Louis Rossmann
1 HN recommender · recommended in 10 months, 2023–2026
17:51 · 978K views · May 26, 2023
Louis Rossmann explains why he stopped using GrapheneOS, describing his interactions with its lead developer Daniel Micay. It includes chat logs shown in the video.
HN uses it as the key reference in arguments about Micay's conduct and GrapheneOS leadership, with some defending it and some urging skepticism.
16 comments from Hacker News
> It's objectively clear though, that this is a very low quality video full of baseless speculation, and severely lacking any technical understanding and knowledge. "Baseless" could not be further away from the truth. You literally have the GOS developer messages coming in live while he rehashes frivolous accusations and threatening to exposing him. To claim objectivity, when you seem to cherry pick the parts of the video that would (loosely) fit your narrative. Where is your evidence that Rossmann is in anyway associated to harassment campaign against the project ? > This is exactly the same as going to a restaurant, having an argument with the owner, and then claiming that they might be putting poison in the food, even though there's absolutely zero evidence or anything that might indicate that, solely because you had a disagreement with someone and now want to harm their reputation. Damn, so close, you were almost there. A more accurate analogy you could have come up with, had you actually critically listened to Rossmann's argument in his video. Yes, it's like going to a restaurant and having a disagreement with the cook, for the latter to explicitly threaten to harm onto you. At that point, is it that far fetched to think he might poison the food ? When you know he has full control over the kitchen ? You can disagree with Rossmann perception of the actual threat, but you should at least admit that it is not absurd for Rossmann to think that someone who demonstrated such i
Speaking of which, what ever happened with all of the kerfuffle going on around GrapheneOS leadership, anyway? I remember Louis Rossmann posting a video[1] that felt pretty damning regarding project leadership, especially given that he seemed to be implicated in the mess for almost no reason at all. In general I wouldn't give a good god damn about drama, but I'll admit it: it's ALREADY hard to trust operating systems, and especially security software, that's effectively made by effectively random strangers on the Internet, but much worse so if it's unclear they wouldn't be willing to abuse their position. Daniel Micay (aka strcat on here I believe) apparently announced they were stepping down from leadership roles in the project shortly after, according to tweets that appear to now be deleted, but that Wikipedia has links to an archive of.[2] At least from the code side of things though, they are still working quite actively.[3] Which is not a bad thing, but it doesn't tell us much about what happened. What I'd hope to hear is that Daniel Micay is in better mental health, but they made the almost-certainly wise choice to stop engaging with social media, and I can't find much information about what actually went down, so I guess it's a question mark. This is unfortunate because as I understand it, the closest competitor to GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, is not nearly as sophisticated. I'd really prefer to just be able to trust GrapheneOS, but I'm left absolutely unsure about what even h
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. 1 - this video 2 - [LINK]
I use GrapheneOS, and I've donated to its development. To say that "None of the claims are true" and that they are "baseless" is incorrect. Louis Rossman was a supporter of the project until he and Daniel had a failing out in which Daniel behaved inappropriately [1], all over a Youtube comment. There's proof for that and other claims [2, 4, 5]. Daniel can be a talented developer, privacy advocate and asshole at the same time. It's sad to see him (and others, like yourself) say stuff like "examine the baseless claims", without providing any sources. After all the drama with Calyxos, Techlore, Louis Rossmann etc, at some point one has to notice a pattern of behavior. 1: this video 2: [LINK] 3: [LINK] 4: [LINK] 5: [LINK]
Fuck. I just last year integrated this in a project of mine. Thinking: "Yeah, Google fucked me over here before when I used their, but it's Mozilla, it will be fine." It is not okay to stop providing a service like this. Not if you are Mozilla, with that mission and money, not something that is so deeply entrenched. Though, reading it more calmly, I can see how them being hit by a patent troll can make their investment in this project untenable. There is a comment about the Graphene Foundation maybe providing an alternative. That would be great - but having this video in mind, with that maintainer still active the project and foundation is a complete no-go. The organic maps comment is the one to follow instead.