Is Calyx OS a grift or on the right path?

[GorujoCY]

In the thread

Calyx Institute: A Case Study in Grassroots Innovation | Electronic Frontier Foundation

The EFF had just released a blog spotlighting the Calyx Institute. At least from first glance, it seems like the Calyx Institute is very well-funded and have multiple purposes beyond Calyx OS. Of course, Calyx OS is more well-known here for not having feature-parity with Graphene OS, but the organization also offer mobile hotspots as part of their membership tiers. In addition, Calyx hosts a Tor exit node and provides a free VPN service. They also give grants to support the development of pr…

It is getting quite off topic than what the post is actually about so I’ve decided I wanted to make a separate post

This is the staff’s opinions:

@jonah

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.

@KevPham

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

The rest of the posts are a mixture of debates between they are doing something and no they’re not, so people which is it?

If it is possible for @staff could you merge these and similar Posts here if possible? I’ll edit the question out once it’s done…