A letter to the CalyxOS community
Dear CalyxOS community members,
The last few months have been especially challenging for us as we have experienced some changes within our teams and in the Android free and open-source (FOSS) development community.
Nicholas Merrill, president and founder of Calyx Institute, has left the organization to pursue other projects.
Nick has championed privacy and data security over the last 25 years, and we thank Nick for his decades-long leadership, guidance, and contributions.
Chirayu Desai, the CalyxOS Tech Lead, has addressed his departure from the CalyxOS project and the organization in
a personal note to the public.
We also want to express gratitude to Chirayu for his enthusiasm and incredibly hard work on CalyxOS.
Nick and Chirayu have been a part of the CalyxOS project and its global community for many years. Without a doubt, there is a gap to fill following their departure. Following their departure, there will be a period of transition as we move forward. During that time, Calyx Institute’s Interim Executive Director, Ellen McDermott, will continue to lead the organization’s important work while the CalyxOS team will focus on bridging the gap and recentering our efforts.
Our commitment to
our mission has not changed: defending digital privacy, advancing connectivity, and striving for a future where everyone has access to the resources and tools they need to remain securely connected. CalyxOS is an integral part of our work and stands at the center of the FOSS digital ecosystem we aspire to create. It is our responsibility to protect the privacy of current and future users of our technologies.
To ensure operational consistency during this transition and adhere to security best practices, our team is working to improve transparency and security through better design, communications, and infrastructure. Our ongoing priorities include:
- Upgrading the tech infrastructure supporting CalyxOS development
- Stabilizing update release cycles for our 25+ supported devices
- Revising and updating our usage and development documentation, wiki, and user guides
To fulfill our
community pledge and foster collaboration, information sharing, and inclusivity, we are engaging with our peers, partners, and security experts to ensure the delivery and integrity of all changes made during this process. After conducting a thorough inspection of the work required for successful completion of the above priorities, we have determined that it may take up to four to six months for us to provide the level of security maintenance we aim to deliver.
We will be switching to new signing keys along with the overhaul of the signing and verification process. As a result, current CalyxOS users will not be able to receive further security software updates until this process is in place.
Given the potential risk posed by the pause of maintenance and development, it’s logical that we stop providing options to install CalyxOS for now. This was an incredibly hard decision to make, and we understand that this decision may cause significant difficulties for our users. For those wishing to remain on CalyxOS until our next release, note that you will not have the latest security patches on your device as released from the Android Open Source Project and from any proprietary sources provided by device manufacturers. We sincerely apologize for the hassle brought to you by this change, and we understand if you need to uninstall CalyxOS and migrate to another privacy-protecting Android distribution in the meantime. If you wish to continue using CalyxOS in the future, please follow our updates to reinstall CalyxOS when it becomes available again.
We are committed to supporting you through this process. To assist any migration, we will publish, by August 6, instructions to back up and restore your phone to a stock or custom Android distribution with Seedvault.
Starting with this announcement, we will be reporting our progress regularly through our
community channels, and we welcome your insights if you would like to contribute to this effort.
We thank you for your continued trust and look forward to further collaborations with people who have, are, and will be using and contributing to CalyxOS and various FOSS projects.
Yours sincerely,
The Calyx team
