To put it bluntly: both the Calyx Institute and Mozilla are grifters. They try to portray themselves as doing important work by using vague marketing phrases like Mozilla’s “keeping the internet free.”
In reality, both of these organizations are milking what little they have dry, while not reinvesting nearly any money they extract from people who don’t know better. Even when they “reinvest,” they sometimes simply launder the money by paying themselves to implement something nobody wants, like ethical ads or some usual Calyx privacy/security teather, such as the “panic button”.
The “privacy space” has a lot of these grifting companies: Unplugged, the Brax product family, Purism, etc. Its frustrating to see.
I’m not trying to single out Calyx. However, I see that people are inconsistently applying their standards, and for some reason, they let Calyx and Mozilla get away with much more than others.
Mozilla has serious issues but you do realize that Netscape quite literally revolutionized the world wide web as we know it today both through user agents, JavaScript, and transport encryption? And that additionally they’re the only thing currently preventing a complete monopoly of the user agent space right now.
Purism also has issues but doesn’t belong with those other two obvious scammers.
History matters, else we are bound to repeat our mistakes.
I strongly encourage you (and others in this thread), like all things in life, to get your knowledge from a variety of sources especially from opposing perspectives.
Indeed, Datura iirc is based off of this patchset here which also predates CalyxOS
Again, its not really relevant who coded it originally, just the fact that its included in their OS.
However you know which are specifically Calyx exclusive features better than me, so just let me know some of them and im happy to engage with those too if needed.
Its easily verified independently. They lie on their own site about the Librem being very secure and private. If you’re familiar with the gap in security/privacy comparing Android with the desktop Linux stack then you know how much less secure the Librem is.
They worked together in the past. From what I recall Graphene requested Calyx not use or modify their code any longer.
I was extrapolating outwards from you calling the entire organization “pointless.”
Calyx does some decent work in the FOSS and privacy space. And as I and others laid out it’s always good to have alternatives. If what they do isn’t relevant to you then great, you do you. That doesn’t make them “pointless” (or “grifters,” as another user posited).
Calyx and Mozilla at least do exactly what they set out to do. They are not misleading their members. Are they doing enough, or are they allocating their resources most effectively? These are totally separate debates, but they aren’t grifting or committing fraud.
People not doing research and assuming tools like Calyx OS and Firefox are better than they are in reality is not really Calyx or Mozilla’s problem.
Braxman and Purism actively lie to their customers and/or don’t deliver products at all. I don’t think people are applying their standards inconsistently here at all.
Its fraud and false marketing to promote Firefox/CalyxOS as private/secure. Its exactly what Purism is doing.
You and I might disagree, but i don’t believe for a second that anyone who knows what they are doing bought a Calyx AP. They largely rely on scamming people who dont know better when it comes to “their” hardware.
Lets assume Purism shipped their garbage to everyone. It would still be a scam.
The only reason people can do research to learn about the problems of CalyxOS and Firefox etc is because GrapheneOS has stood up to their BS and explained their problems. It’s absolutely their fault for having misleading documentation and delivering an inferior product.
I disagree with claims of fraud. Fraud implies intent to mislead. For me intent is irrelevant.
The non-profit I worked for had its heart in the right place and really wanted to help people, but the people were so disorganized and incompetent that we never made substantial progress. Still, they presented their dysfunctional prototype the right way and managed to get lots of government grants and donations year after year.
To me that’s tragic and a waste of people’s good will. We shouldn’t have patience for it just because they’re “nice,” we should expect results. That’s why I felt the need to comment in the first place, because the linked article asks makes Calyx out to be a “grassroots innovator” run by “technologists” and I just don’t see it.
I’m willing to be informed, and they may do good work behind the scenes. I’m just working with what we can see.
What you said about nonprofits is unfortunately true in most cases…
As for Calyx, their micro-grants do help out a lot of organizations in desperate need of funding. I’m biased of course, but a lot of my past work with EFF-affiliated nonprofits receive some funding from Calyx. I think the main concern is whether that source of funding is ethical in the first place.
By all accounts, I wish Calyx “best” product wasn’t some tax deducible internet hotspot or a less secure OS. Great for RVers, van-lifers, and degooglers of course but that really doesn’t place much confidence in the quality of their services
Having two or three decent options is always better than having only one. This is not comparable to Linux distros, of which there are dozens (hundreds?).
Calyx is not as private and secure as Graphene, but it’s much more private than stock Android. It may not be “competitive” for your use case but it is competitive for the use cases and needs of other people.
As another example, I use Firefox on Android because maximum privacy and security is not my only priority in life. I don’t think it should be recommended on PG, but it’s what makes sense for me.
If we can’t engage with the space between black and white then I don’t think we’ll see eye to eye here.