Great to see GrapheneOS getting coverage. I'd even say never mind if it's good or bad coverage, either way it spreads the word, and in the end people can draw their own conclusions. As long as they learn of GrapheneOS, it's a net gain.
That being said, I find this particular article difficult to follow as it seems inundated with subjective anecdotes and tangential digressions that bring little to the subject matter. Not looking to be critical, I'm just a bit surprised as it's a publication people pay for, yet it's not uncommon to see comments on YouTube being better-structured and overall more coherent than the article in question. I expected better.
Just a couple of points to illustrate:
GrapheneOS got its start as "CopperheadOS" [...] A couple of years later, though, an ugly dispute between the two founders of that project led to its demise.
To paraphrase: "Windows got its start as OS/2, although a couple of years later an ugly dispute between the two founders of that project [IBM and Microsoft] led to its demise." Should this be a mandatory introduction to any article about the Windows operating system in 2025? Likely not.
You could write this way just about anything, only what's the point? Why is what happened over a decade ago supposed to be relevant to a user today?
Almost every open-source project is a fork of another project, a fork that was usually the result of some underlying "dispute," and disputes are more often than not "ugly" rather than pretty. Also, disputes are not necessarily bad, for the record: we owe all progress to people who didn't agree what existed before had been good enough. They "disputed" it.
Anyway, in the end, it's a lot of redundant words that don't convey much information but sound scary.
GrapheneOS [...] adds a long list of changes [...] such as a hardened malloc() library or the use of additional control-flow-integrity features
Flashing the firmware of an expensive device is always a bit of a nervous prospect
Who is the article for? An intersection of people who know the meaning behind malloc() yet are concurrently petrified at the thought of "flashing the firmware of an expensive device" must be a pretty small group. Installing Linux, you can easily mess up the whole partition table and lose all your data. Yet this article from the Linux Weekly News, presumably for people who somehow managed to install Linux without suffering a nervous breakdown, just has to alert them to the precariousness of setting up an Android phone.
Some of the points are really quite odd. For example:
GrapheneOS screen is an austere [...] experience. [...] Color is something for the owner to configure, it seems.
As is the Linux terminal. And if you want colors, you have to alias ls="ls --color=auto" too.
GrapheneOS's black-and-white look is ascetic but aesthetic. Also, it's a huge step up from Android's bland, washed-out default color scheme. And in the end everyone has their own preferences related to colors and wallpapers, and they're going to customize their phones accordingly, so it's a sound design choice that there's only a simple black background, and no preloaded wallpapers of any kind that can't be uninstalled. How can someone coming from a Linux background, and presumably familiar with the UN*X philosophy, be disappointed with such an approach is something I can't fathom.
The development community behind GrapheneOS is somewhat murky. [...] There is no public information on how directors are chosen or how the foundation uses its funds.
Right. Because when I bought my Pixel phone, I was immediately informed as to how the considerate amount of funds tendered by me to Google would be used. Separately, I also received a detailed explanation as to why Sundar Pichai had been elevated to the post of chief executive a long while ago and managed to hold on to it ever since.
It is then only natural one should demand similar transparency from a private non-profit organization in exchange for the zero dollars generously donated to them.
The author seems to take great interest in the personal minutiae of people behind the project. I think time is better spent talking about their work rather then who they are. If they wanted to share more about themselves, I'd happily read it but if they don't, it also should be respected. Not everybody needs to seek the limelight. Although it's not as if they are completely anonymous either. By the way, who invented Bitcoin and holds the patent for it? Does it matter for all the people who use blockchain-based crypto on a daily basis?
Participation by the project in the forums comes from a generic "grapheneos" account.
As opposed to iOS forums, where all your inquiries will be personally catered to by Tim Apple?
Seriously? This part is really getting super odd.
At the end of the day, it's a private project. I'm already grateful they share the fruits of their labor so that I can use them as well. But in fact they are doing way more than just that:
- They share the source code.
- They provide an extensive and well-written documentation as to what it can do and how to use it.
- They also share the binaries, so I don't have to build them myself (and we're not talking small files here, that's significant bandwidth).
- They immediately share any updates.
- They allow the use of their infrastructure for update distribution and offer numerous other services, even proxying minor data requests (such as assisted GPS).
- They provide official channels of communication, including message boards.
- Developers are active on message boards and promptly answer questions from users.
But from a "generic" account? This changes everything. Such disrespect. Truly appaling!
OK. Perhaps I got carried away a bit, although this could go on but let's leave it at that. The tone of the article seems positive overall, to the extent I skimmed through the rest of it. It's just unfortunate that the bits as listed above make for such an annoying read (in my opinion at least).
Disclaimer: I am just a random user, not affiliated with the project at all, and this is my personal opinion only.