They should consider making their primary site a .onion and then have clear-web portals in many countries that serve as a secondary class site or cache. The physical location of the primary site should be unknown.
It's a sad fact that there's just no way for GrapheneOS to win this fight. The intelligence agencies of every world government are on one side, and a relatively poor organization that produces less restricted cell phone software is on the other.
I understand the concerns and anger of GrapheneOS's leadership, but the hyper-escalation tactic doesn't do what they hope:
First, it sends a message of inexperience in business, negotiation, and conflict resolution: 'I'm going to take my ball and leave' - it looks like an emotional overreaction without strategic thinking. These days you sometimes see powerful parties making similar threats - e.g., Uber threatening to leave certain markets. But those people have significant power and their tactic is really to demonstrate that in order to shift their negotiating position; usually they don't actually decamp, and GrapheneOS has relatively little power so that tactic doesn't apply.
As importantly, it sends the message that GrapheneOS can be pushed around and manipulated: A slight hint of a threat and they flee. Others will take note, and many will think the same of other FOSS projects, large and small - they are easily intimidated and dismissed.
Another reason people don't use these tactics is that they have other important interests besides the one under immediate threat. A requirement of anyone with significant investments that can't be easily abandoned - which is everyone doing anything of value - is to navigate in a way that upholds all those interests. You don't burn down the house to kill a rat. It can be hard and requires careful, deliberate thought and strategy.
One unmentioned interest that might appeal to GrapheneOS's leadership is the freedoms of people in France to create FOSS, and to individual privacy and security.
Exiting France when they feel like the freedoms of their software and their contributors are in danger seems like a perfectly reasonable response.
GrapheneOS is an open source project. They hand out great software for free. They have no obligations to do this. And they certainly have no obligation to try to "negotiate" with obviously hostile governments. They have nothing to gain from this.
> You don't burn down the house to kill a rat.
I don't see how this analogy applies here. France is the house.
This is the second time people responded to a post about GrapheneOS strategy with an argument about obligations. It's hard to even explain how vastly different those issues are. I didn't say anything about GrapheneOS's obligations; I talked about strategy and tactics to serve their goals.
If you do want to talk about obligations - yes, we all have obligations to our communities, societies, etc., whether we like it or not, whether we deny it or not. GrapheneOS has obligations to the open source community, to freedom, to their users and developers, etc. Defining those obligations is very difficult and I won't try, but if none of us have those obligations then who does? There's nobody else coming to the rescue, there is no authority that will take care of it for you (like parents caring for irresponsible children) - it's just you and me.
> I talked about strategy and tactics to serve their goals.
I am skeptical that there is any lesser step that they can take consistent with their goal of an uncompromised OS. Or that France would be satisfied with anything less. Security is not a side feature of GrapheneOS that they can compromise on, it's their core mission. It's like telling Frodo to see the sites in Mordor, but stay away from Mount Doom.
I don't know. It's making the news, and if GrapheneOS is the only one protesting this, what are iPhone and Android already complying with? Perhaps I should also switch to GrapheneOS.
And moving your servers out of jurisdictions that threaten them is not hyper-escalation; that's just being responsible.
> It's making the news, and if GrapheneOS is the only one protesting this, what are iPhone and Android already complying with? Perhaps I should also switch to GrapheneOS.
Related ongoing thread:
France threatens GrapheneOS with arrests / server seizure for refusing backdoors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46035977 - Nov 2025 (244 comments)
Recent and related:
France is taking state actions against GrapheneOS? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45999024 - Nov 2025 (108 comments)
Also cross-posted on Mastodon https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/115595997701449168
They should consider making their primary site a .onion and then have clear-web portals in many countries that serve as a secondary class site or cache. The physical location of the primary site should be unknown.
It's a sad fact that there's just no way for GrapheneOS to win this fight. The intelligence agencies of every world government are on one side, and a relatively poor organization that produces less restricted cell phone software is on the other.
For what it's worth, Micay has a long history of accusing other people of slandering the project without providing any evidence or rebuttals.
When asked for details, he gets defensive and accusatory, then creates multiple sockpuppet accounts to argue the same points over and over.
"Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45999024
I understand the concerns and anger of GrapheneOS's leadership, but the hyper-escalation tactic doesn't do what they hope:
First, it sends a message of inexperience in business, negotiation, and conflict resolution: 'I'm going to take my ball and leave' - it looks like an emotional overreaction without strategic thinking. These days you sometimes see powerful parties making similar threats - e.g., Uber threatening to leave certain markets. But those people have significant power and their tactic is really to demonstrate that in order to shift their negotiating position; usually they don't actually decamp, and GrapheneOS has relatively little power so that tactic doesn't apply.
As importantly, it sends the message that GrapheneOS can be pushed around and manipulated: A slight hint of a threat and they flee. Others will take note, and many will think the same of other FOSS projects, large and small - they are easily intimidated and dismissed.
Another reason people don't use these tactics is that they have other important interests besides the one under immediate threat. A requirement of anyone with significant investments that can't be easily abandoned - which is everyone doing anything of value - is to navigate in a way that upholds all those interests. You don't burn down the house to kill a rat. It can be hard and requires careful, deliberate thought and strategy.
One unmentioned interest that might appeal to GrapheneOS's leadership is the freedoms of people in France to create FOSS, and to individual privacy and security.
Exiting France when they feel like the freedoms of their software and their contributors are in danger seems like a perfectly reasonable response.
GrapheneOS is an open source project. They hand out great software for free. They have no obligations to do this. And they certainly have no obligation to try to "negotiate" with obviously hostile governments. They have nothing to gain from this.
> You don't burn down the house to kill a rat.
I don't see how this analogy applies here. France is the house.
This is the second time people responded to a post about GrapheneOS strategy with an argument about obligations. It's hard to even explain how vastly different those issues are. I didn't say anything about GrapheneOS's obligations; I talked about strategy and tactics to serve their goals.
If you do want to talk about obligations - yes, we all have obligations to our communities, societies, etc., whether we like it or not, whether we deny it or not. GrapheneOS has obligations to the open source community, to freedom, to their users and developers, etc. Defining those obligations is very difficult and I won't try, but if none of us have those obligations then who does? There's nobody else coming to the rescue, there is no authority that will take care of it for you (like parents caring for irresponsible children) - it's just you and me.
> I talked about strategy and tactics to serve their goals.
I am skeptical that there is any lesser step that they can take consistent with their goal of an uncompromised OS. Or that France would be satisfied with anything less. Security is not a side feature of GrapheneOS that they can compromise on, it's their core mission. It's like telling Frodo to see the sites in Mordor, but stay away from Mount Doom.
I don't know. It's making the news, and if GrapheneOS is the only one protesting this, what are iPhone and Android already complying with? Perhaps I should also switch to GrapheneOS.
And moving your servers out of jurisdictions that threaten them is not hyper-escalation; that's just being responsible.
> It's making the news, and if GrapheneOS is the only one protesting this, what are iPhone and Android already complying with? Perhaps I should also switch to GrapheneOS.
That is a (minor) upside, imho.