But the social negativity has been building for a long time. As lead developer (until today) of a prominent security-focused open source project, Daniel receives constant harassment, including from what are likely organized campaigns. I fully believe his statements that he recently got swatted, something tantamount to attempted murder. But he reacts very badly to the anonymous trolls, ascribing their actions to unrelated people. For instance, he's been fixated on Techlore (a relatively unimportant Youtuber) ever since Techlore posted a video about GrapheneOS that was mildly positive but overall critical. Daniel drew a connection between Techlore and trollish harassment he received around the same time—falsely, IMO—and ever since has consistently accused Techlore of organizing any harassment he receives. And the story repeats itself in Daniel's relationship with other groups in the privacy space (such as CalyxOS, r/privacy...). The fallout continues to expand, as any observer who expresses any nuance is accused by Daniel of toxicity, supporting harassers and harassment, etc.
I'm willing to grant some leeway to people in Daniel's situation. It's tough to handle aggressive harassment and stalking and behave correctly every time in response. But there's a limit to how much you can get wrong, and Daniel has exceeded it. He can't keep drawing false connections between unrelated people and the real harassment he's receiving. Doing so won't stop the harassment, and it's going to torpedo GrapheneOS if something isn't done.
My hope has been that someone close to him that he trusts would set up an intervention. Maybe that's what resulted in him stepping down today. I hope this will improve the community situation around GrapheneOS (whose technical reputation remains, I think, totally unscathed), and I really hope Daniel will now get the mental health relief that he needs.
Louis Rossmann (1.7m subscribers) ascribing his decision to leave GrapheneOS directly to the behaviour of Daniel Micay and stating that "he will never feel comfortable running this code on my phone as long as this person is involved in it" probably began triggering real calculations within the team as to what extent he was slowly becoming more of a liability to the project than an asset. Although, it's unlikely Louis saying that was going to affect the project in any meaningful way, this is not the kind of commentary that makes your position more tenable. I'm glad Daniel pre-empted those conversations by taking the decision to step away himself.
There is no doubt in my mind that Daniel Micay has been subjected to systematic harassment campaigns, far exceeding those of a typical open-source developer of his stature. That kind of stuff has an impact on you and as a result you behave in a less reasonable manner (i.e. more paranoid, less trusting). I just hope the dude takes a long break, gets buff and comes back stronger.
So, my question, do you have concrete proof about Micay being harassed? Screenshot, links, whatever can back up Micay's words.
Note it's very hard to find mainstream sources on this.
[1] https://piunikaweb.com/2019/02/05/the-demise-of-copperheados...