Why was I banned from GrapheneOS? That’s a good question.
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| Why I was banned from GrapheneOS by Daniel Micay) |
Your blogpost is highly inaccurate and a heavy misportrayal of the events that occured. The title is completely wrong already. You did not get banned from GrapheneOS. GrapheneOS is a free and open source operating system, you can’t be banned from using it and the developers would also not wish to do so. You were instead banned from the OS issue tracker on GitHub because of spam and inapprioriate behavior. You were also blocked by multiple GrapheneOS developers on GitHub, not solely Daniel Micay, for continuing to mention them and sending notifications their way even via other repositories than the official GrapheneOS issue tracker. Also, you are not a contributor at all. You have never contributed to GrapheneOS, not a single line of code. Unless you will call issue tracker spam a contribution, but that’s a very big stretch.
Now, as to what actually happened. You wanted GrapheneOS to implement a certain feature, they did not deem it desirable. Instead of accepting this, you kept spamming the issue tracker. The issue got deleted because it caused too much spam from other accounts as well who kept saying they also wanted the feature instead of following the rules of the issue tracker that you should upvote a post if you agree. After getting banned, you forked the issue tracker and started pinging a bunch of GrapheneOS developers. This behavior is insanely inapprioriate in the FOSS world. GrapheneOS is free, yet you act insanely entitled, as if the GrapheneOS developers owe you anything. They also clearly explained to you on multiple occasions why the feature you proposed is undiserable.
If you disagree, the solution in open source is to fork GrapheneOS and make your own changes to the source code instead of endlessly complaining to the developers of the original project, who can’t be forced to follow your opinion. They had every right to ban you because you kept making a scene out of something minor like a non-accepted feature request. Many feature requests get rejected, yet you make this whole drama about it and continue to do so.
On top of all that, you link misinformation and harassment about the GrapheneOS project in your blog post. The videos you link from content creator containg bullying and fabrications about the project and the founder. They are also entirely unrelated to how they dealt with your issue on the issue tracker.
If you are part of the Graphene team and want to defend yourself, at the very least just be honest and say so. OP seemed good intended and just wanted to talk, he got banned.
I’m not part of GrapheneOS. I’m a community member. I’m very active in the GrapheneOS chat rooms. I’m not a moderator, nor a developer nor do I have any other role in the GrapheneOS team. I’m passionate about the project, given that I use it a lot, see that there is misinformation being spread, and want to contribute to correcting that. You seem to not understand that there is a community and user base around GrapheneOS that cares about the project and is willing to help issue corrections about stuff in online discussions.
I doubt the OP had good intentions. The title is a complete lie, as I have explained in other comments. They got banned because of the way they kept pinging and tagging GrapheneOS project members on GitHub because their feature request was not considered and the issue got locked and deleted because there was too much spam on the issue. If they would’ve just stop doing that, in order to avoid the developers inboxes being flooded about one single issue, there would have been no conflict. if developers inboxes get flooded about one single issue, other more urgent issues might get burried under the noise, which is not good. It’s reasonable that the team decided to shut the discussion down.
Thanks for setting the record straight!
Jonathan Corbet from LWN also got accused of various things on Fediverse for writing an article on GrapheneOS recently.
Unfortunately, it seems I’m not the first person to be attacked by Daniel Micay
Oh, honey… LOL there isn’t anyone in the FOSS/INFOSEC community that hasn’t been attacked by Micay/GOS (myself included).
I do use and love GOS but it’s the single most toxic leadership in the space. And it’s unfortunate because it’s to everyone’s detriment.
There are many open soruce project who are on very good terms with Daniel Micay and GrapheneOS. The project with which there are conflicts often have people in their circle who are also part of the other projects with which there are conflicts. The conflicts are often related in that way. Besides that, there are no issue, GrapheneOS is on very good terms with most open source projects. Care to explain why you felt attacked?
Anyone who speaks publicly about GOS, even in a positive light, is accused within a matter of weeks of “harassment” and “SWATing” without any evidence. Just look at their feeds. Every single day they’re accusing some new person or project of “harassment”. It’s The Boy Who Cried Wolf long long long after everyone stopped believing them.
There is evidence of the swatting. You can look it up in the police records of Canada. The harassment is evidenced by many social media posts, including things that are said in this very thread. The project gets attacked a lot, so almost every day there will be a defensive reply, that’s true. If the harassers stop those replies will also stop. Easy.
No, you look it up. I haven’t seen it because they haven’t shared it. I’m not wasting my time looking it up.
There’s no way you’ll ever get me to believe they have daily harassment campaigns from new attackers, all who are well-respected in the community.
Just so you know, the person you are replying to created that account today purely to respond to every single thread about this issue. It’s highly likely they are associated with GrapheneOS.
They created mutiple accounts even. Sounds about as deranged as strcat/Mackay.
No doubt.
Hi Daniel, nice to see the anger management classes are working. Keep on keeping on, champ!
the GrapheneOS guy is clearly a high-conflict personality, but I’m still considering it for whenever I have sufficient $ to get a new-to-me phone.
If you’re considering Graphene, I would recommend checking out Calyx instead. They support basically the same devices. Except one isn’t led by a dickhole.
Responding to attacks is not being high-conflict personality, that’s reversing the roles. People who are harassed and attacked are allowed to defend themselves. Having been part of the GrapheneOS community for almost 2 years, in which Micay is often present, I have to say he is not looking for conflict at all. His messages are often direct, without any bullshit wrapped around it, but he’s a nice and patient person. Note that you can install grapheneos on a second-hand (used) phone or refurbished phone perfectly fine, just make sure it’s not carrier locked. You can verify the integrity of the OS and firmware via the verfied boot hash and the auditor app. That way you don’t really have to trust the seller especially if you buy from a random seller you contact yourself, who is unlikely to target you.
Responding to attacks is not being high-conflict personality, that’s reversing the roles. People who are harassed and attacked are allowed to defend themselves.
That’s mostly true, but misses the point.
Point of order; a ‘high conflict personality’ is not a bad thing on its own. If we didn’t have people with them, open source would not exist as a community. Linus is infamous for his ‘high conflict personality’, although he has for sure cut back on it in recent years. People who get mad and fight back are a blessing and a requirement for humanity to succeed.
Everyone chooses to fight, de-escalate, or to not engage at all. The people who choose to fight, often and regularly, don’t have to be wrong to have a ‘high conflict personality’. They just have to semi-constantly choose to fight instead of the other options.
I looked at the only available evidence (which is from the posted article, because all of the github conversations were deleted) and it’s pretty clear that, of the available options, Micay did not choose to de-escalate. You could argue that deleting the feature request counted as an attempt at disengaging from the issue, but it pretty quickly changed from that to fighting about it.
I get that this is a pretty important issue to you tranquil, I see it in all the comments you’ve made here. But ThorrJo wasn’t making a moral accusation, but casual observation. Micay gets into drama, real or otherwise, enough to show up on a semi-regular basis.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been a regular user of grapheneos for the past year and I genuinely love what has been created. The work done on this software is incredibly important in this day and age, and I’m incredibly grateful to the people who made it.
What a childish response to someone who just wants to contribute. Very sad.
