmann saw this as an opportunity and recorded it as it was happening. He tries to portray Daniel as crazy and people who attack the project and his friends on Kiwi Farms lap that stuff up.

It's not true that he stopped using GrapheneOS, though. He continued using GrapheneOS for months after that video, which you can see by watching his later videos.

> hallucinates

Repeating baseless claims that he's crazy.

> You have to be aware that you give that person root when you use Graphene.

What? This is a very strange way to say it. Either way, it's literally impossible for someone on the GrapheneOS team to target someone like what was claimed in the video. GrapheneOS devices don't send identifiers when they contact the update server. The update servers also only host static files.

> Calyx seems to be the best alternative right now without such a risk factor.

The "risk factor" is completely false. It's all made up to attack GrapheneOS, making the founder look like a crazy person, then people are scared of using the OS. CalyxOS is not a hardened OS and rolls back security in some ways. It's not the next best alternative for people who care about these things.