4 ms·

What's the concern? They are working with Motorola as a manufacturer. It'll probably be a hard fork eventually but why not make it work in the meantime.

matheusmoreira 28d ago
[flagged]
- deleted 28d ago
  [deleted]
- wolvoleo 28d ago
  They basically have opposite goals to Google so I don't imagine there will every be good feelings there. There shouldn't be. Yes Google wants android to be secure, but the problem is that to be truly secure it should be secure from Google too. And they don't want that. They want it to be their personal datamine and walled garden. Just like Apple with ios.
  - grapheneos 27d ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49593405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49593405
    - wolvoleo 27d ago
      Google staff might follow you but their actions speak otherwise. Closing off AOSP, convincing OEMs to lock their bootloaders. They really want to consolidate control over Android.
- Cider9986 27d ago
  One AOSP engineer. Google is the one making bad actions, which it makes sense to complain about. They moved to building in private so forks don't get features as they come and more recently they stopped providing certain source code in a timely manner.
- grapheneos 27d ago
  We've collaborated with many Google engineers working on Android. Many of their engineers, security researchers and even people in management positions follow us on social media. One person who describes themselves as an AOSP engineer on Hacker News doesn't reflect what their overall engineering team thinks about GrapheneOS. This person likely also finds the security engineers at Google complaining about the same things and pushing for improvements annoying too.
qurren 28d ago
If they hard fork, a lot of apps that are generally "necessary for the average person" (e.g. Uber, banking apps, Gmail, Whatsapp/Wechat/Line) might stop working.
- ConceitedCode 28d ago
  Sure, but what could graphene do in the meantime? It's either make it work for the moment or stop those apps from working today. I'd like to see them lay more ground work for web apps but it's a tough spot and the easiest choice at the moment is to continue with AOSP.
  - qurren 28d ago
    I mean we privacy nerds all love webapps but the reality is the people actually in charge of S&P500 companies hate them. They really, REALLY want to fingerprint your device and use it as a verification and tracking mechanism. Until that changes, webapps aren't going to sell. Even Google tried multiple things to "sell" the idea of webapps (e.g. Polymer project) in 2011-2015 and failed. Funny enough, Wechat kinda succeeded at webapps in China because there's a strong user preference to stay inside one monolithic "everything app".
    - bentley 27d ago
      I find, as a user primarily of free and open source software, it’s really the opposite: native FOSS apps have minimal tracking and analytics that defaults to off or is easily disabled, while most free and open source webapps are behind Cloudflare, blocking access to them until I turn off my VPN and disable the anti‐fingerprinting features in my browser.
  - mitxela 27d ago
    I don't want to see more groundwork for web apps. GrapheneOS is meant to be secure, which means running trusted apps on-device. My messages are less secure if they permanently are stored on a server.
- ulrikrasmussen 27d ago
wolvoleo 28d ago
Seriously, I don't see a mediocre android provider like Motorola running and maintaining a hard fork. Forking is all easy, keeping it up to date year after year as codebases diverge is a whole different story. I could see Samsung doing it. But they won't, they're too good buddies with Google. But they have the resources. A Motorola no. The grapheneos team won't either, maintaining a disparate fork and introducing new features independently from aosp would just be beyond their scope. You're not just hardening at that point. You're basically doing everything. Don't forget when Huawei didn't fork. Well they started with that but then replaced every component with their own design. It's easier because if you fork you're still bound by decisions made by the original party. Better to greenfield the whole thing then. And look at how many people made a soft fork of chrome with some ui changes. There's tons of those. There's no hard fork that no longer follows Google. Even a large company like Microsoft didn't.
- ConceitedCode 28d ago
  I think graphene could maintain a hard fork with manufacturer support (Motorola). At least for a while. Long term viability is an open question.
  - wolvoleo 28d ago
    They could for a while but what's the point if it's not sustainable? Google is not going to turn around and make it more open again. With every Android release you will build up more feature base to replicate. Unless you cut all ties and drive a separate ecosystem but good luck getting enough developers to buy into that.
    - unrented7977 27d ago
      And the US might grow a government with a spine and take Android away from Google. It's all hypothetical.
    - epihelix 27d ago
      Well, someone is clearly giving Graphene money, and quite a lot of it, as per TFA: > We recently hired a bunch of new people and will be hiring more so our progress will be accelerating.

matheusmoreira 28d ago

[flagged]

deleted 28d ago
[deleted]
wolvoleo 28d ago
They basically have opposite goals to Google so I don't imagine there will every be good feelings there. There shouldn't be. Yes Google wants android to be secure, but the problem is that to be truly secure it should be secure from Google too. And they don't want that. They want it to be their personal datamine and walled garden. Just like Apple with ios.
- grapheneos 27d ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49593405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49593405
  - wolvoleo 27d ago
    Google staff might follow you but their actions speak otherwise. Closing off AOSP, convincing OEMs to lock their bootloaders. They really want to consolidate control over Android.
Cider9986 27d ago
One AOSP engineer. Google is the one making bad actions, which it makes sense to complain about. They moved to building in private so forks don't get features as they come and more recently they stopped providing certain source code in a timely manner.
grapheneos 27d ago
We've collaborated with many Google engineers working on Android. Many of their engineers, security researchers and even people in management positions follow us on social media. One person who describes themselves as an AOSP engineer on Hacker News doesn't reflect what their overall engineering team thinks about GrapheneOS. This person likely also finds the security engineers at Google complaining about the same things and pushing for improvements annoying too.

qurren 28d ago

If they hard fork, a lot of apps that are generally "necessary for the average person" (e.g. Uber, banking apps, Gmail, Whatsapp/Wechat/Line) might stop working.

ConceitedCode 28d ago
Sure, but what could graphene do in the meantime? It's either make it work for the moment or stop those apps from working today. I'd like to see them lay more ground work for web apps but it's a tough spot and the easiest choice at the moment is to continue with AOSP.
- qurren 28d ago
  I mean we privacy nerds all love webapps but the reality is the people actually in charge of S&P500 companies hate them. They really, REALLY want to fingerprint your device and use it as a verification and tracking mechanism. Until that changes, webapps aren't going to sell. Even Google tried multiple things to "sell" the idea of webapps (e.g. Polymer project) in 2011-2015 and failed. Funny enough, Wechat kinda succeeded at webapps in China because there's a strong user preference to stay inside one monolithic "everything app".
  - bentley 27d ago
    I find, as a user primarily of free and open source software, it’s really the opposite: native FOSS apps have minimal tracking and analytics that defaults to off or is easily disabled, while most free and open source webapps are behind Cloudflare, blocking access to them until I turn off my VPN and disable the anti‐fingerprinting features in my browser.
- mitxela 27d ago
  I don't want to see more groundwork for web apps. GrapheneOS is meant to be secure, which means running trusted apps on-device. My messages are less secure if they permanently are stored on a server.
ulrikrasmussen 27d ago

wolvoleo 28d ago

Seriously, I don't see a mediocre android provider like Motorola running and maintaining a hard fork. Forking is all easy, keeping it up to date year after year as codebases diverge is a whole different story. I could see Samsung doing it. But they won't, they're too good buddies with Google. But they have the resources. A Motorola no. The grapheneos team won't either, maintaining a disparate fork and introducing new features independently from aosp would just be beyond their scope. You're not just hardening at that point. You're basically doing everything. Don't forget when Huawei didn't fork. Well they started with that but then replaced every component with their own design. It's easier because if you fork you're still bound by decisions made by the original party. Better to greenfield the whole thing then. And look at how many people made a soft fork of chrome with some ui changes. There's tons of those. There's no hard fork that no longer follows Google. Even a large company like Microsoft didn't.

ConceitedCode 28d ago
I think graphene could maintain a hard fork with manufacturer support (Motorola). At least for a while. Long term viability is an open question.
- wolvoleo 28d ago
  They could for a while but what's the point if it's not sustainable? Google is not going to turn around and make it more open again. With every Android release you will build up more feature base to replicate. Unless you cut all ties and drive a separate ecosystem but good luck getting enough developers to buy into that.
  - unrented7977 27d ago
    And the US might grow a government with a spine and take Android away from Google. It's all hypothetical.
  - epihelix 27d ago
    Well, someone is clearly giving Graphene money, and quite a lot of it, as per TFA: > We recently hired a bunch of new people and will be hiring more so our progress will be accelerating.