Our community manager has provided a response to the recent LWN article on GrapheneOS with important corrections and context:

https://lwn.net/Articles/1031454/

The article had significant inaccuracies about the history of GrapheneOS, our organization and the details of what we provide.

Prior to the publication of the article, LWN contacted us with a few basic questions. Our community manager replied. It was a short email from them and a short reply from us. We weren't given a chance to address most of the claims made by the article and our response was presented quite strangely.

Following the article being published, our community manager sent an earlier version of what's written at https://lwn.net/Articles/1031454/ as a follow-up email with the hope the article would receive corrections. The response was LWN has a policy against substantive changes to articles after publication.

We would have greatly preferred the article being improved based on verifiable facts over replying to it. LWN suggested that we reply to the article since they were unwilling to edit it and provided our community manager with a subscriber account to provide our response, which we recommend reading.

GrapheneOS was started as an open source project in 2014. One of the previous names of the project was CopperheadOS and a company called Copperhead was co-founded by the founder of GrapheneOS in late 2015. We split from Copperhead in 2018 after their takeover attempt and continued development.

@GrapheneOS OK, I'm sorry, but this is bizarre. The article is anything but negative! In what way do I question the existence of your development team? Please, look again, don't read things into it that aren't there, and don't create drama where none needs to exist.

@corbet Multiple people contacted us about the article and mentioned it's oddly negative and personally focused on our founder. Our community came to similar conclusions prior to us posting.

> In what way do I question the existence of your development team?

Here, among other statements:

> In a response to a private query, the project claimed to have ten active, paid developers, most of whom are full time. One gets the feeling, though, that Micay is still the driving force behind GrapheneOS

@GrapheneOS Also reality: I love gos, but in the past it was "either you are with or against us" - including threatening as reaction to critic. I see this currently improving, which is highly appreciated. But I was threatened, I got no sorry for it, so I will always remember this.

@milkytwix Your support for attacks on our project and team, misrepresentations of our statements and actions and your personal targeting of our founder will all be remembered. Please avoid contacting us or participating in our community again. Thanks.

@GrapheneOS
If I look at the committers, its mostly thestinger.

@ejim The committer is the account used to push changes, not the account which authored the changes or reviewed them. You're not looking at who authored or reviewed changes but rather which account pushed the branches to GitHub.

@corbet As we said, the article shows you appear to think GrapheneOS is good and you say many positive things about the project. However, you combine it with parts which are very negative including misrepresenting the history of the project and a strange personal focus on the founder. It comes after extreme harassment which led to them becoming significantly less active in development and withdrawing from public roles. You're aware of that and portray us as "belligerent" for defending ourselves.

@GrapheneOS A lengthy article mentions the project's founder three times - doesn't seem all that focused?

I *do* get the feeling he's still the driving force behind the project; that has nothing to do with whether the development team exists.

Again, do not read things into the article that are not there. Do not create drama that does not need to exist. I *like* your project, and I wrote an article that reflects that. I'm sorry if you expected it to look like your press packet.

@GrapheneOS @corbet Time to let this lie for a bit now?

@corbet We don't have a press packet. All we expected is for some inaccurate parts of the article to be corrected, some context added and a member of our team who is being targeted with harassment to not be singled out in a way which contributes to the attacks towards them.

Our project and our team being heavily targeted and attacked. You claim we're "belligerent" for defending ourselves along with tacitly supporting ongoing harassment and fabrications towards our team with your biased take.

@corbet It is a reality that GrapheneOS is being heavily targeted from multiple fronts with misinformation, harassment and fabricated stories about our team. You dismiss all that and portray it as us being "belligerent". You chose to take a position in that. The way you're singling out an individual fits nicely into existing harassment and will be used as part of it.

We did say in the thread you seem to like the project, which is why it's strange you're being so hostile towards us.

If you want to read the LWN article, https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1030004/898017c7953c0946/ is a link they provide for sharing articles with non-subscribers. Please read our response at https://lwn.net/Articles/1031454/ too.

@corbet We stand behind what we've said about the hostile tone and focus of parts of the article. However, we've removed the 2nd half of the thread. Our issues with it have been communicated.

There are inaccuracies in the article which would be easy to correct and parts where it takes a strangely negative and hostile approach towards us. The personal focus on someone who is being targeted with extreme harassment in the way that it's done is very unnecessary and stands our from other articles.

@corbet FYI, we did not somehow remove your replies. We removed the part of our response you had an issue with since you say that's not at all what was intended. We removed it across X, Bluesky and Mastodon not specifically here. To us the article very much comes across as you having a personal axe to grind where you like the project but veer into negativity due to that. If you say it isn't, fine, but it looks that way to us.