I completely understand where Louis Rossman is coming from. [1]
Daniel does not apologize for anything he says or does and refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing. He still refuses to acknowledge that how he responded to Louis was wrong.
He hops on every thread of GrapheneOS and regularly accuses everyone of being sockpuppets and trolls. [2] He has accused me of being a Techlore and CalyxOS troll numerous times. Worst still, his community are full of psychophants that enable his abusive behavior. They refuse to see him or his outbursts as negative. They routinely collaborate to downvote comments and raid rooms to manage the narrative which I find to be underhanded.
I was an early Copperhead customer who was very disappointed that he got up and destroyed the signing keys without providing any evidence to back his claims up. When I brought up the issue to him via email, his response was to throw his previous business partner under the bus without offering any apologies for damaging my business.
I did use Android Hardening afterwards, used CopperheadOS for a bit and then moved back to LineageOS. I refuse to use any of his projects again.
I wish the best for him and hope he gets well. He's not mentally stable enough to run a project and he has a long way to go for understanding the nuance of interpersonal relationships.
First of all, I genuinely wish him well. He's an extremely talented developer, and we need more people focused on securing our digital infrastructure. My sentiments mirror what others here have said, hoping he can work his way through recovery and growth to be in a better place down the road. And if there really has been crazy stuff like swatting, that punishment is dealt to the perpetrators.
However, in his role leading a project that ostensibly wanted people to use it, he had a very offputting set of personality characteristics that worked against that goal. He was very opinionated and often condescending, frequently stating opinion as fact and being shallowly dismissive. I'm not talking about arguing with people asking that he add shiny baubles, but just generally almost annoyed the person he was talking to didn't realize the obviousness of their own stupidity in not seeing it his way.
Then, he had a gigantic victim complex where any comment that could be perceived as negative whatsoever was seen by him as some grave personal slight deliberately intended to hurt him. It wasn't sufficient for him to explain why he thought others were wrong. It was frequently accompanied by accusations of bad faith, of potential coordination with others trying to take him down, etc. It came across as hysteria. Not to mention the needless aggression with the Calyx developers, etc.
A few years ago, the IRC channel had a lot of this victimization and desperation-type content from him. It got to a point I was uncomfortable using GrapheneOS out of concern for the leadership and prospects of support.
It used to be Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD and to some extent Linus were benchmarks for "prickly" open source leaders, but I think Daniel gave them all quite a run for the money.
It's good that despite all that, Daniel managed to find some developers he could get along with and the contributor base grew beyond him. Here's to hoping the new leadership team steadies the ship and manages not to be so hostile to the community.
Edit to add: looking over the [2] link from parent, it's clear he did provide a lot of thoughtful, helpful answers as well, so I wouldn't want to downplay the great deal of good for which he's responsible. We're significantly better off that something like GrapheneOS exists.
> I was an early Copperhead customer who was very disappointed that he got up and destroyed the signing keys without providing any evidence to back his claims up. When I brought up the issue to him via email, his response was to throw his previous business partner under the bus without offering any apologies for damaging my business.
That’s a shitty situation on your end, but he was stabbed in the back, and imo did the only morally right decision in case of a security-oriented project: pulled the plug on it as it could not be trusted anymore.
He was indeed quite paranoid, but it was not without reason — hopefully this resignation can help him recover mentally from all that.
Nonetheless, I am very grateful to him for this wonderful project, and even if you don’t use GrapheneOS directly, you definitely use many of his contributions to both the linux kernel and android!
>That’s a shitty situation on your end, but he was stabbed in the back, and imo did the only morally right decision in case of a security-oriented project: pulled the plug on it as it could not be trusted anymore.
That is easy for you to say. Harder for me to swallow losing real life dollars to accusations that haven't materalized.
Considering we all have ample evidence that Micay slings accusations without merit, how can you be so sure the Copperhead situation went down the way he says? Micay routinely accuses people of stabbing him in his back. Louis Rossman included.
I was very similar to you, a resentful paying CopperheadOS customer. But now that I understand just how troubled the guy is, I forgive (but don't excuse) him. I also almost installed Lineage but it was too much trouble and I took the risk and went with Graphene.
I wonder what the psychophants are going to do now that he's not involved. Are they going to continue the same path? Is the project in the same precarious position as it was yesterday?
Daniel Micay has been a rare powerhouse, founding and leading a great project.
From the little I'm aware, it sounded like he was being harassed, and some of his public comments sounded like he was powering through stress.
(PSA: Bad stress is bad. No matter how strong and resourceful and outwardly cool you are, the stress is not only unpleasant, but it's also secretly taking a toll. The smart move is to keep stress low.)
I wish Micay all the best for health and happiness. I hope that he doesn't let recent stresses get him down, and that he gives himself a chance to recharge.
I strongly believe that GrapheneOS is one of the most important projects at the moment for several reasons. Nowadays it's almost impossible to live without a smartphone, it's one of the most used pieces of hardware that people use all day, and there are simply no other alternatives to GOS.
I can't thank you enough Daniel for your work on AOSP and GOS, and all the other work you've done around security and privacy.
I am not sure, but some context about Daniel's failings in communication may have contributed. The following is link to Louis Rossmann's video about his interaction with Daniel published today.
I’m speculating that it is 100% because of that video.
He got called out in a much larger audience this time and is unable to control it like in the project’s forum and matrix channel.
Wish Louis hadn't made this. The drama just detracts from the project. Louis is not really a stakeholder in any of this. He could have just moved on and forgotten about it.
Very smart and talented guy, but gets into fights too easily. I understand that getting swatted and harassed online is really bad, but the way he goes after people that call his behaviour out or use/support other projects is not good.
Stepping back for a while might do him good. Maybe he can come back later, with less stress, and focus on the code instead of dealing with the public relations (his weakness, I think).
For those harassing him, just stop. Honestly, it's not even fun. For those who defend and almost enable his out bursts, also stop because you're not helping him or the project.
The whole saga is tragic. There are so many details that I don't know about, which probably makes me unable to judge the whole situation fairly. I am a very happy Graphene user, for what it's worth.
Thank you for your contribution. All the best, Daniel.
It's been sad to watch. GrapheneOS really is an amazing operating system. From a technical perspective, it absolutely is the most private and security-focused phone OS out there. Daniel is an amazing developer with an incredible understanding of AOSP and security concepts, as is obvious to anyone who's read the materials on the GrapheneOS webpage.
But the social negativity has been building for a long time. As lead developer (until today) of a prominent security-focused open source project, Daniel receives constant harassment, including from what are likely organized campaigns. I fully believe his statements that he recently got swatted, something tantamount to attempted murder. But he reacts very badly to the anonymous trolls, ascribing their actions to unrelated people. For instance, he's been fixated on Techlore (a relatively unimportant Youtuber) ever since Techlore posted a video about GrapheneOS that was mildly positive but overall critical. Daniel drew a connection between Techlore and trollish harassment he received around the same time—falsely, IMO—and ever since has consistently accused Techlore of organizing any harassment he receives. And the story repeats itself in Daniel's relationship with other groups in the privacy space (such as CalyxOS, r/privacy...). The fallout continues to expand, as any observer who expresses any nuance is accused by Daniel of toxicity, supporting harassers and harassment, etc.
I'm willing to grant some leeway to people in Daniel's situation. It's tough to handle aggressive harassment and stalking and behave correctly every time in response. But there's a limit to how much you can get wrong, and Daniel has exceeded it. He can't keep drawing false connections between unrelated people and the real harassment he's receiving. Doing so won't stop the harassment, and it's going to torpedo GrapheneOS if something isn't done.
My hope has been that someone close to him that he trusts would set up an intervention. Maybe that's what resulted in him stepping down today. I hope this will improve the community situation around GrapheneOS (whose technical reputation remains, I think, totally unscathed), and I really hope Daniel will now get the mental health relief that he needs.
basically a high profile youtuber decided to weaponize his fanbase to smear and slander a talented developer because he couldn't get what he wanted out of him. Rossmann mischaracterizes his interactions with Micay and even attempts to used his admitted diagnosis of autism against him. He claims one thing but if you actually read the interactions yourself you'll notice Micay is upset but adamant about his allegations of harassment. Rossmann quite dismissive of his entire explanation and decides he has a better narrative that most people will swallow. Rossmann tone policing a talented dev off his own open source project is the latest in a long line of unwarranted cancellations
For those of you that want to stay on HN, and not visit twitter:
From @DanielMicay:
"I've stepped down as lead developer of GrapheneOS and will be replaced as a GrapheneOS Foundation director. I'll be ending my use of public social media. I'm unable to handle the escalating level of harassment including recent swatting attacks. There will be a smooth migration."
"I'm confident the project will be in good hands with the rest of the development team. I'll be training them to handle everything I used to do myself. I haven't been a particularly active developer for a while now and there will be little impact on ongoing feature development."
"One of our veteran developers will be taking over administration of the server infrastructure. Local infrastructure for official builds, signing and testing will be replicated in multiple locations and verified against each other to reduce trust in any particular location."
"I'm going to focus on recovery from everything that has transpired since 2018. I have not been doing well, particularly in the past few weeks, but there has been no break from it since 2018. The police know about the swatting situation and are preventing it happening again."
"To clarify what was said above, I am stepping down as a GrapheneOS Foundation director, not just lead developer. I won't have any leadership role in the GrapheneOS project. I plan on being entirely uninvolved but it'll take time to transfer everything that I do to other people."
Readit News
Daniel does not apologize for anything he says or does and refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing. He still refuses to acknowledge that how he responded to Louis was wrong.
He hops on every thread of GrapheneOS and regularly accuses everyone of being sockpuppets and trolls. [2] He has accused me of being a Techlore and CalyxOS troll numerous times. Worst still, his community are full of psychophants that enable his abusive behavior. They refuse to see him or his outbursts as negative. They routinely collaborate to downvote comments and raid rooms to manage the narrative which I find to be underhanded.
I was an early Copperhead customer who was very disappointed that he got up and destroyed the signing keys without providing any evidence to back his claims up. When I brought up the issue to him via email, his response was to throw his previous business partner under the bus without offering any apologies for damaging my business.
I did use Android Hardening afterwards, used CopperheadOS for a bit and then moved back to LineageOS. I refuse to use any of his projects again.
I wish the best for him and hope he gets well. He's not mentally stable enough to run a project and he has a long way to go for understanding the nuance of interpersonal relationships.
1 - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4To-F6W1NT0
2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33555221
However, in his role leading a project that ostensibly wanted people to use it, he had a very offputting set of personality characteristics that worked against that goal. He was very opinionated and often condescending, frequently stating opinion as fact and being shallowly dismissive. I'm not talking about arguing with people asking that he add shiny baubles, but just generally almost annoyed the person he was talking to didn't realize the obviousness of their own stupidity in not seeing it his way.
Then, he had a gigantic victim complex where any comment that could be perceived as negative whatsoever was seen by him as some grave personal slight deliberately intended to hurt him. It wasn't sufficient for him to explain why he thought others were wrong. It was frequently accompanied by accusations of bad faith, of potential coordination with others trying to take him down, etc. It came across as hysteria. Not to mention the needless aggression with the Calyx developers, etc.
A few years ago, the IRC channel had a lot of this victimization and desperation-type content from him. It got to a point I was uncomfortable using GrapheneOS out of concern for the leadership and prospects of support.
It used to be Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD and to some extent Linus were benchmarks for "prickly" open source leaders, but I think Daniel gave them all quite a run for the money.
It's good that despite all that, Daniel managed to find some developers he could get along with and the contributor base grew beyond him. Here's to hoping the new leadership team steadies the ship and manages not to be so hostile to the community.
Edit to add: looking over the [2] link from parent, it's clear he did provide a lot of thoughtful, helpful answers as well, so I wouldn't want to downplay the great deal of good for which he's responsible. We're significantly better off that something like GrapheneOS exists.
That’s a shitty situation on your end, but he was stabbed in the back, and imo did the only morally right decision in case of a security-oriented project: pulled the plug on it as it could not be trusted anymore.
He was indeed quite paranoid, but it was not without reason — hopefully this resignation can help him recover mentally from all that.
Nonetheless, I am very grateful to him for this wonderful project, and even if you don’t use GrapheneOS directly, you definitely use many of his contributions to both the linux kernel and android!
That is easy for you to say. Harder for me to swallow losing real life dollars to accusations that haven't materalized.
Considering we all have ample evidence that Micay slings accusations without merit, how can you be so sure the Copperhead situation went down the way he says? Micay routinely accuses people of stabbing him in his back. Louis Rossman included.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycophancy
I wonder what the psychophants are going to do now that he's not involved. Are they going to continue the same path? Is the project in the same precarious position as it was yesterday?
From the little I'm aware, it sounded like he was being harassed, and some of his public comments sounded like he was powering through stress.
(PSA: Bad stress is bad. No matter how strong and resourceful and outwardly cool you are, the stress is not only unpleasant, but it's also secretly taking a toll. The smart move is to keep stress low.)
I wish Micay all the best for health and happiness. I hope that he doesn't let recent stresses get him down, and that he gives himself a chance to recharge.
Dead Comment
I can't thank you enough Daniel for your work on AOSP and GOS, and all the other work you've done around security and privacy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4To-F6W1NT0
This is speculation of course on my part and I do not have any evidence connecting the video with the event itself.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Stepping back for a while might do him good. Maybe he can come back later, with less stress, and focus on the code instead of dealing with the public relations (his weakness, I think).
For those harassing him, just stop. Honestly, it's not even fun. For those who defend and almost enable his out bursts, also stop because you're not helping him or the project.
Thank you for your contribution. All the best, Daniel.
But the social negativity has been building for a long time. As lead developer (until today) of a prominent security-focused open source project, Daniel receives constant harassment, including from what are likely organized campaigns. I fully believe his statements that he recently got swatted, something tantamount to attempted murder. But he reacts very badly to the anonymous trolls, ascribing their actions to unrelated people. For instance, he's been fixated on Techlore (a relatively unimportant Youtuber) ever since Techlore posted a video about GrapheneOS that was mildly positive but overall critical. Daniel drew a connection between Techlore and trollish harassment he received around the same time—falsely, IMO—and ever since has consistently accused Techlore of organizing any harassment he receives. And the story repeats itself in Daniel's relationship with other groups in the privacy space (such as CalyxOS, r/privacy...). The fallout continues to expand, as any observer who expresses any nuance is accused by Daniel of toxicity, supporting harassers and harassment, etc.
I'm willing to grant some leeway to people in Daniel's situation. It's tough to handle aggressive harassment and stalking and behave correctly every time in response. But there's a limit to how much you can get wrong, and Daniel has exceeded it. He can't keep drawing false connections between unrelated people and the real harassment he's receiving. Doing so won't stop the harassment, and it's going to torpedo GrapheneOS if something isn't done.
My hope has been that someone close to him that he trusts would set up an intervention. Maybe that's what resulted in him stepping down today. I hope this will improve the community situation around GrapheneOS (whose technical reputation remains, I think, totally unscathed), and I really hope Daniel will now get the mental health relief that he needs.
https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1662212227561308160
From @DanielMicay:
"I've stepped down as lead developer of GrapheneOS and will be replaced as a GrapheneOS Foundation director. I'll be ending my use of public social media. I'm unable to handle the escalating level of harassment including recent swatting attacks. There will be a smooth migration."
"I'm confident the project will be in good hands with the rest of the development team. I'll be training them to handle everything I used to do myself. I haven't been a particularly active developer for a while now and there will be little impact on ongoing feature development."
"One of our veteran developers will be taking over administration of the server infrastructure. Local infrastructure for official builds, signing and testing will be replicated in multiple locations and verified against each other to reduce trust in any particular location."
"I'm going to focus on recovery from everything that has transpired since 2018. I have not been doing well, particularly in the past few weeks, but there has been no break from it since 2018. The police know about the swatting situation and are preventing it happening again."
He is also posting the same to his Mastadon
"To clarify what was said above, I am stepping down as a GrapheneOS Foundation director, not just lead developer. I won't have any leadership role in the GrapheneOS project. I plan on being entirely uninvolved but it'll take time to transfer everything that I do to other people."