Please remove all code from Vanadium and GrapheneOS project members

[thestinger]

Bromite is no longer welcome to use any code from Vanadium or GrapheneOS. We'll be changing our licensing to prevent using our code here since that is what is being done in the other direction.

We'll be retracting our recommendation to use Bromite and anyone who contributes to Bromite going forward will be banned from the GrapheneOS community until there is an apology and a commitment not to support abusive behavior towards us. I do not genuinely expect that to happen and am perfectly willing to accept no longer working with you ever again along with working to undo all of the support and resources you have received due to contributions and recommendation to use it to a broad community.

[csagan5]

You know perfectly well that license changes are not retroactive; patches which have been licensed with BSD licenses are used as such with their old licensed version.

Please remove all code from Vanadium and GrapheneOS project members

I do not have a list but I doubt there are as many as you imply.

Unfortunately I am going to block you now because it is you that should apologise for the way you conducted yourself so far.

[basilgello]

@thestinger Daniel, what the hell is going on? You are super-professional, why these moves? You could bring some context for the sake of clarity first!

[Tachi107]

Yesterday evening I tried to sponsor @thestinger on GH, but some error prevented me to do so. I love GrapheneOS, but I thought it was a free (as in freedom) and open source project.
What is going on here? Should I reconsider where my donations should go?

[phhusson]

Please remove all code from Vanadium and GrapheneOS project members

To clarify @thestinger 's message, this is merely a "I would like you to", not an actual request. @thestinger's message might have been read as a backward change of license with legal implications. It isn't.

Source: https://twitter.com/GrapheneOS/status/1537851090514890752

[csagan5]

What is going on here? Should I reconsider where my donations should go?

@Tachi107 this is not the place to discuss that.

[rusty-snake]

We'll be changing our licensing to prevent using our code here since that is what is being done in the other direction.

So (parts of) vanadium will be proprietary? Or how will it look like?

apology and a commitment not to support abusive behavior towards us.

they decided to tolerate harassment of our developers.

Does anyone know where this happened? I could not find anything.

[csagan5]

To clarify @thestinger 's message, this is merely a "I would like you to", not an actual request. @thestinger's message might have been read as a backward change of license with legal implications. It isn't.

To clarify my message: I know how open source works and @thestinger knows too, and there are no legal implications enforceable because nobody has been breaching any license here. So even if someone was throwing legal-sounding buzzwords around, it would still not matter.

Source: https://twitter.com/GrapheneOS/status/1537851090514890752

@phhusson this tweet states:

After collaborating with GrapheneOS for years and having our developers help them substantially they decided to tolerate harassment of our developers.

There is not one ounce of truth in this and I have better ways to spend my time than going after this imaginary problem, all the (disgusting) debacle is here: #2102 The collaboration has been spontaneous and not organised/formal. Anyone can collaborate: you can just open a PR or a discussion, that's it.

You can judge for yourself the facts; my abridged summary:

1. @chirayudesai opens a PR
2. I have never interacted with @chirayudesai before (maybe for some bug report, I vaguely remember his username)
3. we discuss the technical aspects of the PR, as I do not do background checks on people (nor plan to do any)
4. @thestinger comes over saying that I should not accept PRs from this person because he is part of CalyxOS (also, never heard before) and author of the attacks he and Vanadium have been victim of
5. I try to de-escalate, but it clearly is going into a different direction; many threats you can read there, of the type "it is us or them!"
6. I state the rules of this project (Bromite), and there is no rule implying that Vanadium/@thestinger decide who can or cannot collaborate (since this project and me are not subordinate to anyone), and that since abuse has not happened on the Bromite project resources I cannot and will not ban people on demand
7. this issue here is opened

(You can of course get a different opinion on what are the facts, the above is just how I see them from my point of view)

Note that in all of this:

1. I have not accepted any contribution from @chirayudesai because there was none to be accepted
2. if @chirayudesai (or anybody else) doesn't do anything wrong here on the Bromite project issues/discussions, I have no reason to ban him or to not accept his contributions
3. I do not declare "allegiance" to any other (open source?) project, since the Bromite project is independent; this is how it is, everyone else must deal with it
4. all the patches used in the Bromite project are either in GPLv3 license (those authored by me and some authored by @uazo) or in the license that authors originally decided for them*; this is similar to how the Chromium project works, which is a mix of software with difference licenses; the copyright holders are the patch authors and only copies of their work with appropriate license has ever been used and will be used
5. the only informal request I have for the use of patches authored here is that their authorship should not be stripped (but it is also a requirement of most open source licenses used)

• = patches with BSD license can be re-licensed as GPLv3 and those in Bromite must be all considered as such; I will start adding licensing information to each patch but what is mentioned in Bromite's README (GPLv3) always applies unless otherwise specified in the patch itself; due to how (dual) licensing works you can still use a patch with BSD license if you find/get the copy which had BSD license, that is completely normal and I have no gripe about how open source works, which I learnt much long ago.

[csagan5]

We'll be changing our licensing to prevent using our code here since that is what is being done in the other direction.

So (parts of) vanadium will be proprietary? Or how will it look like?

Sorry, this is not the place to discuss that. You could try on their forums, I think there are plenty better places.

apology and a commitment not to support abusive behavior towards us.

they decided to tolerate harassment of our developers.

Does anyone know where this happened? I could not find anything.

He is referring to what CalyxOS and other people have (allegedly) done, nothing like that has ever happened here on these issues/PRs/discussions and I would like to keep it that way - so please do not open further issues/discussions about this because I consider it extremely off-topic.

[csagan5]

Reply to madaidan/temporary#1

Hi, I've made this repository because we have been unable to get in contact with you elsewhere and we want to clarify a few things.

I prefer to be contacted about topics related to the Bromite project and this - unfortunately - it is not. Thanks to the way open source works we can collaborate perfectly fine without all the drama; see https://nav.al/schelling-point which has a beautiful definition of that:

Use social norms to cooperate when you can’t communicate

That means: facts talk more than words. I am not interested in endless online discussions to establish who is right or wrong.

Firstly, Daniel was not saying that you must remove Vanadium code, but that he wants you to if you are going to continue working with CalyxOS. This was not a legal demand but rather a request.

I know that, but the previous conversation (#2102) hinted at that, with a play on words.
Thanks for the request, but I decline it for the reasons explained many times so far. While I am not collaborating with CalyxOS I absolutely do not care where patches come from and judge them only on their content and license.

I also want to ask if you'll delete the off-topic content in the pull request and issue, as they are being used to attack the project.

I am sorry to hear that but I also cannot comply with this request; all Bromite conversations are held in public and if I were to delete them I would subject the Bromite project to future attacks because there would be no (easily reachable) evidence of what happened. Be it a memento that it is important to be polite and not write too much in online forums; I am glad I locked that PR conversation because it looked like it was going to become much worse, judging from last comments I have read there.

I want to make it clear that Daniel holds no animosity towards you or your project. He was upset at a friendly project becoming a place in which he does not feel welcome, and he doesn't want his work to benefit those that try to harm him (Calyx, which the animosity is solely directed towards).

Bromite patches are used in a few (less than 10? I am not tracking this) other Chromium forks; as far as they respect the licensing terms I have absolutely no gripe with them*. I understand how annoying it must be if someone that harms you is using part of your work, but that comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of how open source works: you are donating your work to those people, and the people that will get your work from them which is a net benefit for the open source community; additionally if you use a GPL license the derivative work will also be open.

*= sometimes I would prefer that references to Bromite are not stripped from the final compiled app, but I know that it is the license dictating what can be required or not, and not my preferences

We hope that this relationship can be repaired. If you wish to talk further with me or Daniel himself in private, then feel free to do so. We're available on Matrix, Telegram, Twitter and other platforms.

See my previous mention of how to cooperate between open source projects; there is no "relationship" and no collaboration (there has never been, not at least in a "formal" fashion): you want to contribute to open source for the Bromite project? Do so! And be nice in the process. You do not want to contribute? Then do not, and also be nice in the process. As I mentioned earlier I make all conversations for the Bromite project public so I am not going to contact anyone about this.

My personal suggestion: just can it and let's go back to the reason why I started this project: getting Android users a slightly better browser which is not a platform for ads and A/B tests/experiments. I am not interested into anything else.