traveller I think the main worry if this goes through is that opensource devs will be discouraged from creating or supporting existing opensource android software. Why bother, if users with commercial-Android phones won't be able to install their apps?
We have a whole thriving ecosystem of apps for desktop Linux systems, without depending on users with commercial or locked down operating systems installing them. We might see a small hit if Google goes through with this, but in the end, everything on F-Droid is primarily meant for us who already use open source AOSP forks. I don't see us losing major access to open source software because of this. I worry more about Play Integrity making it so we lose major access to proprietary closed source software. That seems more like a threat.
It is also the fact that for desktops, Microsoft have already required third-party developers to ID themselves to make their apps installable on Windows, and much open source software is available on Windows despite this, even though the developer's real name clearly shows in the signing certificate. So even if we are very careful about our privacy in this forum, that is not true for the open source community as a whole.
Pocketstar I just hope that people that care about their privacy, liberty and security still have a digital home that will fulfill their security needs after all of this has passed... I mean, for example, there is Linux desktop and ARM-based Linux, but these are vastly more insecure than anything GOS offers, and so is LineageOS.
As an activist, I can say that phones have widely been recognized as unsuitable for sensitive tasks, at least up until recently. The same is not true for desktop computers though. We have QubesOS, which is already more secure than GrapheneOS in many ways, and we also have some special case operating systems like Tails that are rather good. And we have the new one, SecureBlue which aims to replicate some of the security improvements from GrapheneOS on a regular desktop Linux operating system (Fedora). So that is not something we have to worry about. Besides some "Microsoft certified AI computers" and Apple, there are no locked down hardware in the desktop and laptop world, and Linux is the preferred operating system by many universities, research institutions and academic workplaces.
So I don't think we have to worry about that at all. Worst that happen is that we cannot use phones for sensitive tasks anymore, and we are back to where we were some 5+ years ago.
And that still is only going to happen if both AOSP is discontinued and there is not sufficient interest in the open source community to fork and maintain it in a sustainable way or not sufficient interest to fund a device with unlocked bootloader.
dc32f0cfe84def651e0e I also believe GOS team should consider lowering their hardware requirements to support more devices — the best scenario any with yet unlockable bootloader. I wouldn't mind using an insecure device as long as it is libre.
If we end up in a scenario where there is no device that both fulfills GrapheneOS' security requirements and have an unlocked bootloader, GrapheneOS will likely evaluate what to do. Their current plan is to get an OEM that makes suitable devices for them, and from what I have understood, they have found such an OEM.
dc32f0cfe84def651e0e Same here. I'd switch to a dump phone or Linux phone like Pinephone. Freedom is all. Linux has been my daily driver for decades.
The Linux phones are struggling with being sustainable already. There are barely any hardware manufacturers, and what they sell is hugely overpriced for the hardware, and the mobile Linux distributions are struggling to maintain even a basic level of security, such as even pushing out kernel and firmware updates at all.
As I see it, at worst, we have to fork AOSP and continue developing it ourselves, and make our own devices, but in that case, we will likely still not be worse of than Linux phones. I believe GrapheneOS alone have a larger following than the whole mobile Linux sphere. And we have LineageOS and some other AOSP forks too.
I don't think it will be easier to maintain mobile Linux than to maintain a hard fork of AOSP, to be honest.