Ye shall know the truth, and it shall set you free.
The truth is important to know. The US CIA has an engraving of the Bible quote at both main entrances to its headquarters. (Source 1, Source 2 at archive.org)
Sunshine is sometimes said to be the best disinfectant.
US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis is credited with popularizing this quote (archive.org) in 1913, in essence saying shining light on corruption helps clean it up. There are legitimate needs for secrecy and privacy, sometimes, and where to draw the line will be debated endlessly.
Aside: As it turns out, UV light in sunlight is a disinfectant, and scientists are discovering new and improved ways to use it. (Source 1, Source 2 at archive.org)
Shining sunlight on DivestOS history: As I write this, Tad [Redacted]'s DivestOS History webpage (archive.org, or Archive.Today in case of future erasures) still links to the Wayback Machine archive of divested.xyz, which was an early, 2018, version of the DivestOS website.
Tad [Redacted]'s DivestOS xyz site (archive.org with popup, or at Archive.Today, without popup) had a "prerelease" javascript popup which demonstrates how Tad [Redacted] did the same things IodeOS did - not distributing source code - but earlier, and probably for longer. In September 2018 the popup said (emphasis added),
DivestOS is currently in pre-release stage. Please for the time being DO NOT share this site, the available builds, or the code with anyone. We have spent a lot of time working on this project and we want to release it with a splash. Furthermore dedicated mirror servers have not been setup and this current server would not be able to handle a large influx of users. Thanks for your support and interest. We hope to release soon! Click 'OK' to prevent this message from showing again.
According to Tad [Redacted]'s current version of history,
2014/12/31: The earliest recorded date of publicly offering custom images.
2020/06/12: DivestOS is publicly released, initially on the F-Droid Forum.
DivestOS apparently began circa 2014, and was first tested by Tad [Redacted]'s friends and family. The current history says "publicly offering" in 2014. Therefore, DivestOS did the same thing as iodeOS - not publishing sources, for at least twice as long, from 2014 to at least 2018. According to Tad's current history, 2020. On Github the earliest build info I found was 2023.
As observed by "thereisnoanderson" (page top quote), Tad [Redacted] has removed the Divested Infrastructure description previously at https://divested.dev/pages/infrastructure. Tad also deleted the entire divested.dev and spotco.us websites from archive.org. Ironically, I was in process of recreating the infrastructure information myself, when I found out it was still available at Archive.Today. To answer thereisnoanderson: Yes, Tad [Redacted] did remove the infrastructure webpage, but a December 2023 copy of it is available. Ironically, on transparency, Tad [Redacted]'s infrastructure page said:
Divested Infrastructure
Detailed on this page is technical information on the servers and services I provide for transparency purposes.
Last updated: 2023-12-02
Source (Archive.Today)
See the above Archive.Today link for DivestOS infrastructure details. I don't know why Tad [Redacted] decided to reduce transparency of the infrastructure, because the information is fairly easy to get, with or without archives.
Conclusion:
The long history of DivestOS non-transparency, and more recent deleted histories (and revised histories), make me question whether
anything said by Tad [Redacted] resembles the truth.
Worst case FUD for ROM operating system projects is the obvious concerns that published install files
may not have actually been based on published sources.
Even worse, a project may covertly be a honeypot.
I have no evidence DivestOS is that corrupt, but I no longer feel confident it is not.
Back story: Thanks to Kiwi Farms website, I now know Archive Today has some benefits over the Wayback Machine. Archive.Today appear to be less likely to censor history. I can also ironically thank Daniel Micay (GrapheneOS, strcat, strncat, thestinger) for complaining about Kiwi Farms and drawing attention to it. This was the primary reason I went to check out the website, and saw what bothered Micay so much about Kiwi Farms (Archive.Today). Note: If you're using Torbrowser and NoScript, the Archive.Today site will work without allowing the javascript from mail.ru. First I looked at what was said about Micay, and noticed the comment and link to here at opinionplatform.org. Then, on a whim, I searched Kiwi Farms for "DivestOS" and saw these posts about Wayback Machine censoring history (Archive.Today), as I had earlier observed.
For a long time I've known the Wayback Machine (archive.org) used to respect sites' robots.txt file, and did not display archive results if specified by the website operator. At some point, Wayback changed practices and stopped respecting robots.txt, so archive results were displayed regardless. Things change. They will now stop displaying archive results on request, using criteria that aren't clear, and those rules also change (archive.org). I'd seen other archive.today links, but preferred the longer format archive.org links over the short form, because the latter obscure where the link will take you.
"DDoS retarding by KiwiFlare" looked interesting and succinctly true. I run into Cloudflare delays in Torbrowser almost every day. Cloudflare says it is to make sure I am not a robot. I don't believe Cloudflare is telling the truth, the whole truth, or nothing but the truth. Oddly at archive.org for kiwifarms.st for any date I selected, after showing me,
Solving a cryptographic challenge before accessing kiwifarms.st This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly. Please allow up to a minute, depending on your device.
All archive.org showed me was "Received a client error in reply. Please try again." I suppose that is one way to censor while appearing not to censor, on the surface.
I won't donate to the Wayback Machine (archive.org) either. They routinely violate copyright unless you request them not to, and they censor selected history.
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