CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative • Hacker News Board

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#451

Post by strcat » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

emptysongglass wrote: post #411

strcat wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah GrapheneOS is security over privacy No, GrapheneOS is heavily focused on both privacy and security. See https://grapheneos.org/features for a list of the enhancements compared to the latest Android Open Source Project. GrapheneOS offers substantial privacy advantages over CalyxOS. It has a bunch of nice privacy improvements, carefully designed to work against real adversaries. Bypasses of privacy features are…

Can you please stop attacking another Android distro under the umbrella of a project (the Calyx Institute) that has done a lot of good for others? It makes you look like an a**hole. There's plenty of room in this space for multiple visions of what a more-secure, more-private Android OS looks like. There's gradations of privacy and security and some users might prefer your gradient, whereas others might prefer CalyxOS…

It has to be noted that you're another member of the group spreading misinformation about GrapheneOS.

We're responding to comments here from a few CalyxOS community members and developers attacking GrapheneOS and misrepresenting what the project provides. It's not us being hostile and starting any trouble. It's plainly visible that we're responding to their talking points misrepresenting GrapheneOS as not being focused on providing privacy, security and usability. They take every opportunity to attack us whenever either OS is brought up. People can see that we responded here to these talking points trying to claim we only care about security. No responses would be left here if attacks were not being made on us.

It should be noted that the CalyxOS community has been heavily involved in raiding our community and harassing our developers. Multiple GrapheneOS contributors have had to step back from contributing due to ongoing harassment. This is something they've subtly condoned and encouraged, supposedly because they support free speech within their community, except when it's someone countering the attacks being made. We have ample evidence of the harassment including Nicholas Merrill engaging in trying to portray me as deranged/crazy on multiple occasions to direct more harassment towards me.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#452

Post by justnotworthit » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

joecool1029 wrote: post #205

> microG replaces some functions of Google Play Services while maintaining much more anonymity and privacy. I've said it before and saying it again on here for those that don't know: microG breaks the security model on android and adds in package signature spoofing. It's the only way to add a fake Google Play Services without needing to pull Google blobs. This is why projects like LineageOS are against using this met…

I worry that these projects are asking me to either turn the phone into an ipad touch or a dumb phone.

Do push notifications require microg/google? A communications device (as opposed to a media player) that didn't have push notifications would be missing something required, in my use.

It's my understanding that alternatives to google's location services exist.

I'd just like a phone that allows me to chat/use apps/gps (let's put cell service to the side of a second) without being an OS-wide, logged-in, analytics tracker.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#453

Post by strcat » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 7:23 PM UTC

atatatat wrote: post #417

emptysongglass wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please stop attacking another Android distro under the umbrella of a project (the Calyx Institute) that has done a lot of good for others? It makes you look like an a**hole. There's plenty of room in this space for multiple visions of what a more-secure, more-private Android OS looks like. There's gradations of privacy and security and some users might prefer your gradient, whereas others might prefer CalyxOS…

Your comment leaves out the danger of advertising security and privacy when you cripple those things. All open source projects should be able to take GP's criticism, dev of "competitor" or otherwise — specifically because they're not products — they're public projects. Both projects should absolutely be encouraged — and steered, if a user knows a better way.

It can be plainly see that we were responding to the brigade of attacks from the CalyxOS group involved in spreading misinformation about GrapheneOS across platforms. You're responding to one of them above.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#454

Post by strcat » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

emptysongglass wrote: post #421

atatatat wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment leaves out the danger of advertising security and privacy when you cripple those things. All open source projects should be able to take GP's criticism, dev of "competitor" or otherwise — specifically because they're not products — they're public projects. Both projects should absolutely be encouraged — and steered, if a user knows a better way.

> Your comment leaves out the danger of advertising security and privacy when you cripple those things. Nobody is doing this. Calyx is taking a measured approach, as they see it, and is making commensurate claims: "CalyxOS is an Android mobile operating system that puts privacy and security into the hands of everyday users." Right on their website. I am vehemently against absolutisms on security. Where that road goes…

You're another member of the CalyxOS community group involved in spreading misinformation about GrapheneOS across platforms. It's plainly visible that we didn't start anything in this thread but rather that you folks spreading misinformation about GrapheneOS through talking points misrepresenting it.

The harassment of our developers, raids on our channels and misinformation being spread by your community needs to stop.

Any time anyone brings up CalyxOS or GrapheneOS, you folks show up to attack GrapheneOS with these talking points.

As usual, you're trying to accuse the people you're attacking of being the ones creating the problems. We would NOT be involved in this thread if you folks weren't here misrepresenting what we provide.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#455

Post by strcat » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC

emptysongglass wrote: post #430

atatatat wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You only have to look at Moxie's terrible public behavior to see what the fallout from that approach looks like. Cite Torvalds' absolutism on not breaking userspace, too, while you're at it.. These projects are all forwarding their missions; it's not because they listened to your criticism about being too absolutist on goals they are passionate about. The "dick measuring" you're seeing is how any niche group quickl…

> about being too absolutist on goals they are passionate about. Not at all what I mean when I say I am vehemently against absolutisms on security. Any claim to superiority on security and subsequent trashing of others is rotten because it's not kind, not compassionate, not conducive to cooperation, the single greatest tool we have as humankind. We don't need more division in this space and we don't need people with…

We're responding to the attacks from your community making uncalled for attacks on us and misrepresentations of GrapheneOS here. It's not us attacking you. It's plainly visible that you're the ones making attacks on us. We're countering the misinformation that's being spread with some facts, not personal attacks and insults as you're doing.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#456

Post by FieryBinary » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

tentacleuno wrote: post #338

strcat wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they do, and GrapheneOS is heavily focused on both. The purpose of the project and what it provides is being heavily misrepresented by the comment above. GrapheneOS treats bypasses of privacy features as security vulnerabilities. It offers substantial privacy advantages of CalyxOS and doesn't come with the privacy drawbacks it introduces. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28095033 (above) for a more in-de…

Disclaimer: strcat is the GrapheneOS developer.

He's not "the GrapheneOS developer", he's the lead developer and one of many developers. It's a collaborative open-source project which has made a production-grade OS and whose contributions have been upsteamed for AOSP.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#457

Post by strcat » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

emptysongglass wrote: post #411

strcat wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah GrapheneOS is security over privacy No, GrapheneOS is heavily focused on both privacy and security. See https://grapheneos.org/features for a list of the enhancements compared to the latest Android Open Source Project. GrapheneOS offers substantial privacy advantages over CalyxOS. It has a bunch of nice privacy improvements, carefully designed to work against real adversaries. Bypasses of privacy features are…

Can you please stop attacking another Android distro under the umbrella of a project (the Calyx Institute) that has done a lot of good for others? It makes you look like an a**hole. There's plenty of room in this space for multiple visions of what a more-secure, more-private Android OS looks like. There's gradations of privacy and security and some users might prefer your gradient, whereas others might prefer CalyxOS…

You don't see LineageOS, /e/ or countless other operating systems constantly spreading misinformation about GrapheneOS. It's only CalyxOS. Others are not doing this. I' not sure why you folks can't resist the urge to attack us with false claims any time either OS is mentioned anywhere.

See https://github.com/bromite/bromite/discussions/1186 for an example of what is being done on a regular basis. These impersonation attacks are currently ongoing on Reddit and Telegram.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#458

Post by FieryBinary » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

cdesai wrote: post #446

strcat wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I did not want to get into this, but you're simply spread falsehoods. I'm not spreading any falsehoods. > We do not ship anything proprietary. You ship integration of proprietary services including Google services and WhatsApp. You provide them with privileged integration unavailable to other apps. > We ship microG, which is "A free-as-in-freedom re-implementation of Google’s proprietary Android user space apps and…

I'm really tired of this. > GrapheneOS does not include any form of Play services and has no support for the OS using it. If a user installs Play services, the OS detects it and intercepts the attempts it makes to use privileged APIs and instead returns placeholder data. Isn't that shipping an integration for a proprietary service? How can you claim that we're the ones shipping proprietary service integrations when w…

>How can you claim that we're the ones shipping proprietary service integrations when we ship an open source implementation, and you're the ones shipping an integration for the proprietary implementation.

Play Services is not integrated into GrapheneOS at all. It only has a few shims that, as strcat explained several times, return placeholder data. Play Services has no special permissions, and using it on GOS is the same as installing any other app.

microG is integrated into your OS. It's a partial reimplementation of proprietary Play Services.

>There is precedent here, https://phandroid.com/2009/09/25/cyanogen-gets-cd-from-googl...

That was for distributing Google apps, not for shipping firmware updates. You're making a false comparison.

As you could see if you had read strcat's comments and the documentation, GrapheneOS doesn't ship Play Services but only some compatibility shims, otherwise Play wouldn't know how to work. Users must manually install Play and associated apps.

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#459

Post by FieryBinary » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

scns wrote: post #424

strcat wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Two People created CopperheadOS, one of them now works on GrapheneOS. No, that's not true. GrapheneOS is the continuation of the project by the original development team. There aren't any developers who stuck with Copperhead. The project was created 1 year before Copperhead existed as a company. https://grapheneos.org/history > The security mitigations developed for those were incorporated upstream into Android, de…

I'm sorry, if i misrepresented the great stuff you did and still do. English is the first foreign language i learned. "Two People created CopperheadOS, they had a disagreement. One of them continues to work on it under the name GrapheneOS." Would this describe it better?

See grapheneos.org/history/copperheados and verify it for yourself using Github graphs and other resources.

A better description would be "One person handled development of the project and other person CEO'd the sponsor company. The CEO attempted to hijack the project and the developer eventually resumed the project under the name GrapheneOS."

A little longer, but more accurate :)

Re: CalyxOS – De-Googled Android Alternative

#460

Post by FieryBinary » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

tholdem wrote: post #272

riedel wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think it is kind of absurd that you have to buy a device from Google to degooglify it as CalyxOS does not support other devices. How difficult would it be to actually port it to a device already supported e.g. by lineage?

The OS in this case has nothing to do with not being able to be ported to other phones. Google is one of the few who will pay extra to Qualcomm for the ability for users to flash their own signing keys. Lineage does not support one of the most important security feature of any modern smartphone, lockable bootloader and verified boot. Lineage might be more privacy respecting than Googles Android, but far behind regard…

I disagree. LineageOS has a legitimate use case, being able to easily tinker with the device. It's certainly not as private or secure, and that doesn't make it a bad option depending on someone's use for it.