From 64837579a337a819b91314dfea3694acfb3806b2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Daniel Micay
GrapheneOS aims to provide reasonably private and secure devices. It cannot do that + once device support code like firmware, kernel and vendor code is no longer actively + maintained. Even if the community was prepared to take over maintainance of the open + source code and to replace the rest, firmware would present a major issue, and the + community has never been active or interested enough in in device support to consider + attempting this. Unlike many other platforms, GrapheneOS has a much higher minimum + standard than simply having devices fully functional, as they also need to provide the + expected level of security. It would start to become realistic to provide + substantially longer device support once GrapheneOS controls the hardware and firmware + via custom hardware manufactured for it. Until then, the lifetime of devices will + remain based on manufacturer support. It's also important to keep in mind that phone + vendors claiming to provide longer support often aren't actually doing it and some + never even ship firmware updates when the hardware is still supported by the + vendors...
+ +GrapheneOS also has high standards for the privacy and security properties of the + hardware and firmware, and these standards are regularly advancing. The rapid pace of + improvement has been slowing down, but each hardware generation still brings major + improvements. Over time, the older hardware starts to become a substantial liability + and holds back the project. It becomes complex to simply make statements about the + security of the project when exceptions for old devices need to be listed out. The + project ends up wanting to drop devices for this reason but has always kept them going + until the end-of-life date to provide more time for people to migrate.
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