Avangard was a company in the Netherlands providing an enterprise-oriented product based on and with device management and other added features. They were doing a genuinely good job and were supporting both the GrapheneOS and Molly projects financially.
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There were some misunderstandings about their connection with GrapheneOS but overall we were on good terms with them. There are a bunch of companies using GrapheneOS to build products and most of them haven't supported us to the extent they were. It unfortunately didn't work out.
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The founder vanished and we had to help their users migrate to the official GrapheneOS releases. We were quite upset about the whole thing and thought they'd cut off contact. Our understanding now is that the Spanish government arrested them on bogus charges which were dismissed.
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The information we have is that they were held for an entire year based on charges which were completely dismissed. Their business is obviously in ruins after a year of being unable to manage it. They'll be collaborating with again and trying to rebuild something.
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Their clients were primarily legal firms, hospitals, etc. It wasn't a sketchy business. It was a high quality product but we were concerned it was an attempt by Spain to compromise devices (which didn't happen). We had to help get their clients on the official GrapheneOS instead.
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Also, to clarify, is an independent open source project like GrapheneOS and wasn't tied to this company beyond it being a source of contributions and donations. That will remain the case going forward. Companies are welcome to build on and support both our projects.
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