Maybe I’m reading you wrong, but I still see no alternative that functions to the same degree. So, if DNS blocking is not able to do what uBlock Origin (for example) can do, then investing in it does not seem wise. And if uBlock Origin does not block ads in the most secure way, then that has to be fine - because nothing else is blocking ads as well, right? Are there any claims or designs about how ad blocking can be made more secure while also being as effective as ublock? That would be the next step, right?
Probably something to be aware of with GrapheneOS:
GrapheneOS community member’s organized campaign of harassment, slander, and brigading
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I have spent way too long looking at this, and trying to draft a post.
Anyway, my brief summary:
- Daniel Micay claims to be dealing with anti-GrapheneOS spam from sockpuppets since at least 2020-12-18
- Seth Simmons claims to be dealing with anti-CopperheadOS spam from sockpuppet accounts ever since making a blog post about CopperheadOS on 2021-01-15
The earliest and only time I find the two coming into contact with each other on Twitter is here where Daniel Micay sees Seth Simmons’ tweet claiming to be slandered by the GrapheneOS team itself and encouraging users to switch to CopperheadOS, and Daniel Micay interprets this as “more of the same” spam he and the project has been receiving. This interaction closes the loop (see what I did there @PhaseLockedLoop? 
) and now Daniel Micay & Seth Simmons both seem to be convinced that the other is associated with a sockpuppet campaign against the other.
This particular situation (CopperheadOS vs. GrapheneOS) has factors that seem primed to make people act more emotionally:
- the underlying feud is at some level a personal one between James Donaldson and Daniel Micay
- we have an ongoing lawsuit between a corporation and a community project
- and a developer who (assuming you believe his story) almost had his life’s work stolen out from under him by the very company he helped create
So I suspect the what Seth Simmons observed (specifically the reprehensible attempt at blacklisting) is an idiot fan’s misguided and cultish attempt to “defend the honour/reputation/mindshare” of GrapheneOS; which ironically and predictably does the opposite.
I sincerely despise all of this kind of crap that happens in revolves around projects that could actually be decent. I really don’t understand why the high concentration of childishness occurs in open source developers
I abandoned both projects because I honestly found more value in quicker better security updates that are provided through Lineage OS
Every time someone makes a decently secure ROM The problem is the individuals and developers behind it are usually childish or short-sighted so the project just dies.
As I said before I’m not a fan of the mentalities of these developers. I don’t seek to support them even though that’s a very unpopular opinion I know that most will say you should support open source no matter what no matter how bad the devs are and I just don’t believe that because I think respect should be earned
And right now both projects have lost my respect
The code quality on grapheneOS is superior I will say that
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Because unfortunately:
- a lot of the development community are in college and thus early on in their dealings with people in the real world. this is because cutting edge open-source project development gets a lot of input from students or those who dropped out as these people have the time to volunteer, and are currently being taught the required skill-set
- a lot of the development community are also socially inept, as that sort of person is often the type drawn to computers instead of people… which means the socially-young types above are often even less socially developed
Combination of those two factors = you sometimes end up with weirdos doing weird socially-inept things.
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It is certainly possible, but I wonder how much is it that with open source we just see more of the making of the metaphorical sausage, rather than it objectively being a messier affair.
In the case of GrapheneOS, longevity is not something I am especially concerned about, since it appears to very much be a passion project for the primary developer (Daniel Micay), and he appears to be technically capable of maintaining the project.
I can understand wanting to avoid projects/companies whose leadership/members you are unable to respect.
Personally however, I worry (especially with limited or asymmetrical information) by weighting a widely-distributed incident of childishness too heavily I might swear off a project, only to find later that the alternative I chose instead was associated with people whose interactions are no more admirable, but had merely flown under the metaphorical radar.
I often worry that with incomplete understanding, all I might do is provide market/evolutionary/selective pressure for some one/group who has a better PR apparatus rather than actually being more respectable in their or their userbases’ interactions with others.
And that’s just it I don’t like this kind of immaturity even when I was in college I had some humbleness to realize that it’s going to be a very different world outside of it. I also had that beat into my head before I started college…
So I’m generally just avoidant of the immature behavior. It serves no logical reason to have to interact with it. (Now I sound like commander T’Pol 
)
In any case I hope that it stops.
Passion and technical capability can only go so far in a world. You need money and you need the means to keep maintaining it.
And that definitely does concern me about a one-man army. sure he has a little bit of help here and there but he’s mainly a one-man army
I’m popular opinion but I really don’t care about the user base. When it comes to assessing respect code quality is where I give it. You could have the best user base in the world and if your code is shit I won’t use your project. It’s really that simple. It actually makes me have to seek out different solutions and most and you’ll find that even in my blog and everything I do.
I won’t go ranting and raving and saying hey you shouldn’t use this project because I don’t use it because I don’t respect them I won’t even say a word on it so I won’t serve as any kind of PR in any way 
If I like a project the most I’ll say is I’ll contribute some code or some bug fixes. I won’t promote. stop doing that a long time ago and realized it was futile. People are going to use what they’re going to use. there’s no logical reason and arguing with them over it even if it is to suggest something better they should have to figure that out for themselves.
Interesting, it seems we have the same priorities but with a different assessment of factors. As I see it, Daniel Micay seems to know what he is doing, and is staying fairly close to upstream, so the smaller team size or userbase is not much of a concern to me.
Maybe it is just my perception of the LineageOS project being more of a “hack on it; if it works, ship it” outfit, but if there were some sort of security/privacy issue arising from a complex interaction of components, I anticipate GrapheneOS noticing it before LineageOS.
Regarding “promoting”
I definitely think people talking about something can help its adoption, and obsessive fan-like advocacy can cause pushback. What counts as “promoting” can be a bit fuzzy though.
For example, I like to talk about POWER9; if something tangentially related (memory/cache design, >2 multisocket boards) comes up in discussion, I will often mention it. Does that count as promoting? Does it only count as promoting if I do a bad job of explaining how I see it as related to the conversation?
What about the thread I made about GrapheneOS a year ago; that certainly could be seen as trying to “promote” GrapheneOS to this forum, or simply trying to have a discussion about a topic I find interesting. Frankly, I am not sure how much of a difference there really is, which is why I try to be careful about posting too often about things which seem to be of limited interest to others, lest my post be seen as merely spam.
Considering how prolific Daniel is, I wonder if there is any audio or video of him anywhere. In terms of FOSS phone OSS, the overall impression is nothing comes close to GOS in terms of security. Calyx might, but that isn’t better enough in other areas to justify the difference in security. Quite a sad state of affairs in the FOSS phone works in 2021 - in both closed & FOSS hardware.
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