yes, but i cannot really afford to use a less secure phone. if it was equally secure, the choice would be obvious.
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To give Calyx credit, they’re a nonprofit organization that also gives out micro-grants to other organizations in this space. Most of their funding come from grants or their membership dues instead of selling a product, that is unless you consider their travel hotspot device to be a product they’re selling. Calyx OS is just another service they offer.
Why does this distinction matter? Well, remember that iode and Novacustom are both smaller companies developing and selling privacy-friendly hardware, and don’t have the same constraints behind them. I think a good compromise would be to acknowledge the work they’re doing without exaggerating the security capabilities of the SHIFTphone 8.1. Otherwise, that would entail putting a lot of people at risk.
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yes, this is where it gets very muddy, it was probably a mistake to mention those numbers here.
but my point I wanted to convey was more so that money doesn’t necessarily help a project/product like this due to the sheer amount of long term work and collaboration that is necessary
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Calyx has an amazing history. Nicholas Merrill has shown his legitimacy by standing up to the US NSLs
And before anyone asks: I have no COI with Calyx. I just like to give credit where credit is due 
@dngray Mooom, dad is calling us weird! But I digress.
That’s fair enough. But it’s just never a good idea to criticise other projects/companies in your marketing announcements. It’s just liable to cause further headache.
Anyway, if they’re willing to play ball then I’m all for letting bygones-be-bygones (to an extent). And if they do, it might be worth considering splitting of the questions and answers to a new thread, what with this one already being quite long and we’re all over the place.
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However noble one may see that lawsuit, it is completely irrelevant to conversation about the leadership, competence, and impact of the subsequently founded Calyx Institute. I don’t know why it always gets brought up.
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off topic
We’re aware a small company which wanted to partner with us but was unable to meet our security requirements has been attacking GrapheneOS with misinformation and libel since November 12.
And it begins!
They launched a device using a fork of LineageOS without standard privacy and security patches or protections. Their launch announcement goes out of the way to attack GrapheneOS with inaccurate claims. They doubled down on it on several forums where they got a negative response.
I wouldn’t describe it as “attacking”. Yes, they wrote something incorrect, but it has been fixed now. I’m not defending the company, by the way. What they did was wrong, and they should have done better.
Companies marketing phones as being private while lacking basic privacy patches and protections clearly feel very threatened by GrapheneOS. Completely unprovoked attacks on us including linking harassment content is a bold launch strategy for a product asking people to trust it.
Again… Why would they feel “very threatened” by GrapheneOS? The “completely unprovoked attacks on us including linking harassment content” which they’re referring to is probably this blog post Wessel shared. I really love GrapheneOS and what they’re doing. However, they shouldn’t act as if the whole world is their enemy, especially Daniel Micay, who accuses anyone who offers the slightest criticism of spreading disinformation or attacking the project.
Did Nicholas Merrill ever give a reason to why he left the Calyx Institute?
Off-topic reply
Yeaaa, same. I absolutely adore Grapheneos, and time has shown that they really know what they’re doing. But man, they can be about as diplomatic as the Roman Republic sometimes. I really hope it doesn’t bite them in the butt one day.
But not sure if we should continue this topic any further here. Don’t want to cause poor Kevin even more work moderating.
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