They are For-profit
Reminder that FOSS is compatible with commercial licenses.
That is not to say /e/ is FOSS. But given the reality of the capitalist hellscape we live in, we should not shame developers (FOSS or not) for not opting to work for free.
Non profit dosent mean everyone who works there cant earn money.
It just means, that you as Shareholder cant just sit on your ass and collect the revenue from your company.
If you own a non profit, and you work as for example a Dev or the head of PR, you can still have a hefty 30$/hour salary.
And the other way around, having a For profit just tells me that you do so little, that you can't even justify employing yourself at a non profit and giving you an own salary that way, because a non profit has to disclose just how much money you give yourself while underpaying your workers
Ok, the openAI thing is not great. However...
they advertise themselves as degoogled, but instead let you connect to Google/Microsoft/etc services
What the fuck are you talking about? Degoogled doesn't mean you shouldn't be allowed to connect to Google services. It just mean that it doesn't require Google services to function and that the default configuration shouldn't include any Google services. If the end user actively wants to use google/microsoft/etc services then they should be able to. It seems as though you are advocating for an open source operating system to lock itself down from allowing the end user to use certain features, which is against the FOSS ethos. Remember, "free" as in "freedom."
This is a FUD post. Honestly this is just doing a disservice to privacy in general.
Of course /e/OS is not perfect but the title is wrong (/e/OS didn't suddenly start sending data to OpenAI without user permission, they are relying on OpenAI for a service that is optional PLUS they are explicitly saying that they setup a proxy to anonymize content!) but the content is also wrong :
TL;DR: /e/OS is not perfect but it's damn well better than Google!
Also important clarification, the Murena services (backup, STT highlighted there, etc) are NOT MANDATORY! When you boot you can decide to use them, make an account, etc (yes, like other services, including Google) but you just as well refuse and use your device. There is NO account required. The goal is to help people who are not yet self-hosting everything have an alternative rather than... have nothing then give up and fallback to iOS or Googled Android.
Of course /e/OS is not perfect
Let me stop you here.
Every phone /e/ supports, Lineage or calyx supports too. Lineage and Calyx are both non profit, implement an actually secure Backup system by default, and do not try to sell you a subscription.
So why should I be defending a company that's worse then the Alternative, that's obligated to extract the most possible profit from its costumers, that says it is Private, yet sends your backup and Photos unencrypted to murena servers?
And no, you can't jUsT uSe aNoThEr bAcKuP sErViCe. These require root access by default, so you can't just install Seedvault.
Also, I don't give a fuck if the data to OpenAI is proxied or not. OpenAI is still not Private, and Murena has other, on device, Open source Voice to text options. Yet they, the self proclaimed Private OS, rely on a non private service
let me stop you here.
... So why should I be defending a company that’s worse then the Alternative, that’s obligated to extract the most possible profit from its costumers, that says it is Private, yet sends your backup and Photos unencrypted to murena servers?
You'd have benefited from not stopping there, at least reading the bold parts : nobody has to use Murena servers. You turn on the device, say no, use whatever alternative services you want, that's it. What Murena (not /e/OS) offers is buying a phone with a working deGoogled Android device. There is a market for that. You don't have to buy from them and it's enough. You can criticize it as much as you want, here and elsewhere, and honestly your criticism is welcomed so that they can improve, just don't make things up.
Source : I'm backing up my photos locally with Immich, no Murena account, no Murena services.
Edit: thanks for sharing https://github.com/seedvault-app/seedvault looks interesting.
nobody has to use Murena servers.
Im just saying, that Murena, with their current services, is in no way better than Google. Also, that can change at any time, since the one making the Services and the one making the OS is the same Murena, so theres nothing stopping them to vertically integrate their Services more and more, until it becomes the only real option
just like Google and Apple did it.
Google started as a company that gave extraordinary Services for cheap to people, and only once it got popular, they started selling user data and doing questionable shit as result of them not really caring about Data Security and storing data unencrypted on their Servers.
Murena is a company that is giving extraordinary Services for sometimes Cheaper than the non Privacy friendly option, and once it gets popular, they still will be reserving the right to start selling user data and do Questionable shit as a result of them not caring about Data Security and storing data unencrypted on their Servers.
Yes, they did not sell your data. Yet. They did not release your Data to authorities. Yet. Their Service, being unencrypted, baked deep into the OS (with their Backup) shows just how much they could go that route at any time, and by having a mostly noobie audience, they wont get much shit for it probably
For me, its just like the Mastodon vs. Bluesky thing
Yes, /e/ is currently better than Google, but /e/ can turn as bad as Google any time. Unlike something like Proton or other Backup systems, since they have the option to encrypt your Photos and therefore make them Availible only to the user.
Murena, with their current services, is in no way better than Google.
Honestly you seem to understand the technical side of things but I don't think you fully grasp the economical scale of Google. Murena is literally nobody, like 10 guys in a small shop in Paris, the CEO walking around, few extra staff international, some contributions here and there, it's not symbolic and I don't want to diminish their effort but it's really tiny. Your local supermarket probably has more staff than they do!
Meanwhile... Alphabet who owns Google is nearly ~200k people on payrolls, thousands more outsourced via 3rd party services (e.g. data annotation, social network "cleaning", etc) and the 4th largest corporation in market capital.
Honestly the comparison is not even apple versus orange.
Same for Apple, 3rd market cap, ~150k employees.
Yet... maybe more importantly, Murena has 0 lock-in, none. Meanwhile Apple and Google literally own the mobile market. It's practically impossible to buy a phone without at some point using one of these 2.
So finding imperfections in /e/OS and Murena is fine, again hopefully helping them to grow out of those potential problems, but the comparison ... I don't even know why do it in the first place. Murena literally can not become Google.
Google and Apple were once the 10 employee nobodies going against behemoths.
Google also used to have no lock in, as well. It's original selling point was an open ecosystem with no lock in, unlike Apple.
You're like a walking definition of 'those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it'
GrapheneOs continuing to be the only unclowned rom
Graphene is the biggest joke of them all. Only works on Google hardware? lmao
no u
THANK YOU! Such a glaring hole in graphene os, I dont know how it doesnt get talked about more!
There is no "hole". It has nothing to do specifically with being from Google, only that no one else but Google is manufacturing devices that meet the hardware requirements and have full support for alternate OSes.
That's because they're the only ones that meet the project's requirements at the moment, but that may soon change soon. Maybe you've seen the news that the project is in talks with an OEM for them to meet the requirements and have official support for GrapheneOS for some of the existing devices.
https://lemmy.world/post/27344091
Hardware-level components like Titan M can execute processes that users cannot audit or disable, raising concerns about opaque data collection.
It is an isolated component without networking. This is not evidence that unknown data collection is occurring. You need to provide actual evidence that it is.
You need to provide actual evidence that it is.
How do you expect me, or anyone else, to provide you with the inner working details of Google's surreptitiously closed-as-fuck custom SoCs? That's the entire basis of the problem, it's closed-as-fuck and there is nothing that you or I or anyone else can do to verify that it isn't malicious.
At this point, you have to choose whether or not to trust the manufacturer. Given that the manufacturer is the most notoriously data-hungry surveillance corporation in the history of the entire world, I choose not to trust them. I wouldn't trust them, even if they were to claim not to spy on us with these phones. (Incidentally, that is not something they claim.)
Open source or source availability is not a requirement for auditing a system. There would be evidence that would have almost certainly been found by now if this was the case. It is up to you, or the claimant, to prove their claims. I can say that there has not been any evidence of data collection by hardware components found, despite years of Pixel devices being tested by security researchers and mobile forensics companies. Not only that, the actual technical capabilities of the hardware (isolated component without networking capabilities) backs that up.
What do you have except fearmongering?
Creepy. Fixed link: https://lemmy.world/post/27344091
I fixed mine too. Copy-pasting from email broke it.
Linaege and Calyx is OK too, since they actually develope software (Linaege does it from scratch, Calyx develops Seedvault etc). even though they are not as rigid as Graphene, they are still ok for normal ungoogled stuff, and to be honest, most people dont need the security Graphene provides them with.
My problem is with Roms like /E/ OS or Iode, which essentially add nothing of value, but instead Fork Linaege, remove Seedvault and everything what isn't essential, and sell what is essentially a DNS blocker (which you can just use on your VPN slot via apps like DNSnet, or Server side like Adguard or Mullvad DNS) as a new ROM, complete with Subscription Service and (in the case of E OS) even with non encrypted Backup, essentially begging someone to compromise their Servers and steal peoples Photos and Data.
Isn't calyx dead now
A lead Dev has left and now they have to rebuild much of their workflow, it will only take 4-6 months according to them
Being serious, what is /e/ ?
Alternative version of android that removes google stuff, basically.
Watching from the sidelines as a LOS ROM user, I'm disappointed by the replies from the devs. From mischaracterizing surprise, anger and generally negative feedback as positive praise to completely ignoring the two main asks of the community. For me, there are other red flags, but I'll leave it alone.
Ego seems to be coming into play here, and the repeated references to GrapheneOS seem to reinforce that. Handwaving new and unique criticism as if it is a continuation of an older conflict is pretty poor form.
The basic issue as I see it (as a non-user of their platform) is to market your OS the way they do while also adding this feature without notice or explanation. Their claim that they want to stay relevant and include popular features is a straw man. There are other ways to implement it, and other ways to introduce it to the community. But that's not relevant. Their explanation could be used to justify abandoning their stated objective of anti-big tech in any/all ways. Saying people want big corporate tech features is weak and obviously not in parity with the stated mission of privacy-first.
It's not always the poor choices that sink user trust; sometimes it's a tone deaf response or unexplained motives, or opaque financial incentive structure.
Sometimes it's all of the above. This seems to be one of those cases.
Ty @Luffy879 for sharing.
E: spelling
send the DB entries of your Downvotes on a Thumb drive (or anything else from SSD to 3.5 inchHDD, depending on your preferences), and shove it up your rectum.
Do not threaten them with a good time
Every year people have to re-find out /e/ calyx and lineage were never focused on privacy and or security.
Man, i really want to like Murena as I have been using e/os for about 3 years now. Even signed up and pay a yearly subsriction for their online ecosystem, albeit its more expensive, but i wanted to give my money to the underdog in this instance.
Going have to read more into this since last years failure doesnt help their image
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)