History

- -

GrapheneOS was founded by Daniel Micay in late 2014. It started as a solo project - incorporating his previous open source privacy/security work. The project initially - created a port of OpenBSD malloc to Android's Bionic libc and a port of the PaX kernel - patches to the kernels for the supported devices. It quickly expanded to having a - large set of homegrown privacy and security improvements, particularly low-level - hardening work on the compiler toolchain and Bionic. Work began on landing code - upstream in AOSP and other upstream projects. A substantial portion of these early - changes were either successfully landed upstream or heavily influenced the upstream - changes which replaced them. The project was able to move very quickly in these days - because there was so much low hanging fruit to address and it wasn't yet trying to - produce a highly robust, production quality OS.

- -

In late 2015, a company was incorporated which became the primary sponsor of the - project. GrapheneOS was previously known as - CopperheadOS while it was sponsored by this company. The intention was to use the - company to build a business around GrapheneOS selling support, contract work and - customized proprietary variants of the OS. The company was supposed to serve the needs - of the open source project, rather than vice versa. It was explicitly agreed that - GrapheneOS would remain independently owned and controlled by Daniel Micay. This - company failed to live up the promises and is no longer associated in any way with - GrapheneOS. The company ended up holding back the open source project and taking far - more from it than was provided to it.

- -

In 2018, the company was hijacked by the CEO who attempted to take over the project - through coercion, but they were rebuked. They seized the infrastructure and stole the - donations, but the project successfully moved on without them and has been fully - revived. Since then, they've taken to fraudulently claiming ownership and authorship - of our work, which has no basis in fact. They've tried to retroactively change the - terms of their involvement and rewrite the history of the project. These claims are - easily disproven through the public record and by people involved with the open source - project and the former sponsor. This former sponsor has engaged in a campaign of - misinformation and harassment of contributors to the project. Be aware that they are - actively trying to sabotage GrapheneOS and are engaging in many forms of attacks - against the project, the developers, contributors and supporters. Meanwhile, they - continue profiting from our open source work which they falsely claim as their own - creation.

- -

After splitting from the former sponsor, the project was rebranded to - AndroidHardening and then to GrapheneOS and it has continued down the original path of - being an independent open source project. It will never again be closely tied to any - particular sponsor or company.

- -

GrapheneOS now has multiple full-time and part-time developers supported by - donations and multiple companies collaborating with the project.

- -

GrapheneOS Foundation was created as a non-profit organization in Canada in March - 2023 to handle the intake and distribution of donations.

- -

Releases

- -

A history of releases for the current incarnation of GrapheneOS is available - via the releases changelog.

- -

An archive of changelogs for the earlier releases is available via the - legacy changelog page.