Every company is nice until the monies they earn is not guaranteed anymore. They were closing the doors they have intentionally left open in the name of security for a couple of generations.
Now they're being more open about why they are limiting user choice. Because like Chrom(e/ium), Android is designed to be a large data sink for Google to feed The Machine.
Also maintaining the monopoly over the app market and getting a good cut out of every transaction within. A non google controlled device in the mass market can introduce new markets independent of google (and not paying them).
They would not like that.
If the device is sufficiently secure, it will be considered for the official support from GrapheneOS.
Of course, GOS can be forked by anyone, including Chinese OEM with insecure hardware.
Can design forgeries be prevented by selecting as designs phrases and fragments of text that are politically provocative in China? To the extent that they continue to make faithful copies to sell in the West, they are exposing labor force to provocative say anti-party content. Or they forego the imitation business?
how is that legal??
that sounds like a very clean cut case of thinks companies aren't allowed to do under fair market lawes
The GPL clearly grants every recipient the same full rights as whoever they received something from, so copyright law itself says that you can take that source and redistribute it.
But starting a year or so ago RedHat says you may not redistribute, which they can't actually say, so you still can, but if you do you will be fired as a customer and lose all future access, so you only get to do it once.
Given the clear wording that makes the intent of the GPL unambiguous, that every end user is fully empowered and you may not do anything to curtail that, I don't see how they get away with it except the simple fact that no one has been willing to take on the legal fight.
If you're a pre-"stream" Centos user, you don't have the money for that. If you're a paying RHEL user, you don't want to be on bad terms with RedHat or maybe IBM either, and neither the licence costs nor the rules bothers you at all anyway.
So it's plainly illegal in my opinion, but will stand, illegal and yet in effect and unchallenged probably indefinitely.
This is basically the reason Google lost their Play Store anti-trust lawsuit when Apple won theirs. Google did all these incriminating, behind closed doors deals to lock out competition from their “open ecosystem”, where Apple never pretended to be open to behind with.
[0] https://tildes.net/~tech/1wam/blocking_of_unverified_apps_on...
Except when Steve Jobs lied saying FaceTime would be an open standard.
"FaceTime is based on a lot of open standards: H.264 video, AAC audio, and a bunch of alphabet-soup acronyms. And we’re going to take it all away. We’re going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we’re going to make FaceTime an open industry standard." - Steve Jobs at Apple’s WWDC 2010 keynote (emphasis mine)
You mean like the Skyhook vs Google 2014 lawsuit? (look it up) Settled before it could go any further.
[1] https://fightchatcontrol.eu/chat-control-overview
[2] https://waag.org/en/article/european-digital-id-wallets-are-...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Kids_Act
[4] https://www.androidauthority.com/why-i-use-grapheneos-on-pix...
How? Even in the case a majority of MEPs have different views to the Commission, it does not matter because only the Commission can initiate legislation. On the off chance the Commission does not get what it wants from the Parliament they can just ask the Council to send the same proposal to the Parliament as an 'emergency' procedure that has to be rejected by a minimum of 361 MEPs even if 50%+1 of the MEPs in attendance vote against. That's how Chat Control 1 was resurrected after it was voted down by a majority of MEPs. 331 MEPs voted against it vs 301 for, and it still passed due to the 361 rule. Which is why lobbying anyone except the Commission is pointless. You can do that even in China - people lobby the CCP there too, nobody claims this is democratic.
So, no conspiracy is needed, this is the EU functioning exactly as designed.
Google was found guilty by the EU antitrust investigation and payed a 4 billions euros fine (and Google has changed nothing since then, they only increased the pressure).
GrapheneOS is especially annoying for them as it destroys their blanket excuse that it's ""for security""
Bill Gates published that infamous open letter about copying software, and both Bill Gates and Brad Smith said that Microsoft's core pillar is IP: "Microsoft is built upon the idea of having IP and protecting and using it" (paraphrased by me).
The quotes I can find by digging the net:
> Microsoft was founded on the premise that software is valuable intellectual property that people should pay for. --Bill Gates
> Microsoft was founded on intellectual property. Intellectual property is the foundation of our business. --Brad Smith (This is the quote I remember in the first place)
So, Microsoft never wanted to be an open company. They were the epitome of the closed source, behemoth software company, where you get the goods, get to use it, and pay them for the privilege.
Microsoft doesn't just choose not to release source code; they send takedown notices to projects that redistribute Microsoft's proprietary software (e.g. Ninjutsu OS). They also put clauses in the EULA for Windows to disallow reverse engineering and certain kinds of remote access (something related to if you change who has access too frequently).
Microsoft takes extra effort to prevent people from sharing or modifying Microsoft software, in order to make more money.
Is it evil to introduce terms and conditions that restrict how you expect your users to use your product? No, it's probably more hypocritical than evil; I don't think my parents telling me not to smoke while they struggled with addiction was evil, but it sure didn't model the best behaviour.
Is it evil to lobby government to curtail the freedoms of individuals to protect your business model? Yeah, probably; in most cases I believe that reducing consenting adults freedoms is usually a pretty evil act.
Microsoft is guilty of both, but I prefer to save Evil to describe actions that actively cause harm, either physically, mentally, emotionally, or in terms of harming the freedoms that people enjoy, especially if that choice to cause harm is economically motivated.
I'm not advocating on behalf of Bill Gates or Microsoft, just on clear terminology so that we can focus on actual evil behaviour versus consenting adults entering into a valid contract for mutual benefit.
I may have been too focused on the "false dichotomy" part and forgotten that you were talking about old Microsoft and not current Microsoft. I don't know enough about old Microsoft to say whether they were "evil" all along, so I won't comment on that part. I do agree with "don't hate the player, hate the game" in general though.
I also understand that we need to eat and have bills to pay, and there are many ways to achieve that, incl. Free or Closed Source software.
What I'm against is weaponization of closed source software beyond reasonable point. To EEE, to deprecate otherwise capable and functional hardware in the market, to limit user freedom or to extort money.
I hope I made my point clear.
Furthermore:
> I've worked at software companies - have you?
I didn't work at a software company per se, yet I develop open source software for the projects we work on, and I know what preparing a codebase for publishing entails. I also worked as a tech-lead of a Linux distribution, and a nation-wide one at that. I know what it entails, trust me.
If we're talking about experience in terms of years, I'm doing this for ~20 years, using Linux for ~25 years, and using computers in a level I understand what programming them entails for ~30 years.
So yeah, I'm not that newbie who have seen some Python and tied themselves to a knot of awe.
> causes a lot of risk,
Don't let's get into FUD territory of "Free Software is insecure", shall we? We see how Windows has been breached yesterday and today, and will see it more for years to come, as with other software.
> and provides absolutely no benefit whatsoever so it is simply irrational to do it.
Hmm, I'll agree to disagree here because 90% of the thing your digital stack is living on is Open Source and Free Software.
I don't have time to flesh out the benefit and irrationality aspect of it, because I mean, it's plainly wrong when it's put that squarely. We can find some nuances maybe, but it's limited to certain scenarios.
your comment honestly just sounds like you dislike closed-source software.
for most commercial software projects, releasing the source provides no tangible benefit, aside from people like HNers being happy
but if Microsoft would've open sourced their OS, they would've been vulnerable to their OS being diluted into free versions or maybe even OEM-maintained versions
from a business sense, it makes no sense.
and as for security, closed source software is harder to attack (and was a lot harder to attack before LLMs). like, there's still much that we don't know about Windows internals exactly, and even those who do are a very small group of people.
it'd be a lot easier to find vulnerabilities if the source was open.
yes, it doesn't mean it's automatically more secure, in fact it can be less so if people don't have eyes on it, but I'd say the amount of attacks is less and usually done by more sophisticated attackers
Right now it doesn't really affect me that Ableton Live is closed-source. But it would affect me if the main method of sharing music on the internet was Ableton Live project files. And if Ableton had cultivated that situation on purpose they would be weaponizing the closedness of their software.
Some business models - like OSS, and free-with-ads - are like dimension-folding weapons from Dark Forest trilogy: once deployed, there is no stopping them, they just permanently drop a degree of freedom from the universe, inside a shell expanding at the speed of light.
I can understand specific hardware and/or CPU generation requirements up to a certain point. Because CPU generations bring more than new instructions and performance, but I don't understand why Windows Team or Microsoft doesn't use function multi versioning to allow more systems to use up to date versions of Windows for longer time.
On the other hand, using closed file format related documentation as reference in a supposedly open format's specifications and trying to short-circuit ISO to push their seemingly open but ultimately closed document formats as standard or using Embrace, Extend, Extinguish tactics to kill competing products, or inserting code which makes their applications crash in competitors' operating systems is straight up malice.
...and we have Halloween documents which are openly(!) trying to make Linux non-functional on PC hardware, so there's that.
I'll note that these stuff can be also weaponized in Free / Open Source software. Pulling hardware baseline higher, deprecating drivers, and not giving good enough errors to make the problems obvious while not giving the source and/or building instructions/configurations is also a tactic of Red^H^H^H IBM. Remember: If you merge a company with IBM, you get IBM.
> your comment honestly just sounds like you dislike closed-source software.
Insisting about something when I openly and honestly said it's not is not very nice. Yes, Free Software is my first choice and where my heart lives at, but I'm not malicious about closed source software. This comment is being written on a Mac, for example. If you really want to dig that, my comment history is also in the open. For the record, as I always say, I prefer Linux desktops and Mac laptops, again for ~20 years or so.
> but if Microsoft would've open sourced their OS, they would've been vulnerable to their OS being diluted into free versions or maybe even OEM-maintained versions
I'm not saying that Windows would be dead if it was open source, but we'd have versions where ads and telemetry are straight up ripped from every possible part of it. Windows 11 and 10 to a certain point feels like it's working against me. Constant nagging, no ability to use local accounts during install, suggested apps everywhere... It's not an operating system anymore. It's a software holding me hostage to its agenda with a side effect of making my computer run. Windows XP was not like that, 2000 was not like that. Even 7 was good.
> from a business sense, it makes no sense.
You can always make it sense, if you decide to do that. There's SQLite for example. It's not an OS, but its development environment is protected enough so you can't get the quality the official versions propose.
However, I'm not saying that Windows shall be open source. However, its closed source nature is weaponized towards its users. Not with hardware requirements primarily, but how it herds the user and siphons data out of the computer in the name of telemetry.
> and as for security, closed source software is harder to attack
Ha, no. A small anecdote: When WMF attack vector was introduced, WINE team had the laugh of their life because the problem seemed so stupid to pass on. The next day, WINE released a patch, because it turned out that WINE also had the same security hole. They reverse engineered Windows API to a level that their implementation was bug for bug compatible.
Another one, about WINE again: My friends' Linux machine got infected with a Windows virus via WINE. The virus was unable to do harm, but it was infecting any USB drive attached to that computer. So, even if we didn't have the code, WINE has reverse engineered and implemented a bug-for-bug compatible Win32 API under Linux.
Both are pre 2010 events, BTW.
Also, with the leaks we have learnt that NSA had a truckload of zero days to infiltrate Windows systems. Great for security, right?
> it'd be a lot easier to find vulnerabilities if the source was open.
This is the half truth. Finding, fixing and evading the introduction of vulnerabilities are a lot easier if the source is open. We evaded 7z incident. Do we know that there's no universal backdoor in Windows? I don't. You can't know either. I don't my computer to have a TSA-approved keyhole somewhere.
Do you remember how NSA backdoored a cryptography algorithm? I do. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG
Have you ever read how Crypto AG rigged secure communication devices sold to certain countries, even NATO allies, because they were in fact owned by CIA (and BND up to a certain point)? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG
Closed source something can't be audited to be secure or anything. It doesn't make it harder to attack, however. Only the good guys (or nobody but us) doctrine doesn't work. An intentional backdoor doesn't discriminate. You say the correct phrase, and it opens.
> yes, it doesn't mean it's automatically more secure, in fact it can be less so if people don't have eyes on it, but I'd say the amount of attacks is less and usually done by more sophisticated attackers
Security through obscurity never stopped anyone from infiltrating anything. With enough persistence, any system even obfuscated can be cracked, even without LLMs. People reverse engineered SMB despite Microsoft's best efforts. Then, they registered it as CIFS and open sourced it, because they had to.
Please, we have gone through this 30 years ago. These arguments doesn't hold water anymore.
I'm not insisting anything, I'm just saying that I don't think your arguments are purely objective, but rather from a matter of principle, which is fine, but to frame it as some kind of established fact that it's being "Weaponized" even though I'd say it's a bit extreme.
I don't like Windows, especially Windows 11, but I can understand why they exist and what markets they serve.
> but I don't understand why Windows Team or Microsoft doesn't use function multi versioning
because otherwise they'd have to support systems for a really long time and they'd be unable to support newer features that *they* think are important.
> I'm not saying that Windows would be dead if it was open source, but we'd have versions where ads and telemetry are straight up ripped from every possible part of it.
this is what I mean. your views are incompatible with closed-source software. not saying all closed-source software needs to have telemetry, but for the average user, this stuff probably helps catch bugs and things.
local accounts, I agree, I've never bothered with Windows 11 for that reason.
it's enshittification, not weaponization.
> You can always make it sense, if you decide to do that. There's SQLite for example.
this is just not a very good point. we're talking about paid products, paid OS that is paid by an OEM or an end-user.
> Not with hardware requirements primarily, but how it herds the user and siphons data out of the computer in the name of telemetry.
what data specifically? I'm not a fan of this either and I'd always disable everything, but it might again be something that people would really not care about. and for an organization like Microsoft, telemetry is probably very useful because otherwise they'd have to rely on user reports or test everything themselves
> Ha, no. A small anecdote
I really think you're dismissing this just because of your principles like "security through obscurity isn't security"
yet security through obscurity literally works. it's not foolproof, but a lot of bugs are never found because of it. and a big part of finding bugs is to get enough information to know where to look
like you saying "look my friend got a bug 15 years ago" doesn't disprove what I claimed.
> Also, with the leaks we have learnt that NSA had a truckload of zero days to infiltrate Windows systems. Great for security, right?
and what are you saying with this? the fact that only NSA (and some others probably) had the ability to find bugs is proof that the security failed?
> Finding, fixing and evading the introduction of vulnerabilities are a lot easier if the source is open.
yes, that is why I said "in fact it can be less so if people don't have eyes on it".
> Do we know that there's no universal backdoor in Windows? I don't.
that's right. we can't know there isn't one in MacOS either.
and yes, I do know about DUAL_EC_DRBG and Crypto AG.
"Closed source something can't be audited to be secure or anything. It doesn't make it harder to attack"
It literally does. the only argument against it is that with it being open you'd have others that would catch bugs and report them to the vendor, vs. keeping it to themselves, which I think is fair, but it doesn't make it harder to attack, at least historically when you had to put a lot of effort into security research which of course the intelligence agencies could leverage. I think this is changing with LLMs.
"Security through obscurity never stopped anyone from infiltrating anything. With enough persistence, ..."
it has stopped tons of attempts. literally.
there simply isn't an infinite amount of "persistence" available to people/orgs. it takes a huge amount of time to meticulously reverse engineer and find security holes in an OS like Windows, it's like games with DRM like Denuvo, it works. it's security through obscurity, but it works, it has held off games for like 6+ months after release.
"security" doesn't mean impenetrable, there's always going to be new bugs even in Linux, Chromium and others even though they're open.
but with closed source software, it is much harder to comb through it and find bugs.
> Please, we have gone through this 30 years ago. These arguments doesn't hold water anymore.
like, I don't understand what you mean with this.
you're talking like this is a settled argument and that you're just absolutely right, closed-source software is not harder to attack and it's just propaganda from the NSA or something?
like, we can be objective and point out the flaws of closed-source software and security through obscurity, but we also have to be realistic. things may be changing now, but at least up until very recently, only the most determined actors (usually organized groups) would be able to conduct sophisticated attacks against these systems
but also remember that a lot of the major vulnerabilities against Windows have been through leaks from the CIA and etc. that is not Windows being "breached yesterday and today". and Microsoft has the resources to hire very well-paid engineers who work on security around the clock, unlike with many FOSS projects
Not a big news person?
Was this ever the deal with Moto? They announced something recently, but it didn't read like Moto would be distributing devices with preinstalled GOS. Just that it would be able to run GOS.
[0] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116159602850585685
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/1rik0np/motorol...
Then there's expectation GOS might be sold pre-installed as well.
This seems similar to wanting to follow the advice of "only buy bottled water on your trip to India", but the bottle you're buying has the cap removed so they could put a straw in it for your convenience.
> The Auditor app uses hardware-based security features to validate the identity of a device, along with the authenticity and integrity of the operating system. It ensures the device is running a verified operating system with a locked bootloader and that no tampering has occurred." [0]
I assume that it would be quickly discovered if Motorola were tampering with phones en masse.
But never, never has the EU sanctionned Microsoft for signing OEM deals that prevent companies from installing other OS than Windows.
So that in three years (after Graphene has gone under and after Google pressured Samsung to stop working with them) Judge Mehta can rule that it is in fact illegal but not doing it would damage Google's business so he will allow it?
I regret to inform you that the manager will not save you. The manager will be doing $100K speeches on a tour of google campuses.
> end-90s/begin-00s Microsoft levels of anti-competitiveness.
Also got away with it. The only consolation prize we got was a glimpse at a bunch of documents that made clear that they knew full well what they were doing. That actually makes it worse.
Because corporate managed phones are required for all the id crap governance franchises intend to foist on people.
Absolute anti-competitive behavior. "Android is open, but not really"
That sounds like a brilliant idea, I'm sure it'll be amazing show of force for all the top kernel contributors as well.
This actually is a brilliant idea.
This is rich even for the very low standards of HN.
Moronic take of the day. Quite a feat.
Simple reason, they're afraid of Trump bullying them into submission, just look at the oil/diesel stockpile release drama.
The US has never been shy about its politicians up to and including the President being an extended arm of the large US corporations - but Trump takes that x1000.
To be That Guy, Apple is not allowing anyone anywhere to sell any devices with anything but MacOS/iOS.
> But this is really end-90s/begin-00s Microsoft levels of anti-competitiveness.
It's not even the most anti-competitive in the market of 2026!
Google made the choice to announce that Android was open to all, in an attempt to take market share from Windows Phone.
Now they want to go back on their word.
> Alphabet's Google on Thursday lost its long-running fight against a record [€4.1 Billion] EU antitrust fine for using its Android mobile operating system to block rivals
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2026-07-02/goo...
Now they are trying block Motorola from pre installing a different fork of Android.
They will either back down or face another enormous fine in the EU.
The important part is allowing users to make an informed choice, which requires you to be honest about what you are selling.
Apple doesn't allow Apple selling Apple devices with other operating systems.
Google doesn't allow other OEMs selling the OEMs' devices with other operating systems.
Big difference.
(Yes, pedantics: I know that OEMs could sell devices with other OSes, but not being able to sell GMS Android devices would lose them most of their customers.)
Not from the perspective of competition, as I see it. Like, if you want to compete with Apple by using part of its platform for your own stuff, you can't at all. But you can with Google, just not all of it and in all ways.
Point being: this is just another platform flame. People with one kind of phone in their pocket are outraged at the maker of the other thing.
Apple doesn’t prevent other OEMs from selling phones.
The linked comment was posted a day ago by what appears to be an account used for speaking officially about GrapheneOS.
So, like, you could go ask.
Nah. The guy who -presumably- has all the relevant information in his head can be reached by writing an HN comment. The proposed question is directly relevant to the comment you'd be replying to.
Regardless of how the guy replies... with a sensible story, bullshit, or silence, everyone saves a ton of effort by asking him.
Seems stupid to go redo a whole bunch of research when the primary source of the claims in question is figuratively sitting right next to you and obviously open for conversation, doesn't it?
Or, you know, any actual market. Where I can sell whatever I want from my stall but I can't sabotage other people's stalls.
Oh, if you sell in your stall oranges at 10c box, with plenty of stock, you will sabotage the other stall selling fruit. And you can do that because your actual business is another one.