paradox2011

Seriously. It seems like the subconscious anxieties and fears of the writer's mind come through in statements like this and a few others. Whatever positives (real and imagined) there are about the situation, there is an underlying loss of personal autonomy that causes a sense of unease. The thing that's continuing to intrigue me now is: did the writer intend for that to come through, showing the losses a society of that nature would sustain as a commentary on those that promote it, or are they unaware that their words reveal that distress and anxiety? Idk, weird article.

"Once in awhile I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. No where I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me."

The consensus seems to be that this is a propaganda piece (or at least heavily opinionated by the writer) but I just don't understand how they could write this with a positive frame of mind. The article is a strange mixture of perspectives that don't seem consistent. Bizarre.

FOSS is a two sided coin: it's awesome that anyone with an interest can continue a project when the original maintainers disperse, but man you have to watch your software carefully for the most actively maintained forks. Thats happened to me on a bunch of apps: Breezy Weather, Paperless-ngx, Cromite, Ironfox, Simple Calendar and on and on 😂. It takes time, but it's worth it.

Interesting, I hadn't noticed the OG app had been abandoned. Thanks for the correction!

Try these two apps out. They'll help you remove deeply integrated stuff. If you don't need the Google Play store you can outright firewall it from internet access.

1. Universal Android Debloater. It'll guide you through removing whatever extra stuff the manufacturer put on that you don't want. It's great.
2. Netguard. This will let you see all the apps and services that are making calls out, and what they are calling. Then you can simply block what you want and deny access to the internet for any proprietary app.

You're doing the lord's work 🫡

LineageOS if you want a certain piece of hardware that is supported by them and aren't too concerned with highly technical security. Lineage is also much more flexible through custom recoveries and rootable firmware.

GrapheneOS if you don't mind Pixel devices and are interested in security above all else.

Sure is. Here's the github. I ran it for awhile a year or so go. It was good.

These are the kind of subtleties that people often miss, thank you for expressing them.

You end your comment by saying...

"Which makes one wonder why CalyxOS, with an entire team behind it, doesn't follow the same example"

When you already answered your question in the beginning...

"To understand the purpose of CalyxOS, you must understand the purpose of the project, of course"

If you compare CalyxOS to DivestOS or GrapheneOS, then you've missed the point of CalyxOS, "the purpose of the project". They are intended for different people, though there is some overlap. CalyxOS respects FOSS much more than does GrapheneOS, and to me that's a very valuable thing. They tighten privacy, but are not as focused on security alterations beyond stock android, beyond making it less leaky when it comes to personal data, which in its own way is a reinforcement of security.

Also, DivestOS has "divested" itself of participation in the privacy/security game and stopped all development. It's sad, but I'm happy that the developer is getting to live his life to a fuller degree now. He contributed a lot of value to the open source world in the past.

Thanks for the TL;DR, I figured it would be a uneducated take, you saved me the time of watching it 🫡

I'd suggest looking in to it farther. The commenter above basically covered it, but no, beeper is not all closed source. Their hosted server has never been open source, but all the self-hosted bridges have been, and continue to be. You can run your own, open source, self-hosted beeper server, just like you've always been able to. There's nothing embrace, extend extinguish about that.