Comment by drnick1
5 days ago
I think this is the real problem here if it's true. The community must absolutely retain the ability to fork the project and reintroduce things like root that the developers are obstinately against. If not, then Graphene will simply become another Google/Apple.
I think root is precisely what most of these apps are trying to avoid. They think (at least the finance app I used to work for thought) that with root, user credentials the app stored would be accessible by whatever uses those root permissions and they didn't want the risk
> I think root is precisely what most of these apps are trying to avoid.
Maybe, but it's necessary when you want to modify some aspect of the system you disagree with. For example, Android has a mechanism that prevents the user, the owner of the phone, from snapping a screenshot of an app he can see with his own eyes. Those kinds of limitations are enraging, and are just one example of why root is needed if the user is to truly own the device.
Well yes, that's exactly the sort of the thing banking apps would want to prevent. Android also blocks overlays on banking apps to prevent a whole class of attacks.
But you can do that. You can go and root it with a fork. You just won’t run banking apps on it, because it introduces undue risk that they don’t want to absorb.
This ‘all or nothing’ attitude in the comments is a bit silly to be honest.
Most banking apps will still work on a fork of GrapheneOS which appears to keep the security model intact to apps. A half dozen apps which work on the official builds won't work on an unofficial build since the bank has chosen to make a list of which operating systems not certified by Google are allowed.
GPLv3 fixes this.
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