this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
1503 points (99.5% liked)
Technology
82227 readers
4585 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What's the likelihood that Motorola will eventually lock down GrapheneOS though? Imho it'd be a bad move if they did. The FOSS mobile OS community has matured to the point that we don't need to rely on for-profit monoliths any more. Motorola would be smart to lead the way to where the mobile device economy will be.Which phones are we using for Graphene OS at the moment? Ah, yeah… Google… well known for its non-profit behaviour… I say: Give me alternatives which we aren't to try to get rid of in the first place.
See: PinePhone (Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS) for $149-199 via their intl site: pine64.org.
OR
SF's Librem 5 (PureOS, plus Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS) for ~$700 via puri.sm.
Both shippable to the US. They're unpolished OSs and expect delays, but they do exist. The competition will only increase going forward.
Both are alternatives, but not fleshed out as far I know. There is also e/OS, but it's the same story. So we actually don't have a viable solution
Also: Why is "shippable to the US" a criterion for FOSS or the rest of the world? You know, there are other Countries on this blue Marble…
We're speaking English and the US is by far the largest demographic for English speakers on BlueSky. The UK is the second closest and represents 5-6x less people. I genuinely wish you luck with how you engage with people in the future.
How would Motorola lock it down? They don't control it in any way.
Oh snap, I misread it as Motorola bought GrapheneOS! This is way better news than I realized! Thx for the clarification. 🫡
Edit: On reflection can FOSS even be bought since it doesn't have an owner to pay? I'm caught up now.
Yes, you can pay developers to stop publishing new changes. Basically hire the people developing it and stop releasing the code. Community can try to still develop it independently.
At the limit though they'd have to pay every coder with an interest in that software's development and enough time for a hobby. I guess they could target distribution like Codeberg but alternatives would eventually fill their place.
Normally there's a small group of people with expertise doing most of the work. If you poach them and pay them to work full time on the project it will be really hard for the community to compete.
GrapheneOS is open source, Motorola - just like anyone else - can make changes to it before they install it on their devices.
Like a locked bootloader and bloat.
That's not what "lock it down" means.
What does it mean to you?
Prevent changes. Locking down software project would mean making it closed sourced. Locking down hardware means preventing software/firmware changes.
We meant the same thing then. Nothing prevents Motorola from making changes to GrapheneOS, making it closed source, and blocking software/firmware changes on their phone so that you can't install the open source original.
Any phone manufacturer can do it and they don't need any special deals with GrapheneOS for that. GrapheneOS would definitely not support Motorola making some secret changes to the OS before installing it so this news is the complete opposite of such situation.
I completely agree, I am answering the hypothetical you brought up:
I don't believe they will lock it down, but you asked how could they do that. And the answer is they could easily do that, deals or not. I don't think they will, but there is nothing preventing them from doing so.
Yeah, technically it's possible. Technically they can also hire GrapheneOS guys and make future versions closed source. In the context of this news both things are unlikely though.
Different tense.
I wasn't using it in the privacy hardened sense.Just realized it refers to the same thing both ways. GrapheneOS is user-side hardened whereas iOS is producer-side hardened.
Jesus dude let them get compatibility before you bring out the assumptions.
A question isn't an assumption. It's possible to hold an idea in one's head without immediately accepting or rejecting it. I also don't see any problem with planning ahead. Why are you assuming I'm a dude?