GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard

Thank you for the details! That lays it out nicely for anyone else passing through.

A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an “aggregate” if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.

If you'd include a GPLv3 gallery app in, say, a mobile OS, it does not mean that the rest of the OS has to be under the GPLv3. It merely means that you cannot limit the user's right when it comes to the GPLv3-part (the gallery app). They would still be allowed to redistribute/modify it and you have to provide the source code on request.

You only have to make other code GPLv3 if you somehow create a derivative work (e.g. linking against a GPLv3 library).

(IANAL blah blah)

Oof, so it was essentially destined to fail when the spec was being written.

I do! I have a old-ish but up-to-date and stock Pixel phone, and I see (what appears to be) full E2EE with several text contacts in Messages, with ability to verify keys (which admittedly I have not attempted to use yet). It only works if both devices / all of the devices in a group are fully compatible with the version that adds encryption or newer, but when they do, it just starts working automatically and transparently. AFAIK, that's primarily thanks to Google's work.

I think what we've learned from the rise and fate of current alternative messaging apps and services is that, if we actually want to get the majority of the world's population on modern-quality E2EE for all of their communication, it's going to have to be done gradually and transparently through the apps they already use. Getting everyone to switch to a different app is a pipe-dream that will never happen, at least not thanks to the work of any particular person or company.

Apple is pretty good at privacy and security for people playing within their ecosystem. They seem rather indifferent to any attempts to communicate or interact with anybody without an Apple device. Better than nothing, but not great IMO. Google has many faults in many areas, but I think they're doing awesome work at a difficult and thankless job as far as developing a standard for modern and fully encrypted communications that is actually possible for everyone to switch to transparently, and dragging everyone kicking and screaming into actually using it. Apple just rolled out support for it in beta 4 months ago. Very likely in the next year or so, we may see the majority of texts and group-chats between Android and iOS be actually E2EE without the users needing to do anything besides ordinary OS updates. That will be IMO 80% Google's doing, and 20% Apple's.

That's not a sustainable solution because 2G/3G are getting switched off. And it doesn't really have any bearing on LTe itself.

The real issue is that they didn't really standardise VoLTE enough. Leaving every carrier and manufacturer to have a mesh of different options and not every carrier and every phone supports the exact same subset of options, which causes the compatibility issue. Also sometimes providers don't bother checking phones they don't sell.

They really should have standardised it 100% so this couldn't happen.

The whole saga with VoLTE was really quite entertaining: https://nickvsnetworking.com/background-to-the-volte-mess/

Either you will have people content with SMS, or you will have people content with RCS. Which is better is obvious.

I am not on the GrapheneOS team but the community does push better options such as Molly/Signal and RCS is usually only advised as a fallback messenger.

Not really... You will be communicating with other people who don't use GrapheneOS and if you are e.g. communicating with iPhone users who have iCloud backups enabled (most iPhone users) and did not opt in to ADP (against most iPhone users), the chats are only encrypted at-rest in the iCloud backups and are accessible by Apple and law enforcement.

Signal is way better because it opts out iCloud backups (and Android backups) in favor of truly end-to-end encrypted backups.

If what you say about “the rest of the world” using other messaging apps is true, then yeah, it probably is North America–centric. So what? Are you agreeing with the OP who didn’t see any point and advocated that GrapheneOS “totally ignore RCS”?

GrapheneOS already supports WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, Snapchat, and LINE. What’s wrong with improving OS support for another widely used alternative, that for all its faults is mostly better than still another widely used alternative (SMS/MMS)?

There’s a thread on the GrapheneOS forum titled “Using RCS with Google Messages on GrapheneOS” with 2,192 posts in it. Clearly there’s a lot of interest in using RCS on GrapheneOS!

The project would benefit from more polished, professional image/interactions with the community. I (personally) have a hard time trusting my data to a project that is constantly bickering (“no, we don’t vibecode, did you even look at the repo”) in public forums like this under the official letterhead account.

I’d love to see y’all discussing these types of technical details with individual, identifiable (even under fixed pseudonyms if you want) developers’ accounts, and leaving the official letterhead account to stick to posting marketing material.

Just my 2 cents.

Your account is persistently engaging in inappropriate personal attacks towards our founder. It's inappropriate to keep dropping someone's personal name who has never participated with their name on this site even aside from the personal attacks.

You're seeking out threads with discussion about GrapheneOS to post misleading and inaccurate claims about it in order to troll. You previously set your profile bio to a hostile remark towards the GrapheneOS project and have now changed it to pretend to be a GrapheneOS supporter.

Flagging personal attacks, harassment content, trolling, AI slop, engagement bait, shady advertising for products and deliberate attempts to mislead people is an appropriate use of the feature from our perspective.

We've been reaching out to the Hacker News moderation team for a while to discuss the years of libelous personal attacks and harassment content posted on the site. They can reach out to us at contact@grapheneos.org where we can discuss that.

There are other ways to record calls such as enabling speaker mode and using another device to record the audio. It's similar to apps trying to prevent users from taking screenshots. It fundamentally doesn't work.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49599645

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".

Of course there is. Sent from my daily driver Librem 5.

Disclaimer: It is less secure than GrapheneOS, according to the GrapheneOS threat model.

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.

And yes we still have windows as the major desktop OS but don't forget, in the 90s/early 2000s windows was equivalent to computing.

These days the desktop OS is much less relevant than it was and many people don't even own a laptop or desktop anymore. They just do everything on their phone. And Microsoft totally and completely lost that race.

I would recommend it as tool for a Linux app designer to use with testing and user improvement. Helps find issue not present on a laptop or desktop. Highlights the difference in solution choices; Python vs Node.js vs Rust.

I'm getting away from Google as far and fast as possible. The sooner the bandaid is pulled the better and more freeing. Google's path with being able to reject those that they don't seem worthy to run on Android, that is a prison.

Personally, I should have root access to the device so that all content which must be archived can be or consumed with another tool; Category Theory. I should have direct access to copying or backing up SMS with ease. Watching the network traffic to know what is actually going through.

Security is also being able for one to learn about the actual operations and test and validate them.

So say you use a USB device to host the kernel boot image which then requires manual password authentication to decrypt physical device drives. Without the USB device, it boots into duress mode.

Duress mode provides a false shell into a working phone. Physical security system do this, by provide false statements of what is going on. Wipe the real stuff in the background if need be.

GraphneOS is using a Linux Kernel. I'm looking for something more Linux Distro style of implementation. Not choosing GraphneOS is pure objective to remove myself from Google and Apple as much as possible in a communication tool.

Android device has become phone and text only. Linux device has become my engagement. Going for a walk without primary communication is peaceful.

RCS is what GMS Android and iOS provide so that's what people need to talk to non-GrapheneOS users.

Which non-carrier-based messaging app or protocol do you think we should include and why? What happens if we decide that's no longer the best one wand want to get rid of it? Apps included in the OS cannot be easily removed but rather only disabled by default for new installs and phased out for new devices. Otherwise, users would have their working setup break.

And the OS should come with a GrapheneOS Monero wallet to compete with Google Wallet/Apple Pay.