“We'll be making a new release later today with a completely overhauled user interface written in ‹whatever›” is something developers love, and users fear.
Graphene is clearly bullish on Android, but I have no idea why. The writing is on the wall, Google is slowly asphyxiating AOSP.
Apps are written for android. Grapheme can run all the apps because it's android. If it couldn't run apps, you wouldn't use it. Are you posting today from a pinephone?
So what should they do instead? Just give up? Assume that it's simply inevitable that Google will cancel AOSP entirely and so Graphene should hurry up and die?
What's the concern? They are working with Motorola as a manufacturer. It'll probably be a hard fork eventually but why not make it work in the meantime.
If they hard fork, a lot of apps that are generally "necessary for the average person" (e.g. Uber, banking apps, Gmail, Whatsapp/Wechat/Line) might stop working.
Sure, but what could graphene do in the meantime? It's either make it work for the moment or stop those apps from working today.
I'd like to see them lay more ground work for web apps but it's a tough spot and the easiest choice at the moment is to continue with AOSP.
I don't want to see more groundwork for web apps. GrapheneOS is meant to be secure, which means running trusted apps on-device. My messages are less secure if they permanently are stored on a server.
I mean we privacy nerds all love webapps but the reality is the people actually in charge of S&P500 companies hate them. They really, REALLY want to fingerprint your device and use it as a verification and tracking mechanism.
Until that changes, webapps aren't going to sell.
Even Google tried multiple things to "sell" the idea of webapps (e.g. Polymer project) in 2011-2015 and failed.
Funny enough, Wechat kinda succeeded at webapps in China because there's a strong user preference to stay inside one monolithic "everything app".
Seriously, I don't see a mediocre android provider like Motorola running and maintaining a hard fork.
Forking is all easy, keeping it up to date year after year as codebases diverge is a whole different story.
I could see Samsung doing it. But they won't, they're too good buddies with Google. But they have the resources. A Motorola no. The grapheneos team won't either, maintaining a disparate fork and introducing new features independently from aosp would just be beyond their scope. You're not just hardening at that point. You're basically doing everything.
Don't forget when Huawei didn't fork. Well they started with that but then replaced every component with their own design. It's easier because if you fork you're still bound by decisions made by the original party. Better to greenfield the whole thing then.
And look at how many people made a soft fork of chrome with some ui changes. There's tons of those. There's no hard fork that no longer follows Google. Even a large company like Microsoft didn't.
I think graphene could maintain a hard fork with manufacturer support (Motorola). At least for a while. Long term viability is an open question.
They could for a while but what's the point if it's not sustainable? Google is not going to turn around and make it more open again.
With every Android release you will build up more feature base to replicate. Unless you cut all ties and drive a separate ecosystem but good luck getting enough developers to buy into that.
The concern is AOSP engineers see them as annoying complainers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49537268
There's clearly some kind of situation brewing here. Hopefully the GPL proves to be enough to keep code in the hands of GrapheneOS developers.
They basically have opposite goals to Google so I don't imagine there will every be good feelings there. There shouldn't be.
Yes Google wants android to be secure, but the problem is that to be truly secure it should be secure from Google too. And they don't want that. They want it to be their personal datamine and walled garden. Just like Apple with ios.
There is no alternative.
Apple isn't going to let them build on top of iOS, and anything except those two is dead in the water because it'll never have users because it is missing a bunch of critical apps, and will never have those apps because it doesn't have users.
Remember when we thought IE's monopoly could never be broken? Or windows?
Anything can and will go down. Nothing is forever.
IE's monopoly was replaced by Chrome and Safari's, and Safari only exists because Apple gives you no choice but to use it on iOS. Firefox had a brief spot on top, but it really didn't last that long.
Windows still has the vast majority share of desktop.
Chrome is the outlier there. It didn't come with any desktop OS and still got near 100% market share, even before Android contributed to that. How? It's worth studying.
Yes but that's my point. Monopolies don't last. We have other ones now yes. But that's because the earlier ones died.
And yes we still have windows as the major desktop OS but don't forget, in the 90s/early 2000s windows was equivalent to computing.
These days the desktop OS is much less relevant than it was and many people don't even own a laptop or desktop anymore. They just do everything on their phone. And Microsoft totally and completely lost that race.
> There is no alternative.
There have been several projects like Ubuntu Touch to create an open Linux for smartphones.
That would be an open alternative.
Android is not open.
FuriLabs makes a Linux phone that is designed as a daily driver. Looking at it to replace Android.
Yes RCS is barely a standard worth implementing, let alone the best one. Make SMS/MMS and XMPP work together seamlessly in one app, forget RCS.
Yes RCS is a pig with lipstick. Invented by the carriers to recoup some control over instant messaging, then abandoned and picked up by Google for the same reason. They're the ones that added encryption to it.
It was always meant to be a walled garden. Exactly what an open system shouldn't be.
Remember Pidgin and Trillium?
I remember who forced me to consider other options.
> Graphene is clearly bullish on Android, but I have no idea why.
Their resources are historically better spent hardening vs literally reinventing the wheel.
Multiple variables in that equation have changed - so it could be interesting where we end up.
Someone (else!) may yet arise chasing their stated model without Android, as well.
They may as well get ready for an eventual hard fork, then?
Perhaps they're hoping to get significant market share before they lose the opportunity for good?
I hope they replace the AOSP keyboard with FUTO keyboard. I'm mostly fine with the other stock apps, but that keyboard was the one thing I absolutely had to end up replacing due to its jenky behavior.
I wish Futo had the ability to use a typing heat map for more accurate predictions like SwiftKey. It constantly suggests "AMD" when I am trying to type "and". I have fat thumbs OK! I don't even have the caps on and I RARELY talk about AMD. It's just the one thing I miss. I do find the predictions generally less accurate as well, but perfectly usable.
I use Gboard with the network permission disabled. It works well but I hope they have a better stock keyboard, I haven't found any others that don't annoy me in one way or another.
I agree FUTO is the best right now but it's not open source so they won't.
The source is here: https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/latinime
Featured prominently in the "Source Code" container on https://keyboard.futo.tech/
AFAIK everything FUTO makes is open source? I haven't seen a counter-example (I have not looked hard though!), and https://futo.tech/about claims the following:
>All FUTO-funded projects are expected to be open source or develop a plan to eventually become so. No effort will ever be taken to hide from the people what their computers are doing, to limit how they use them, or to modify their behavior through their software.
From the LICENSE file:
https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/latinime/-/blob/master/LICE...
>You may modify the software only for non-commercial purposes such as personal use for research, experiment, and testing for the benefit of public knowledge, personal study, private entertainment, hobby projects, amateur pursuits, or religious observance, all without any anticipated commercial application.
Violates clause 3 (Derived Works) and clause 6 (No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor) of the Open Source Definition [0].
>You may distribute the software or any part of its source code only if you do so free of charge for non-commercial purposes.
Violates clause 1 (Free Redistribution) and clause 6.
>Notwithstanding the above, you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software related to payment to the Licensor in any copy you distribute to others.
Violates clause 3.
It is a "source available" license, not Open Source.
Ah, yeah, agreed - "source available" fits that much better. I'm pretty sure that's the same for immich (which is also from FUTO).
Thank you for the details! That lays it out nicely for anyone else passing through.
https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/latinime/-/blob/master/LICE...
It is not open source. They use a custom source available license. There's no way any Android distribution would include it. A layman's reading is that FUTO could claim license violation on account of the distribution accepting donations (non-commercial use only) and there's a weird clause about not accusing FUTO of patent infringement.
Right, they are adhering to a definition of open that includes free as in liberty, so licensing matters. What good is it to read the source if I don’t have rights to modify and redistribute?
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Heliboard is good, customizable, and actually open source - GPL3.
I like Heliboard a lot, but its autocorrect gets stuck in the mud all the time.
It completely falls apart and starts injecting nonsense phrases made up of nonsense misspelled words moment you miss a space ('v' or 'b') or type a really long word it doesn't know.
It also stubbornly incorrects other things like 'a' into "and" if it thinks it knows a phrase fragment. It's always wrong. It just happened to me now twice. Above, "or type a" became "or type and". Also, "it's" became "IRS".
Heliboard would be perfect if it stuck to word-only spellcheck and never split words. Just now again, it tried correcting "heliboard" into "hellenized" and "he lib oars".
This is not a matter of just lowering how aggressive the spellcheck is. It will still generate slop every time. The only real option is to completely turn it off. Futo can have similar problems, but there are a lot more options to tweak and the defaults aren't so bad.
I turn off automatic autocorrect except for "I". I can use it manually when I need it (jot often).
this was my experience. the autocorrect for heliboard is beyond atrocious and renders the keyboard unusable.
i ended up just using gboard on gos because every other one i tried fell short.
hopefully the stock gos one can be reworked into an actually decent keyboard.
Why not Unexpected Keyboard?
Ctrl+f clipboard, no results. What does "Secure Clipboard" in the title refer to?
The release seems to be only the SMS/RCS app, rest is future:
> We're also going to be overhauling or fully replacing the rest of the AOSP apps in the near future. AOSP Gallery is incredibly outdated and is being entirely replaced. AOSP Keyboard may be similar. We recently hired a bunch of new people and will be hiring more so our progress will be accelerating.
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I believe this is the planned gallery app. I've already been using it: https://github.com/IacobIonut01/ReFra
Just tried this out. I may soon be cancelling by Google Photos subscription...
twitter versions have paragraphs not threads
https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/2096677808424788256#m
https://nitter.click/GrapheneOS/status/2096677808424788256#m
https://bsky.app/profile/grapheneos.org/post/3muun5c4fdc2o
Secure paste:
https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/2096685327020933355#m
https://nitter.click/GrapheneOS/status/2096685327020933355#m
Certainly, with Opus 5 and GPT-6, modernizing or even completely rewriting self-contained, non-critical tools seems like a Friday afternoon job now. I wonder however how important this is, in the grand scheme of things. I use GrapheneOS and the bundled messaging app is serviceable. It isn't pretty, but it gets the job done.
They are using AI [1]. I don't think messaging app is non-critical though.
I dunno. If they're using AI, it's well controlled. I don't see a lot of artifacts you usually get from full-on vibe-coding.
"RCS isn't an open platform in practice. It isn't even as open as SMS/MMS. It heavily depends on proprietary Google and carrier infrastructure in practice. We can start by replicating Google's approach and then we can work on only using carrier services for carriers where it's actually supported."
Except... what carriers still remain using their own RCS carrier services and haven't been pressured by Google to adopt Jive?
> RCS isn't an open platform in practice. It isn't even as open as SMS/MMS. It heavily depends on proprietary Google and carrier infrastructure in practice. We can start by replicating Google's approach and then we can work on only using carrier services for carriers where it's actually supported.
RCS was DOA from day one as far as I'm concerned. The carriers being involved in any capacity deeper than providing dumb pipes alone was enough to make it pointless, but no E2E in the base spec makes it extra pointless. They may as well have just extended SMS to be more capable, because that's what they've effectively created.
I don't know much about RCS other than that carriers need to be involved, but there's a way to not involve them, which Google did for a while using some kind of compat-service (jibe or something?), and then they stopped doing it.
Never seen RCS working on any carrier ever since. I don't understand why Google couldn't just continue doing what it was doing. Why require carriers?
The RCS spec has encryption in its documentation. I think the current spec version is 4.0?
It has it in its current documentation (maybe 3.0 too? I forget, but it's new this year), and Apple and Google have had messages to themselves encrypted for a while (but not to each other, which is what the RCS docs are intended to resolve). It took many years to get it documented though (despite loudly claiming RCS is more secure the whole time), and AFAIK none yet implement it. Definitely none with all the documented things it needs to show to be compliant with the spec I read, e.g. key verification - I certainly don't see any of that in Google's "Messages" app! Though hopefully that will all change.
But honestly, in a non-open ecosystem, can you really trust that the near-exclusive two major players are actually playing by the rules? Apple has been relatively protective of its users on privacy stuff, but I've lost all trust in Google at this point.
Almost none of my RCS conversations are encrypted. Who cares what's in the spec if nobody uses it?
The point of the exercise is for Google and Apple to maintain control over the ecosystem.
RCS is technically superior (protocol, transport, security, all of it) but is captured from the start on the technical level by design by the big players. From the perspective of the vast majority of users who have very limited technical awareness, it was silently slipped in as an upgrade at one point or another. This means that those not adopting the proprietary BigTech solution are perceived as being difficult by insisting on using software that's now perceived as outdated or as otherwise mildly incompatible.
GrapheneOS does not want to adopt RCS for public perception. It is still a better option than SMS/MMS and providing it is beneficial. GrapheneOS will still recommend using better platforms and protocols but RCS being bundled and cross platform are great reasons to implement it.
Eh, I don’t think you have to include Apple here. If it were up to them, the iPhone would still have zero RCS support right now. The current implementation of RCS, even in iOS 27 beta, is clunky.
To me, the only they’re trying to maintain control of is AppleOS-to-AppleOS text communication.
> To me, the only they’re trying to maintain control of is AppleOS-to-AppleOS text communication.
Yes, exactly. Apple and Google are both acting to maintain control and this has resulted in a standard that improves functionality but is effectively poisoned at the technical level. Left to their own devices I'm sure Apple would have preferred to stay with their original solution that is even more closed off.
Idk, I mean RCS on iPhone is just SMS/MMS but fixing like 90% of the issues. I don’t find it that clunky.
From [0], it seems that RCS can use the cellular signal instead of LTE or 5G:
> In cases where RCS is able to operate over cellular networks without data, it supports messaging as well as file transfer, enriched calling, and more.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services
In LTE and 5G there exists no cellular signal without data. That was a 2G/3G thing. Since 4G everything is data. The separate sms and voice services are gone. And 3G is rapidly being deprecated.
RCS's point is to deliver ads. It is its first purpose. The way I see the situation, the point for Graphene to implement RCS is to prepare for the foreseeable deprecation of SMS. Who knows when it will happen, but better start working now than wait and get stranded when it'll happen. I'm pretty sure RCS implementation will take a long while.
The point is to access an e2ee protocol bundled by default on many devices, and is cross-platform.
GrapheneOS does recommend using superior platforms like Signal, but that is 3rd party, and thus has adoptability issues in convincing people to use it. Just because better platforms exist does not mean RCS should be ignored.
Thanks for clarification. Anything first party from Big Tech is a lost cause privacy wise. At the same time, nobody uses it (maybe that is different in the USA, don't know). So for me this would be ultra-low prio as I (and I expect almost every other GOS user) will never use it. But I believe GOS knows what it is doing.
Nearly everybody uses it in the USA. It's very common to text people through the default messaging app on your phone there (probably an outgrowth of the popularity of iPhones and iMessage), and backup options would be Instagram, Snapchat for a certain demographic, or Facebook messages. Whatsapp is only for messaging foreigners, and Signal/Telegram are for messaging your drug dealer.
Yep, I have never used anything other than the stock messaging app that came with the phone. Whether that's SMS, iMessage, or whatever has never crossed my mind
I was really disappointed when Signal went away from being used as an "everything" messenger, including regular SMS. I onboarded all my family and now because it's not a default messenger, nobody is using it.
In the US everyone with an iphone uses RCS, so you'll often have family group conversations on it and so on. Whatsapp or signal are comparatively rare (although more common for anyone with overseas family naturally)
No, in the US, everyone with an iphone uses imessage. (Basically all my family's messaging goes over imessage) It's only when non-iphone users are on the chat that RCS comes into play.
RCS allows higher resolution pictures than MMS.
Perhaps it's different in other countries, but I've never seen anyone use MMS. (Everyone uses WhatsApp nowadays, but even before WhatsApp existed, I never saw anyone use MMS.)
I've seen people try, only for it to never actually work (images either compress horribly, to the point there's no reason even sending it, or just fail to send).
MMS bring broken since day 1 in my experience is probably the reason I jumped on internet chat and email, since those actually work as advertised (sure, they has some practical limits, but they tell you about those!). I probably would have sent my mum that image over MMS if MMS actually every worked. Since it never did, using a difference service was a must.
Then again, this feels like an extension of the rest of the phone system. Anything beyond calls between two people, SMS and data that involves connecting to the phone system has always (in my experience) been either janky or broken. No wonder I try to use anything else given the opportunity.
It depends heavily on country, yes. USA is extremely light on WhatsApp, and MMS use is widespread (and has been free for a long time now, and SMS even longer). RCS is a mostly silent upgrade for USA.
I'm not sure which of the two is better tbh. Utterly dominated by a Facebook-owned system, or using something that's crappy enough that people spread out to a variety of systems?
There are excellent FOSS gallery apps already, like the Fossify suite. Why not use them I wonder?
Their license is invalid due to being GPLv3. GPLv3 cannot be included in GrapheneOS as that would necessitate GrapheneOS give up their permissive licensing.
Refra Gallery is licensed as Apache 2.0, which is a permissive license GrapheneOS can bundle in the OS.
Its not part of the OS so why would it affect the Graphene OS license? Its an app, not a library.
The preinstalled apps are part of the OS.
Can you please elaborate on what you mean?
Ubuntu does not aim to be a permissively-licensed system. It can include copyleft (e.g. GPL) and permissive (e.g. MIT) without issue.
Permissively-licensed systems like FreeBSD and GrapheneOS cannot include GPL code if they want to remain permissive.
IANAL, but I would expect that to fall under "mere aggregation"
Can the Linux kernel be included in the OS?
Linux is GPLv2, though. Not sure if that makes a difference here.
Media handlers are a security nightmare, might lead you to the right answer if it isn’t it.
Maybe I'm old school but
big announcement
> We're well into the process of converting the Messaging app included in GrapheneOS into a modern app.
> We'll be making a new release later today
Back in my day this would not make for excitement. On the contrary. (We would expect months/years? of release candidates, test releases and such after such big rewrite)
How come a recognized brand such as GrapheneOS speak like this?
Have their leadership fallen to AI psychosis too?
Very good idea! Google abandoned these long ago.
I don't really get why so many Americans want RCS to succeed though. Do you guys not remember when carriers charged 10p/text? Why on earth would you want to give any power at all back to those people?
After getting several family group chats finally converted over to RCS, one day my phone just started absolutely refusing to verify my connection to the RCS servers. Instead of any kind of notification, I was just silently not sending or receiving messages for nearly an entire day. I had to disable RCS on my phone, which created a several day long issue where some chats would just fall back to SMS and others absolutely refused to work, or strange interactions with Apple devices where certain messages would not be displayed. After enough trouble with it I convinced everyone to switch to a third party messaging app. I'll never turn RCS on again, I can't trust that it won't just start silently failing.
Americans have had unlimited texting plans for much longer than Europeans. I'm pretty sure most Americans had unlimited texts before Whatsapp existed, so there was never the move to it for economic reasons.
Yes I think this is the main reason for WhatsApp's popularity in Europe. Our providers were hanging on to sms as a cash cow and they were pretty much the most expensive bits you could send.
Malicious providers like kpn in the Netherlands even sought to charge extra for WhatsApp traffic because they lost so much revenue. However the EU shot that down hard under net neutrality.
But I remember it well and this is why I always disable RCS. I don't ever want to give my provider the chance to do that again. And I don't trust Google either. SMS is completely dead here too. It's been years since anyone sent me a personal message. It's just spam and poorly implemented 2FA shit.
It's not an issue here in Spain anyway. The only phone with iPhones are rich expats and posers (sorry for the term but we get a lot of that type). Most of the people I know use cheap budget androids.
The main benefit of RCS is the fact it is available by default on other platforms like certified android and IOS. 3rd party messaging apps hit adoptability issues. A bundled, cross platform E2EE protocol is a huge step above SMS and MMS.
Many 3rd party platforms are still better though.
It's a bandaid over iMessage's dominance among iOS users.
Text messages in iMessage or SMS are a fairly US-centric relic. That's not to say overseas is better - Europe depends on Whatsapp - but outside the US the whole 'blue box' thing isn't even a thing.
The only benefit is sending higher DPI pictures between android and ios
It makes group messaging work a lot better, too. Previously, group chats with a mixture of ios and android users were really buggy leading to iPhone users significantly preferring group chats with all ios, which led to some social exclusion for android users in the US, leading to market dominance for iPhones. Now, with RCS, you can make a functional group chat across platforms and you don't have to convince anybody to install something new.
Well that is if that user uses Google messages. I certainly don't even have it installed.
If you have a smartphone from the last 5 years, you have to have done something unusual to it to not have an SMS app that also does RCS.
I'm happy todays update shipped auto call recording.
Yay! Finally, been waiting for it for ages.
Maybe they'll work on the backup now, this *** seedvault is worse than nothing (consistently broken on both my GOS phones, never giving the same results with 2 backups, never giving out as much as the status I could trust)
LineageOS keyboard and the Trebuchet launcher would be most helpful.
I do miss keyboard symbols without shifting and icon packs.