You are asking if a partnership with Fairphone would bring in revenue for GrapheneOS.
Fairphone would need to design a new phone with hardware that meets the security requirements of GrapheneOS, which is what Motorola is doing in the announced partnership. There is the development cost, and then the new phone hardware would be more expensive than the Fairphone 6. For Fairphone, there is the question of whether the cost of developing this new phone will be recovered in sales of this more expensive phone.
Would Fairphone give GrapheneOS a big enough share of the profits to fund the port of GrapheneOS to this new hardware and pay for the share of the costs of the monthly software updates? Otherwise it wouldn't reduce GrapheneOS's need to fundraise via donations, which is the subject of this thread.
I don't know if Motorola is offering any cash to GrapheneOS, but they are a famous enough manufacturer that the partnership will raise the profile of GrapheneOS and help them be more successful. By contrast, I'm not sure how many people have heard of Fairphone but have not heard of GrapheneOS. The only reason I've heard of either project is through tech social media. Retail outlets in my area don't sell Fairphone and local mobile operators don't offer Fairphone hardware. But these guys do offer Motorola.
In summary, I'm not sure a Fairphone GrapheneOS partnership makes financial sense for either project, even if it sounds great from a tech nerd perspective.
In all honesty, I first found out about LineageOS while looking for “pure Android”, then GrapheneOS when I wanted more sane privacy defaults and only then I learned about Fairphone when I started looking for devices to run GrapheneOS and discovered that it would need a Google Pixel.
Fairphones have very poor security at a hardware, firmware and software level. They've shown complete disinterest in making devices meeting our requirements.
Fairphone is closely partnered with /e/ and Murena which have repeatedly claimed GrapheneOS mainly benefits criminals and pedophiles. They've also said that about hardened devices in general on several occasions. They've falsely claimed GrapheneOS is mainly used by GrapheneOS. That's part of years of misleading people about what GrapheneOS provides to promote their products. Fairphone stood by them on this.
It's very relevant the context leading someone to post this thread. /e/ and Murena directly got involved in attacking us during the attacks on GrapheneOS with misinformation in France by a national law enforcement agency. Many of the claims made to attack it closely resemble years of past attacks by /e/ and Murena falsely framing it as being for criminals and not suited for regular people.
Wow I didn’t expect you guys to reply to my comment. Really appreciate you sharing the insights about Murena! I don’t like EU’s stance on privacy at all, it’s a ticking time bomb that WILL be used by malicious political parties as they come into power. But it’s pretty low to embellish your project like that.
I only discovered GrapheneOS last year when I decided to reduce dependence on big tech and started migrating use cases one by one. Looking forward to purchasing a Motorola phone to use with GrapheneOS once it launches.
I only know about differences between LineageOS and GrapheneOS and I think you guys have the better model for the average end user. It inspired the design for my self hosted cloud infrastructure.
Fairphone would need to design a new phone with hardware that meets the security requirements of GrapheneOS, which is what Motorola is doing in the announced partnership. There is the development cost, and then the new phone hardware would be more expensive than the Fairphone 6. For Fairphone, there is the question of whether the cost of developing this new phone will be recovered in sales of this more expensive phone.
Would Fairphone give GrapheneOS a big enough share of the profits to fund the port of GrapheneOS to this new hardware and pay for the share of the costs of the monthly software updates? Otherwise it wouldn't reduce GrapheneOS's need to fundraise via donations, which is the subject of this thread.
I don't know if Motorola is offering any cash to GrapheneOS, but they are a famous enough manufacturer that the partnership will raise the profile of GrapheneOS and help them be more successful. By contrast, I'm not sure how many people have heard of Fairphone but have not heard of GrapheneOS. The only reason I've heard of either project is through tech social media. Retail outlets in my area don't sell Fairphone and local mobile operators don't offer Fairphone hardware. But these guys do offer Motorola.
In summary, I'm not sure a Fairphone GrapheneOS partnership makes financial sense for either project, even if it sounds great from a tech nerd perspective.