The Sad Saga of Purism and the Librem 5

https://jaylittle.com/post/view/2019/10/the-sad-saga-of-purism-and-the-librem-5-part-1

by hlandau • 7 years ago

251 179 7 years ago

mlthoughts2018• 7 years ago

It gives me a 502 bad gateway error if (and only if) I try to access it when connected to vpn.

ncmncm• 7 years ago

Perhaps ironically, I get that error when using the Librem VPN. I got through to parts 1 and 2 a short time ago, but cannot see part 3 -- nor parts 1 and 2, now.

jaylittle5• 7 years ago

Should be resolved, sorry ;)

whydoyoucare2• 7 years ago

Is it just me or is everyone hitting a 502 (Bad Gateway) error?

jaylittle5• 7 years ago

Should be resolved, sorry ;)

Kenji• 7 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20191027144805/https://jaylittle...

teddyh4• 7 years ago

Part 2:

https://web.archive.org/web/20191027153729/https://jaylittle...

Part 3:

https://web.archive.org/web/20191027165020/https://jaylittle...

kiba• 7 years ago

it has now been made clear that the phone will have to use proprietary firmware blobs for a variety of onboard devices.

They worked with the FSF to make it certified. To my understanding, it's basically an impossible tasking to write open source firmware, not if you want to throw additional million of dollars(this is just a guess).

The compromise is that you basically cannot update those binary blobs.

mike-cardwell• 7 years ago

It was always my understanding that some of the hardware would not be open, but that hardware would be sufficiently isolated from the core of the device.

whydoyoucare2• 7 years ago

I think that is the key design aspect, since as other user stated, it is extremely difficult to get open source firmware unless you are willing to spend a lot of $$.

It is indeed a sad state for Purism 5 to be in.

herogreen• 7 years ago

Agreed, having modems not sharing memory with the CPU would already be a big progress.

Hasknewbie• 7 years ago

When I was working in the mobile industry, I was told repeatedly that a 100% FOSS phone would be impossible. Not only is the existing tech proprietary and patent-encumbered, even if somehow you could get past that your GSM radio must be certified before going to market. And if your radio is FOSS-based that means an end-user can toy with the baseband, therefore you will never get your cert, period. The stuff at the lowest level must locked down before being allowed on a public mobile network.

awinter-py3• 7 years ago

You can release reproducible signed builds that the user can verify. You can be open source without allowing users to upload new blobs.

You can still accept PRs and stuff.

swiley6• 7 years ago

I have no idea why anyone expected it any other way, even laptops need firmware blobs for the WiFi. (there are, I think two (2) WiFi cards with the beginnings of open source firmware for them, mine is actually one of them and I've taken the time to read through it. Lots of stuff is still totally unimplemented (a couple of popular encryption standards being the deal breaker for me personally.))

voltagex_• 7 years ago

From the other parts, it sounds like you might not have to worry about firmware at all - you won't get a phone.

yepthatsreality• 7 years ago

I have also been wondering about the lack of shipment and post regarding it. Some of these issues seem like they should have had a plan before announcing models.

I’m still hopeful. And for the record it looks like Librem has indicated some of the reasons Aspen and Birch models aren’t shipped to customers in a recent blog post (memory, performance, and battery issues). [0]

[0] https://puri.sm/posts/supplying-the-demand/

frittig• 7 years ago

I just get a 502 error

jaylittle5• 7 years ago

Should be resolved, sorry ;)

mondoshawan14• 7 years ago

There have been some interesting technical developments with regard to the points Jay is making. For one, FCC certification should only be necessary for the baseboard -- the SOM and PCIe devices should carry their own certification. The fact that they are supposedly sending these out without certs for the baseboard is hugely concerning -- and illegal. If anything, this is the core reason why nothing has left their hands yet.

What else is concerning is that they are shipping the SOM without schematics or documentation -- even the dev units have no details on their construction. For reference, Purism only made the baseboard and mechanicals -- the actual SOC and RAM are on a module made by Elecom. I asked about this in their matrix channels and the best answer I could get was "it will be made open" -- a tall order, given the past history of Elecom keeping their designs close to their chest. This is most likely the core reason why their thermal and RAM performance sucks -- the community can't get in there to help.

Note that they aren't even running the RAM at full speed -- that's not something you can easily change without re-generating the training programs, and locking that in without proper burn-in or huge amounts of QA to validate is going to likely be the biggest hurdle they will face. Especially given the requirement that the program not be updated.

Source: built and shipped SOMs using the i.MX8MQ in the past and still supporting them now: RAM training is a huge problem.

awinter-py3• 7 years ago

what is RAM training? I googled this but google thinks 'training' means 'documentation' apparently

nsomaru• 7 years ago

It seems that memory is “trained” on boot — the system does POST and checks that critical hardware is responding as expected. PC motherboards have some settings to adjust timing for enthusiasts, but I’m not sure that that’s a trend or even desirable in consumer electronics. So these expected values are probably “burnt in” to the design and difficult to change.

Maybe Purism has a way to do this?

I am not an expert!

mondoshawan14• 7 years ago

Modern DDR PHYs require PLL training and adjustment to communicate to the RAM chips because DDR is runs at such high speeds that it is mostly operating in the analog domain these days.

Often this is done by setting registers. The trick is that its hundreds of thousands of registers to alter the way the PHY behaves with regard to impedance and other parameters, and the vast majority are undocumented. So its done with a two stage thing: the first is a generative program that analyses the eye diagrams using feedback from the PHY over a long period of time to get the majority of the settings.

The second half is actually getting the PHY PLLs to sync with the clocks and the RAM, which is done by the PHY at runtime, every boot.

letstrynvm5• 7 years ago

Fast buses operate at some multiple of a reference clock wired up to both sides, it's often 1/2 or 1/8th of the actual data rate which each side arrives at by feeding the reference clock to an on-die pll.

This can create ambiguity in which bit of the 2 or 8 or whatever is on the bus, and temperature, board design, bus length, humidity etc change the phase where the best sampling place is for the data signal. So there is 'training' to test which fine delay between the receiver pll clock and the data gives the lowest error rate when used to sample the incoming data. Periodically some buses must pause and do retraining to account for, eg, temperature changes.

MisterTea• 7 years ago

Good article: https://blog.asset-intertech.com/test_data_out/2014/11/memor...

Basically it's the memory chip bring up procedure of the memory controller. It figures out what kind of ram is on the bus, configures and even tests it so it's ready for use.

V4ASt23• 7 years ago

I can see a lot of mistakes or misconceptions here. You say

The fact that they are supposedly sending these out without certs for the baseboard is hugely concerning -- and illegal.

and then

this is the core reason why nothing has left their hands yet.

Wait, so are they sending them out or did nothing leave their hands? I'm confused.

What else is concerning is that they are shipping the SOM without schematics or documentation

No one is shipping SOMs, the phone is a board with the SoC integrated.

even the dev units have no details on their construction

What do you call Kicad schematics then? https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/dvk-mx8m-bsb/blob/master/dvk-...

the actual SOC and RAM are on a module made by Elecom

Emcraft

the best answer I could get was "it will be made open"

The phone schematics will be available to those with the phone in their hands. This is how GPL works as well, btw.

a tall order, given the past history of Elecom keeping their designs close to their chest.

Apart from the phone having nothing to do with Elcom, it's also not using anything made by Emcraft, so no one has any say about schematics but Purism.

thermal and RAM performance sucks -- the community can't get in there to help.

I wonder if other i.MX8 kernel contributors agree https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...

Note that they aren't even running the RAM at full speed

You've clearly not read the report in the first link. RAM running at full speed was the problem causing heat generation.

Source: work at Purism.

mondoshawan14• 7 years ago

Okay, here we go: full disclosure, I'm an embedded software engineer that works at Google. My views are my own, and don't represent Google's opinions or views, yada yada.

I have been working with the i.MX8MQ SOC for over two years now, fighting with various bits of how it behaves with different vendors of RAM and dealing with exactly the same problems Purism is running into. While I haven't managed to get things upstreamed into mainline yet, our source trees are open and up at http://coral.googlesource.com.

I'm also a backer of the Librem 5, and while I didn't ask for an Aspen, I do want the project to succeed. I just have concerns that nobody's been able to answer.

I can see a lot of mistakes or misconceptions here.

Yeah, that's probably because I'm typing on my phone and fighting both HN and iOS's Safari. Apologies.

Wait, so are they sending them out or did nothing leave their hands? I'm confused.

Well, my statements are that a) they are trying to ship something but don't have certifications in place, and b) they claim they've shipped Aspen, but there's no evidence of it.

So... They have "shipped" and still haven't?

No one is shipping SOMs, the phone is a board with the SoC integrated.

That's news to me -- the dev units were shipped with SOMs. If they are flattening the SOM into the baseboard, that's new, and is not what I found in my research. If that's the case, awesome, glad to hear it! :D

Where are the flattened schematics with the i.MX8MQ SOC and RAM onboard? So far, I haven't been able to find them.

Also, where's the FCC certification? Flattening the SOM into the baseboard or just integrating the SOC now makes certification a much bigger problem.

What do you call Kicad schematics then? https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/dvk-mx8m-bsb/blob/master/dvk-....

That's for the baseboard of the dev unit, according to https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/dvk-mx8m-bsb/blob/master/READ... and the first page of the schematic. Pulling down the source and opening it in KiCad, I can't find the i.MX8MQ anywhere in the schematic or the PCB board art -- only the EmCraft SOM symbol.

\Emcraft

Yep. Guessing that was a typo from my phone. Apologies!

Apart from the phone having nothing to do with Elcom, it's also not* using anything made by Emcraft, so no one has any say about schematics but Purism.

Typically when you lay out a board schematic and board art, you use prior proven designs or have the upstream vendor design that part of the board for you. I'd be surprised if Emcraft isn't involved -- and more concerned if they aren't, given that the dev board does use the Emcraft SOM as a starting point.

I wonder if other i.MX8 kernel contributors agree https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin....

Given that these commits typically come from either Purism, NXP, or Google in this regard, I can say that analysis is about correct -- the only contributors I've ever seen are the ones who are developing commercially using SOMs or the SOC directly. Obviously these corps are part of the community, but this commit is only tantamount to my point: it was authored by someone from Purism -- not someone with a dev board who doesn't work at Purism.

I'm glad to see commits to the mainline kernel, though. Go Purism! (no snark intended here -- this is one of the things I like about Purism) I'll likely be attempting to get our commits (if any) submitted to mainline at some point as well.

You've clearly not read the report in the first link. RAM running at full speed was the problem causing heat generation.

Ahh, my apologies then. My memory must have failed me. Glad to be corrected!

Source: work at Purism.

See above. :D

RandomBacon2• 7 years ago

I don't think they're trying to be malicious, I just think that they have piss-poor public relations and are digging themselves into a bigger hole.

I understand that they're worfully behind schedule and that some people are mad, but...

I wish people would just let them focus on building the phone rather than hounding them which might cause them to cut even more corners and result in a worse product.

I paid them $600 or whatever two years ago, and I say let them keep building.

It's okay to be critical, but it seems like some people are bullying/trolling. Even in HN threads from months ago before shipping was even an issue.

mondoshawan14• 7 years ago

When you've been doing development in consumer tech, some of these missteps are glaringly obvious and having proper engineering in place from the start would have avoided much of the problem. I, too, am a backer and keep hope alive, but I, too, am a hardware developer and half the things they are saying don't jive with the facts, or are omissions critical to the product's success (RAM timing, FCC certification, etc). Have to say, I'm a bit jaded now, but if it comes out, it comes out, and I'll be happy regardless. Doesn't mean I'm going to keep my trap shut when something is fishy, though.

My big concern right now is that they're pushing hard to release before things are ready, and with this SOC, that can easily be a death knell for the product they release.

RandomBacon2• 7 years ago

My big concern right now is that they're pushing hard to release before things are ready

Because people keep hounding them!

Do you do your best work when people keep interupting you asking when it'll be ready? You would still complete your task if people weren't interupting you, right? The interuptions might cause you to say 'fuck it' and just ship just to get it over with, even though you wanted to spend 10% or whatever more time to make it 50% better.

That's what I'm getting at.

wiz21c5• 7 years ago

>> When you've been doing development in consumer tech, some of these missteps are glaringly obvious and having proper engineering in place from the start would have avoided much of the problem.

Maybe you could help them to prevent the next "glaringly obvious" issues ?

gridlockd4• 7 years ago

When you've been doing development in consumer tech, some of these missteps are glaringly obvious and having proper engineering in place from the start would have avoided much of the problem.

Oh sure, that's the problem. Instead of improper engineering, they should've gone with proper engineering. They really should've known better.

In all seriousness, if you expect such a small company could build a decent phone, on a new Linux platform, on their first try, on schedule, then you're divorced from reality.

Version 1 of this thing was going to suck, no matter what. Remember, the first Android handsets by reputable manufacturers were utter garbage.

megous8• 7 years ago

So what do you think about allegation that they had ran out of money, and can't deliver to orignal backers, so they produce false information/hype to get more money from pre-orders to at least satisfy some of the original backers.

I mean, it can work out if they can satisfy everyone in the end, but it may also end up pretty badly, and be viewed basically as defrauding of people who're making pre-orders now, not being fully aware their money are used to get phones to someone else, now, and whether they'll see anything themselves is a pretty big gamble.

I guess if they were open about this, people may make informed decision to take the gamble, but that's not the case here.

To me that seems somewhat malicious.

cyphar• 7 years ago

As you said, it's an allegation (one I haven't heard). To me, it seems very premature to assign malice by assuming that an unproven allegation is true.

ploxiln• 7 years ago

I don't think Purism is malicious, I just think they are just not sufficiently competent. There is just too much "fake it till you make it". I think they have had some very competent employees over the past few years, who joined due to the mission, and later left for various reasons (and they may still have a couple). But the management is not sufficiently competent with the technology. They see the need for marketing to keep the company alive, but they just don't know what claims or plans they can reasonably make.

I was a backer of the original Librem 13. I can list lots of little details which individually should be forgiven for a company like this, but together are just ridiculous. It seems like every little thing was botched at least a little. Here's a really trivial one: in the initial news posts (before anything was shipped) it was written that the touchpad driver would be licensed gplv3 and submitted upstream. I sent an email "hey, you probably want to correct that typo (should be gplv2, or maybe gplv2+, obviously)" and the response was "we will consult with the FSF". Sure, consult with the FSF in general on the project, but who could be involved in this company, announcing details like this, and not know the license of the linux kernel? On its own that is nothing, but there is so much more. When I received the laptop, it came with slightly customized debian testing, and a broken apt/sources.list so updates did not work. I can fix that, of course. But they didn't have any working repo for a couple months, back then. (Which I only really needed for the kernel builds with the rather crappy touchpad driver. Later models switched to a different touchpad, and I suspect use no drivers that required any development work.) They hired the guy who did the majority of the coreboot customization and fixing needed, after I received the laptop, like 2 years after the project started. He no longer works there. And there's more.

I haven't been following the phone project closely. I can imagine that some (many?) supporters are very familiar with these technologies and issues, and when they read the news and claims from this project, they translate it internally to what it really means, given what is plain impossible and what is very unlikely. But still, it is ridiculous, and a bit embarrassing, for others who support free software and open hardware.

noobermin6• 7 years ago

The trolling might be the case, but given how many failures occur in these kinds of projects lead people to calling BS or grift when they see it, even if the trolls are just too cynical. You can't blame them for being a little critical.

swiley6• 7 years ago

I don't see why people are surprised, it's hardware and that stuff pretty much never gets delivered on time. I'm pretty sure the original raspberry pi came out a year at least after it was expected to and OH MY GOSH was the original pi hardware absolutely awful. I think mine was so unstable it could only reliably run for about 10 minutes with nothing plugged in.

Now I have a number of pi3s that I permanently have installed and haven't had issues with. This is almost certainly going to go the same way and we just need to let them do their thing.

iamnothere2• 7 years ago

I have to agree. Even if there are some problems with the phone, we need a good alternative to the Google/Apple duopoly. If you care about free and open communications, it's counterproductive to demand a refund at this point. An imperfect but mostly open device is better than a known spy in your pocket, and it will pave the way for future projects through Purism's software contributions.

The old canard applies here: first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. I suppose Purism is entering stage 3 right now.

newnewpdro2• 7 years ago

The old canard applies here: first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. I suppose Purism is entering stage 3 right now.

That applies to competitors.

When it's your customers laughing and fighting you, you're very much not winning.

lez2• 7 years ago

I agree, this tone has been on their forums since the beginning.

I hope that they spend their resources building the product in these critical times, and just ignore trolls.

djsumdog3• 7 years ago

I recently put in a pre-order for a Librem 5 (like a month or so ago) based off the fact that their previous batches were shipping. I realized it might be 6 months to a year, but I recently have been really frustrated with my mobile experience and want out of the Android/iProduct ecosystems. My attempt to source an old Nexus 5X to run KDE Plasma off of eBay ended in a canceled order.

I am totally prepared to support a phone that runs Linux and would rather spend time writing my own apps to fill in the gaps of my needs for either PureOS or Plasma. I had seen Purism 5 development boards on my mastodon/fediverse feeds, so I was confident they were out in the wild (Purism does have an official fediverse server; although they were given flack for some of their code modifications).

PostmarketOS has done some amazing work, but it's still a long way from being able to run open operating systems practically on mobile devices. I don't even really care about the binary blob firmware honestly as long as I had a reasonable level of introspection on the rest of the operating system.

This post makes me really sad and wonder if I should have backed this project, or tried to keep sourcing old Nexus 5Xs or wait for the PinePhone. I hate how shitty of a (non)-platform ARM is, which makes it so difficult to just port Linux to it. Microsoft at least had mandated ARM+UEFI. There are people who have gotten past their bootloader locks, but there are still no FOSS drivers for any of the hardware. If Microsoft actually gave a shit about open source, they'd release kits for getting Linux working on their old mobile devices instead of letting them end up in landfills. I've done a full post on this before: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/android-fragmentation/

I know Purism has hit a lot of controversy before. I'm not all that mad that they can't make totally open hardware ... that is just plain difficult only any x86 hardware today because of all the stuff Intel/AMD will simply not let go of. But it is sad if they're being dishonest about their progress or outright lying to people. Most of their customers are engineers and people close to the software field; people who understand the unrealistic expectations of marketing and management--people who put up with enough bullshit as it is.

awinter-py3• 7 years ago

Maybe the right starting point is to build a fully open USB cellular modem, rather than a fully open phone. You serve the same values and get to focus on the hardest part of the problem.

Tepix• 7 years ago

It's probably an unsolvable problem without huge funding. Perhaps the better approach is to treat the cellular modem as part of the untrusted network.

letstrynvm5• 7 years ago

That's not really solveable.

Their focus has been okay... the foss os stack, the gpu driver the apps... even if they fail other projects can pick these up.

It's just very difficult to get to the point you have enough pieces in good shape for a minimal usable set of functionality in 2019. A month or so ago on a devkit, the browser was crashy and juddery scrolling, not janky but going away to think on things for a bit, failing to update any more etc.

They're kind of responsible for all the pieces in the stack, unlike a normal phone company who get OOT kernel and drivers and gpu pieces handed to them all good by the soc vendor. if they can hold out and keep their nerve, it shows signs it will get there. But maybe in 2-5 years for the software imho.

teddyh4• 7 years ago

Part 3 quotes /u/whiteinge on reddit¹:

Let's assume the company is in jeopardy. Let's assume the project is over-promised and will be late and under-deliver. Let's assume the CEO is a fuckup and the Marketing Director is a liar. None of that is as bad as NO smartphone alternative to Google and Apple, let alone an open and privacy-focused alternative. I'm a Linux user and I very much want a Linux phone. And there has been so, so many false starts and near misses over almost a decade. My patience and goodwill for Purism and the Librem 5 is effectively infinite. It's not over until they shutter the doors or can the project. Until that happens I will continue to hope they limp over that finish line no matter what.

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/dm2smy/is_the_libre...

badrabbit• 7 years ago

Well said,if only someone throwed money at purism like they did with signal.

akimball3• 7 years ago

Indeed, what good is signal on your phone, when your phone is out of your control?

jdjdjjsjs• 7 years ago

This doesn't make sense to me. If all those things about the company and its execs are true they are almost certainly not gonna deliver the alternative you are clamoring for. In the meanwhile your money is sitting with them instead of a team that actually might

robto• 7 years ago

Except that they are making progress. They've upstreamed some import work to the kernal, they've contributed to phosh and libhandy. They clearly aren't working as fast as they (or many others) would like, but they are working. And not many other people are.

I also support hardware projects like ZeroPhone, Pine Phone, and the Dragonbox Pyra and software projects like Plasma Mobile. When I saw Purism articulate a vision for what a phone could be I had to support them too.

I wish they collaborated and communicated better, and I wish they had made some different decisions regarding the stack, but at the end of the day they are slowly moving the ball forward. But when I gave them $600 I did it partly because they had a vision that I valued and I wanted to signal to others that it is a vision worth investing in.

So I'm disappointed when I hear these reports, but I'm still supporting them because they are part of a very small community doing very important work. And since it's free software, it's not work that's going to waste, it can always be picked up by someone else. That's part of why it's so important.

swiley6• 7 years ago

I've seen third party developers demoing the devkit, from my understanding they really just need to stick it in a plastic shell and it's more or less good to go (outside of some bugs with gtk or video playback or whatever, phone calls and the shell works and that's all I want.)

squarefoot• 7 years ago

"... None of that is as bad as NO smartphone alternative to Google and Apple, let alone an open and privacy-focused alternative. ..."

I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately not off the shelf hardware is expensive, software support for it (device drivers) is even more expensive if not plain impossible to obtain from manufacturers in the form of open documentation, and all off the shelf phones prevent any open operating system from running on them by design, therefore making a new platform from scratch is the only viable albeit very expensive solution.

I wish Purism, Pine64 and others best luck, however. In the meantime I can only dream of laws that would force hardware manufacturers to release technical data about hardware after either X years or once they declare it obsolete or some time after they stopped selling/supporting it. Just think of the huge decrease in pollution when a startup could take all those Android 2.0+ phones, all those junk iPhone clones from 5-7 years ago, and convert them say into home controllers, portable music players etc. Old phones became junk over time because the manufacturers programmed them to become as such by refusing any kind of repurposing.

noobermin6• 7 years ago

If I'm not wrong, the fight for the right to repair if it were to succeed would facilitate this.

zozbot2346• 7 years ago

Just think of the huge decrease in pollution when a startup could take all those Android 2.0+ phones...and convert them say into home controllers, portable music players etc.

When it comes to Android 2.0-or-so phones, this is already possible in many cases. Just grab an old CyanogenMod image from the archived version of the site, grab kernel sources from the Lineage OS git repository, and start hacking on support for that phone as part of the postmarketOS project. The real problem is that every single one of those phone models runs on bespoke hardware, there's no standardization like you would find on the PC platform. It's a lot of effort for an unclear gain. A startup is not going to do this, especially when those phones are irredeemably insecure against sophisticated attackers, due to proprietary implementations in the baseband and WiFi/BT radio components.

wvh• 7 years ago

Meego, Jolla, Puzzlephone, Firefox phone, Ubuntu phone, Librem, etc... Is there really that little demand that it's a nearly impossible task to get any "alternative" phone going?

gh02t• 7 years ago

I'm not sure it's demand so much as extremely high barriers to entry. Android and iOS are both mature and have a lot of features, plus manufacturers like Apple and Samsung have a lot invested into the latest and greatest SoCs and other hardware features. Matching all that right out of the gate and building competitive hardware and an OS is hard, making it difficult to make something that the average consumer will notice.

noobermin6• 7 years ago

Made a comment below to this effect, I don't think it's mere demand, there are possibly bigger hurdles to making an appealing product that can rival cheapo mobile phones.

dmitriid• 7 years ago

A modern smartphone phone needs an ecosystem aka apps. Even Microsoft is struggling with an ecosystem for Windows phones, and they sunk billions into them.

“An opensource phone that I can hack on” is a very, very, very niche market that can’t even cover the development costs.

dredmorbius2• 7 years ago

It's exceedingly difficult to get traction and buy-in. As a freestanding effort, all but impossible. I'm holding out hope that as a side-gig / loss-leader (that is: rather unlike Purism's model, unfortunatley), it might be tractable.

Keep in mind that Microsoft and Facebook failed at this. That former industry giants Nokia and RIM were felled. That Sony Ericson is no longer free-standing. Palm has died.

It's a ruthlessly competitive market with huge winner-take-all dynamics. Apple and Google are the current incumbents. History's lesson is that they will probably fall, but only to be replaced by equally oppressive monopolies. This to me is not progress.

I'm hoping Purism does succeed.

pmontra• 7 years ago

It's not impossible as long as it can run the apps people use most. In my country I'd guess they are WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and obviously GMail and Chrome. And a lot of games.

None of those phones looked like it could run them. Furthermore it's pretty sure it won't run the next sensation, whatever it will be.

detaro• 7 years ago

Firefox OS at least lives on as KaiOS, more successful market-wise than Mozilla ever was with it.

Fairphone barely (it seems) keeps surviving and might still count somewhat as an "alternative" phone, even if their primary platform is Android.

A new OS is a big task to get to market - non-open contenders have failed too. The combination of an more open phone (which likely comes with compromises) and a new OS just makes the task even harder, and while enthusiastic, I'm not sure the market of people who'd prefer that product is large enough to make it real, sadly.

blihp• 7 years ago

The problem is that it is very difficult for even a medium-sized business to make the economics work for a hardware business based on Free Software. As soon as someone releases a device that even remotely gets traction, just watch: there will seemingly overnight be a dozen knock-offs available both undercutting on price and adding features. Great as a consumer, lousy as a (medium/large) business.

As a result, no one with the resources to readily pull it off wants to do so. Eventually it will happen. Hopefully it will be Purism and/or Pine64 because I'm really fed up with the proprietary offerings.

iamnothere2• 7 years ago

It's nearly impossible to get a "moonshot" phone going that attempts to displace iOS or Android. Most of these projects failed because they went too big. Making a phone is hard enough, but reinventing an entire ecosystem is pretty much impossible.

In my opinion, what Purism and Pine64 are doing is the right approach. Make a low-volume device for an existing operating system, without an additional "platform" layer on top. There are enough privacy and tech enthusiasts to sustain a small-volume manufacturer if you can make a functional device and keep costs down (which admittedly is a difficult problem). It's similar to the current micro-laptops that are popping up, or e-ink tablets. There's not a ton of demand, but they aren't going bankrupt.

theamk• 7 years ago

The same part then says:

However there are now so many signs that Purism isn't competent enough to be trusted with a phone, much less our privacy, that I cannot in good conscience do business with them.

Do you really want a badly executed Linux phone? If it ends up with major security vulnerabilities, vendor spyware and other nasty stuff, it will only harm the idea of Linux phone itself.

thawaway1837• 7 years ago

I honestly think the LightPhone people have the right idea. They aren’t trying to compete with Google/Apple. They simply made a simple device whose idea is to not be a smartphone at all. It’s basically a feature phone, but far less distracting.

tluyben2• 7 years ago

Going completely open takes a lot of money as you need to do the work yourself. Also it seems [0] that a lot of that work would be illegal in most (all?) countries. Starting to work on opening things up (RiscV cpu + everything that is not illegal/possible to open up, so I guess all but ble+wifi+gsm) opened up and then working with the authorities to open up those would be something I would put money into. Long term all this closed stuff in laptops, phones etc will be bad for many reasons.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/36aqdx/what...

KirinDave• 7 years ago

I really hope more folks talk about how deeply disappointing the hardware of this company is relative to their price and sales pitch.

You can't overprice your goods AND be a transparently unethical company betraying the values you claim to uphold on your sales pitch. But that's precisely what Purism has become. When you compare the quality of their goods and software to other competitors, they often fall short even on the stated extra goals (e.g., privacy).

I'm not sure how Purism's brand ends up being so untouchable. It's sort of like Brave, I think it just isn't popular enough for folks to remember exactly how ridiculously badly the company ends up behaving.

shmerl• 7 years ago

From all the previous failed crowdfunded hardware projects (like KDE Spark tablet, Jolla tablet and so on), I know one thing. Making mobile computer hardware is hard, when such companies depend on third parties for assembly and manufacturing. Those can pull the rug from under you at any point without even a blink. Especially when it's a tiny fish, which is nothing for them in comparison with clients that order magnitudes more.

So when dealing with such crowdfunding, don't get frustrated, treat it as a high risk investment and learn to be stoic. Most likely it fill fail. But if you are lucky, it won't.

wiz21c5• 7 years ago

Well, while we're at it, any news on the PinePhone front ?

megous8• 7 years ago

Supposedly, HW will start shipping in a few days to devs.

ddevault2• 7 years ago

I've worked directly with several people from Purism. I can confirm hearing about similar internal issues from first-party sources, as early as well over a year ago. I cancelled my Librem 5 pre-order several months ago, and it'd probably be wise for anyone who doesn't want to lose their money to do the same sooner rather than later.

teddyh4• 7 years ago

anyone who doesn't want to lose their money [would be] wise [to cancel their] Librem 5 pre-order

Anyone who has sent money to anyone has already “lost” that money, in a sense. What those who have pre-ordered expect is a phone. Are you claiming that Purism won’t ever send anyone a phone? Even the person who wrote the article doesn’t go that far.

ddevault2• 7 years ago

Did I not open by saying that I have more context than most people would? I have a Librem 5 dev board, too. They may end up shipping a phone to at least some of their customers, but it's going to be a disappointing product with crippling problems.

baybal2• 7 years ago

I watched a lot of initiatives for community developed hardware, starting with FIC 1973.

The community people are repeating the same issue as the industry: too much time spent on drama and talks, to little on doing stuff; 40+ years old men with attention span of an infant; people being too absent minded.

It require some willpower to forcefully kick detractors from opensource projects, as much as kicking out bad managers in a commercial enterprise.

The Silicon Valley and the culture there does not teach people any good entrepreneurship. VCs and allegedly competent mentors do not really know how to run business properly, which in my understanding means running them profitably.

I had a talk with Tapabrata (Vathys) about the case of MP3 codec chip companies still making many megabucks of pure profit on relatively simple stuff. It was very good demonstration how most of "tech" industry looses out to plain, sound entrepreneurship:

The few remaining standalone MP3 decoder chips are a very good business for whomever is making them (chips sold at $10,) and it's an easy grab for just any fabless outfit, but not many people can pull even something this simple.

It is for the simple reason that "people who will screw up running a billion dollar tech startup are equally capable of screwing up a $10M a year business." Even simple, and easy business require solid executions.

gridlockd4• 7 years ago

The kind of people that focus on software being licensed in a particular ideological way aren't going to be the most pragmatic folks out there.

denton-scratch• 7 years ago

"40+ years old men with attention span of an infant"

When I was 40 years old my attention span wasn't too bad; I was managing a dev team and a support team at the same time, and earning good money for it. I reckon a 40-year-old woman could have done even better. The dev team was not meant to be a profit centre; but it's easy to run a profitable support operation.But that was working as paid help; my one (youthful) attempt at entrepreneurship was a washout. I didn't have the temperament for it.

nickodell• 7 years ago

So if you've been paying attention to Purism's website and do some digging, you'll realize that they've never actually [filed a Social Purpose Report]
I filed a complaint with the State Attorney of Washington over the issue
So yeah Purism is going to skate by on yet another clear and obvious lie. They are pretty much going out of their way to take advantage of people at this point. On a side note, its really sad and pathetic how little the state of Washington is willing to do to try and compel Purism to live up to their legally mandated expectations as an SPC.

Um, what were you expecting? The State Attorney is going to view this as "someone forgot to file a form." That isn't exactly priority #1.

Mathnerd314• 7 years ago

Publicly traded companies have to file 10-K's, and failure to file ends in delisting. Similarly nonprofits have to file Form 990 or get their tax-exempt status revoked.

Meanwhile "the failure to furnish a social purpose report does not affect the validity of any corporate action" (https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=23B.25.150) and the sole remedy is for a shareholder to request production of a report after 2 years.

But failure to pay the annual filing fees is grounds for immediate dissolution (https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=23.95.255)

I think the story is that Washington SPCs are LLCs in pretty much every aspect besides shareholder-board disputes.

joecool1029• 7 years ago

Anyone remember Neo900? That was the last project I saw that actually had some potential of being made into a working phone supporting its own OS. I threw them 100EUR for a device that was anticipated to balloon to 1000EUR in cost.

Why did I believe it was possible? They had a base to work on with the N900. Ultimately, hardware is hard and it never shipped. I don't regret plunking down as it was an attempt in the right direction, I see it as support for projects like that. The people running the project were at least transparent about delays and problems. They never said the deposits weren't a 'risk-buy'.

I can't tell you how many people came to me and were like 'hur durr, just buy the librem 5, it's a real FOSS phone that's going to ship'. Yes... soon.

The Purism can join the textblade as hardware projects that will ship soon. Don't let anyone tell you hardware is easy, it's not. Pebble went under with a device that's a lot more simple.

codedokode5• 7 years ago

What I don't understand is why Purism and other vendors try to invent their own operating system instead of using Android or its parts which is:

- designed by smart engineers from Google

- well-tested and maintained

- well-documented

- has development tools and debuggers with GUI, not text-only GDB

- uses GPU

- has permissions and isolation for apps which Debian doesn't have

- has several app stores including FDroid and lots of apps made by independent developers

Why don't they want to use at least Dalvik and userspace software like Phone or Calendar? Nobody is going to rewrite thousands of applications like Youtube, Telegram, Maps or Happy Farm for Debian. Debian is nowhere near as polished as Android.

For example, I watched a video about Pine64 which uses Ubuntu and UI doesn't look well-designed, the icons are hidden away from desktop, the thing that pulls down from top of screen looks inconvenient to use etc. It would be better if they just ripped iPhone's UI.

Are there some technical or licensing issues or is it just because someone doesn't like Google and everything they do? Is writing in Java less productive than in C/C++/GTK or whatever they use in Ubuntu?

UPD: Also 3 Gb of RAM might be not enough for Debian/Ubuntu based OS.

ignoramous• 7 years ago

Different approaches: Daniel Micay's https://grapheneos.org is a step in the direction you're looking for.

With Android 8 Google introduced Project Treble which kind of enforces that AOSP work out-of-the-box on every (!) Google Certified device. This has kick-started a popular project, phh-treble, by a senior XDA developer that I keep a keen eye on.

You could flash AOSP today on any (!) Google certified android phone that launched with Oreo+ with very few quirks, if any.

https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki/Fre...

phh• 7 years ago

Phh-Treble author here.

First, to outside looks, your post might be confusing: GrapheneOS and (Phh-)Treble are independent, and complementary. GrapheneOS is focusing on hardening Android (and tbh I'm impressed by Daniel Micay's work). Phh-Treble is about bringing AOSP (the fully opensource Android provided by Google) to the maximum of post-Oreo devices, but using OEM's proprietary drivers. It is technically possible to make a Phh-Treble GrapheneOS, to have an hardened Android that runs on any post-oreo Android device, though that's probably an heresy.

Going back to the subject, I have to say that (one of) my goal when doing Phh-Treble is that some people use my work to create a whole new "Smartphone OS". There are many restrictions, and such a "new Smartphone OS" would probably need to be based on Android to be able to use Treble, but still, imagination is the limit, and you don't need to worry about the drivers! You can just create whatever you think has value, and pretty much anyone can use it straight away! And I'm not just thinking of FLOSS-oriented, privacy-focused, I'd be happy to see alternative "Smartphone OS" emerge.

Looking at Android as it is today, and the opensource apps the community has made, it is possible to make a privacy-focused "Smartphone OS" that is usable to the masses without much effort.

Some other post mentioned /e/, who are people that actually are trying this route. (Though they are totally ignore Treble for the moment...) Though they get quite a bad reputation, for fairly good reason (for instance there are few google "trackers" inside AOSP. they are easy to remove, yet /e/ still have them)

I personly have tried to maintain a distribution of AOSP with pre-installed FLOSS apps to get out of Google's ecosystem, but I haven't had users for it.

Back to the subject of Purism and Librem 5, even though I'm happy such an initiative exists, I feel like they are trying to do too many things at the same time. In my understanding, they are trying to: 1. Make a secure hardware (cf modem over USB) 2. Create a brand new Smartphone OS, going down to drivers, up to applications themselves, basically from scratch. 3. Make a device that runs mainline kernel.

All of those steps can be done independently, and have much higher chances of success if done independently. Also the skill-set required for those are extremely different

noobermin6• 7 years ago

Not sure what you mean by "not near as polished" but reading it as "nowhere near as polished for mobile devices" perhaps.

smartmic• 7 years ago

There is also the /e/ initiative: https://e.foundation

vertex-four• 7 years ago

Nobody is going to rewrite thousands of applications not to use Play Services either, so open-source Android doesn't actually get you much in the way of app support. Many of Android's features actually exist in a binary blob shipped by Google.

Building a free-as-in-freedom ecosystem for phone software, that isn't connected to a single company, is really important as a goal. Purism's work is/was largely being upstreamed to major community projects like GNOME, where others can build on it and influence its direction.

codedokode5• 7 years ago

As far as I know, there are replacements for Play Services, and it might be easier to write and maintain them (the API is public, right?) than rewrite existing Linux apps for mobile screens.

For example, in China Google is blocked but they can use Android and applications from local stores.

Mediterraneo104• 7 years ago

Nobody is going to rewrite thousands of applications like Youtube, Telegram, Maps or Happy Farm for Debian.

Funnily enough, the libre YouTube app of choice on Android, NewPipe, if I am not mistaken, just uses youtube-dl under the hood, which is a script that was originally written for desktop Linux.

With regard to Maps, the sort of people who want to buy a Librem phone are probably often the people who like to use OpenStreetMap-based apps like OSMAnd or Maps.Me. I am concerned about the availability of a map app on Librem, but surely one of the existing libre OSM solutions could be ported over?

Also 3 Gb of RAM might be not enough for Debian/Ubuntu based OS.

The Raspberry Pi 3 has less and has still served people well for many uses.

codedokode5• 7 years ago

I am concerned about the availability of a map app on Librem, but surely one of the existing libre OSM solutions could be ported over?

I think that you underestimate the amount of work required to port applications for a new OS. You cannot use existing desktop apps on mobile without remaking their UI and refactoring them. Who is going to do it? Who will pay for it? Will Linux users who got used to free software, pay for apps?

I know how many time it takes developing a single mobile app, and it is not less than hundreds or thousands of man-hours for one app.

Android has a working model for developers to earn money which attracts them and motivates to write new software, and the costs are distributed across millions of users which allows to keep the prices low.

Privacy-oriented phones are unlikely to become a mass product quickly so they won't create an attractive market in the nearest future, and even if someone writes or ports an app, they won't be able to keep the price low.

And as I understand, this small market of privacy/freedom-oriented phones is going to be divided between several vendors with incompatible OS distributions.

That means that there won't be many third-party applications. There will be a Firefox-based browser, Terminal (not very usable on the phone), several built-in apps and that's all. There will be no games, no popular messenger apps, no bank apps, no apps to play music, no manga selling apps, no photo editing apps, no apps to buy clothes or order a taxi.

Regarding memory usage, Android has a system that can start or stop background services, unload applications to free memory while preserving their state. Linux applications are not written with this in mind, and you cannot unload them and restore back. So they will use more memory.

eeZah7Ux• 7 years ago

smart engineers from Google

Questionable.

well-tested and maintained

Not really.

well-documented

Not really.

has permissions and isolation for apps which Debian doesn't have

Having compared google play and the apt-get ecosystem, I cannot trust the first.

Also, Debian has seccomp, cgroups and the tooling required to provide very fine-grained access control.

has several app stores including FDroid and lots of apps made by independent developers

True

Are there some technical or licensing issues

Concentration of power; monopoly; corporate surveillance

Is writing in Java less productive than in C/C++/GTK or whatever they use in Ubuntu?

There is no "they use in Ubuntu". It's a distribution. It benefits from application written in two dozen languages and most people don't want to rewrite applications in java.

UPD: Also 3 Gb of RAM might be not enough for Debian/Ubuntu based OS.

Nonsense. I was using it with 32MB of RAM. Now 4 and I have free memory while running 2 browsers.

megous8• 7 years ago

Because the whole point is to escape the Android monoculture.

codedokode5• 7 years ago

That might be not easy. Microsoft have failed to do this as I understand, though they had invested a lot of money into Windows Mobile.

neetdeth• 7 years ago

I thought the whole point was to have an open-source, hackable device from top to bottom.

It's a red flag when you have multiple areas you're trying to differentiate in with one product. Sometimes you can hit two birds with one elegant stone. Sometimes the two goals are so inextricable that you have no other choice. Most of the time, it's just a bad idea.

zozbot2346• 7 years ago

Its not for nothing that Debian is called the Universal operating system. Last I checked, laptops on the International Space Station weren't said to be running Android, or even AOSP. They were in fact running Debian.

has permissions and isolation for apps which Debian doesn't have

"Debian buster has AppArmor enabled per default. AppArmor is a mandatory access control framework for restricting programs' capabilities (such as mount, ptrace, and signal permissions, or file read, write, and execute access) by defining per-program profiles. ..."

Why don't they want to use at least Dalvik...

Dalvik is dead anyway. Modern AOSP versions use ART.

swiley6• 7 years ago

1) 3 Gb of RAM is plenty for debian. I own lots of machines with less and they're just fine (just don't do anything stupid like running GNOME)

2) Android is a fucking awful mess: the whole thing is a single monolithic project that in general doesn't accept community contributions and is extremely difficult to build yourself. It's built expecting the user to be a danger to them self and handicaps them in ways that make it very difficult to run useful software. The devtools are pretty awful compared to what you have on GNU/Linux IMO, which is quite the achievement.

3) the people buying these phones are buying them because they don't want to deal with "polish" and are happy with something like debian or alpine.

4) there are almost no apps on android that are actually useful or can't be replaced with the companies web page or a small piece of (already available and much more mature) community maintained software that runs on debian. Youtube is an absolutely fantastic example of that, if I really want something native I have youtube-dl and ffplay. graphopper (the engine used on the librem5 for mapping) is arguably an improvement on google maps (except for geocoding heh. that's a different thing anyway and google's solution was to just pay people to drive around and collect house numbers which no one is probably going to volunteer for.)

5) f-droid is amazing compared to the play store but sucks compared to a real distribution package manager.

Mediterraneo104• 7 years ago

google's solution was to just pay people to drive around and collect house numbers which no one is probably going to volunteer for

While Google’s Streetview cars were pretty nifty things, apparently the Streetview cars were not the source of house numbers in many countries. Instead, Google simply bought the rights to existing sources of information. National postal systems and municipalities had quietly created their own databases over the years.

People do volunteer to add house numbers to OpenStreetMap. My own city of half a million people got house numbers precisely because our local OSM club organized weekend outings where we would walk around town and add all the numbers. Then, when I moved out to the countryside, I would bicycle around to add all the house numbers for the surrounding villages.

mackrevinack• 7 years ago

except for geocoding heh. that's a different thing anyway and google's solution was to just pay people to drive around and collect house numbers which no one is probably going to volunteer for.

theres the mozilla stumbler app that collects wifi ap's but I think the firefox app also collects the same thing unless you opt out. then there is opencellid as well.

i drove every road in my area capturing photos using mapillary with the end goal to use them to improve openstreetmap. i had the above apps running the whole time because why not. I'm sure other mappers do the same but if not I'm sure it would be easy enough to find a few people in most areas that would be willing to contribute

flukus• 7 years ago

Android is a spyware delivery vehicle for google and others, I want an open and free phone that works for me not against me.

Development on android is absolutely horrible, tonnes of xml and java just to get a simple hello world working, a huge bloated IDE that's practically required to do anything, glacially slow emulators to debug with instead of just running the app natively. Java and all the performance problems from that.

Nobody is going to rewrite thousands of applications like Youtube, Telegram, Maps or Happy Farm for Debian.

Good, they aren't wanted, I don't want to have to rely on malware and proprietary messaging apps from the play store. Once you get rid of that you don't need the crazy permissions system, the users that need that permissions system don't understand it anyway.

Is writing in Java less productive than in C/C++/GTK or whatever they use in Ubuntu?

Yes, at least when coupled with the horrible android ecosystem. Compare a hellow world app with c + gtk (https://riptutorial.com/gtk3/example/18820/-c---hello-world-...) to one in android (https://www.tutorialspoint.com/android/android_hello_world_e...). Having a sane and performant environment to build apps in is the most promising aspect of the Librem 5.

realusername• 7 years ago

Because Android, even with all those apps is still severely limited to what you can do compared with an actual Linux distribution.

Then the next problem is that Android itself is a mess to work with, it's not designed with an open-source community in mind, the barrier is high to make it work for this kind of use case.

newnewpdro2• 7 years ago

For someone so critical of Purism's dishonest PR, jaylittle should probably check his own hyperbolic grandstanding of being an "investor" entitled to internal information.

noobermin6• 7 years ago

As someone who didn't back it (I got burned by the pandora people a few years ago and have shyied from helping people like this), it seems very possible the issues in producing a FOSS phone not only faces lack of will but really faces systemic challenges that have a price tag, like producing a phone with parts that don't require blobs just adds that many more constraints.

After seeing so many failures in this space, it's clear it might take something beyond the mere "backers-to-a-start-up-like-company" model. I'm not sure what that will take but it's happened enough that it appears it needs something more.

jchw• 7 years ago

Unfortunately the article is down, but I am deeply saddened to hear there are issues with Librem 5. I mean, I know its behind schedule, and that’s fine. But I really hope it comes to market.

It’s actually funny. Seeing Gnome 3 run on a phone made me reach an epiphany: I actually don’t like Gnome 3 as a desktop environment, but it seems pretty decent as a phone environment.

I’m currently running an iPhone because Apple makes good hardware. But I am pretty much ready to take any compromise to get a phone that can ship conventional Linux out of the box. I know it’s not everyone’s favorite, but with the Linux desktop I feel in control.

The second best thing would be a phone running postmarket OS, but I don’t see too many promising options, and frankly I think in 2019 it’s unfortunate we can’t have a phone with mostly open source firmware.

jaylittle5• 7 years ago

My apologies. My posts have been largely ignored on reddit and I don't frequent ycombinator so I didn't realize that it was getting such play over here. Thus when some fellow nerd emailed me a few hours ago asking if I'd enable ipv6 for my site, I figured "Why not?"

Well the answer to that question turns out to be: I just spent the last few hours of my life dealing with intermittent website availability issues on nginx after attempting to configure ipv6. I have now reverted everything and we are back online.

Sorry :(

rdiddly2• 7 years ago

A shitstorm must be a-brewin', because the "my account" pages at puri.sm are giving 502s right now (2019-10-27 12:59 PST).

eptcyka• 7 years ago

I've seen the phone actually make a phone call at the chaos camp this year.

jaylittle5• 7 years ago

Wow. Didn't realize this story was getting so much play over here. It has essentially failed to have an impact on reddit as nobody there apparently wants to be told that they are likely part of a Ponzi scheme.

Regarding the 502s: I was attempting to enable IPV6 and HTTP/2 for my website per a request I received from a fellow nerd over email. After two hours of pulling my hair out over intermittent non-availability, I just reverted back to my good ole trusty IPV4 non-HTTP/2 config and all is well again. Except for that guy. Sorry dude, maybe some other time.

Anyway, I would encourage everybody to read all three parts. Barring that, just read part 2 as it covers what my anonymous in-the-know source shared with me and my attempts to verify their claims with publicly available information. That's the real meat of the piece (at least it should be as I spent hours researching and cross checking data for it).

Thanks again for the support!

deftturtle• 7 years ago

Definitely worth reading all 3 before you come here and comment on the subject. My takeaway is that the company needs to come clean, or it’s going to snowball into disaster.

riazrizvi• 7 years ago

Ponzi Scheme? It’s a major engineering project going over schedule. What do you expect them to say? I am so glad they have stepped up to try and get this done. As someone with a phone on order, I do appreciate you flagging the problem. I’d appreciate it more if the tone was less alarmist.

bo1024• 7 years ago

This link (Part 1) is outdated due to Purism's blog post the same day:

https://puri.sm/posts/supplying-the-demand/

I am an early backer of the Librem 5 and have been following the campaign as well as comments of jaylittle and others on related forums.

I think I speak for many users in feeling that jaylitte's somewhat extreme reaction is counterproductive. But at the same time we have been disappointed in Purism's lack of transparency bordering on deception regarding Aspen. We have been waiting a long time for this phone and are okay with waiting a bit longer, but not so okay with being deceived.

gridlockd4• 7 years ago

There's a stark economic difference in producing hardware versus software. A single person fueled with nothing but instant noodles and energy drinks can produce software that changes the world. There's no significant upfront costs and lots of room for mistakes.

Libre hardware can only work if there is strong and stable demand from users, and those users need to adjust their expectations. Writing long-winded critical blog-posts, burdening Purism with refunds and investigations on formalities unrelated to the phone - that isn't going to help. If anything, it's poisoning the well. It should be obvious that most companies aren't interested in pandering to FOSS-enthusiasts.

kd3• 7 years ago

Sounds like a serious case of Elon Musk time and planning (missing deadlines, bad time estimates etc.). A small company like Purism delivering an ambitious first time project like the Librem 5 phone on time would be nothing short of a miracle. The clouds would have parted and jesus himself would have come down to congratulate them. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and have some more patience.

skinnyasianboi• 7 years ago

I have so much hope in this project. Linux apps adding support for libhandy is so full filling to see. A long time dream seems to become true.

My thinking might be way to posetive but the fact that the post gets a lot of attention on HN might even help the project instead of letting it die.

grizzles3• 7 years ago

I feel for the backers but this was entirely predictable:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16182968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17913940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15090567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17140823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17913700

I even tried to warn Todd off his approach before the crowdfunding campaign kicked off. I knew no good would come of it.

grizzles3• 7 years ago

How I would have did it:

1. (If possible) License a mediatek phone & ship an open source android image. Sell it for a low price. Pros: No risk, great phone, Cons: Might not be possible - though Fairphone did it for a high end phone.

2. Ship a Raspberry Pi Zero + Battery + LCD screen sandwiched together. Pros: A focus entirely on the mfg process might get you a slim mobile device. Cons: No 4G modem.

3. Don't do it at all. Pros: Save reputation. Cons: No Purism One funding.

The approach they took (custom everything) was insane.

grizzles3• 7 years ago

Brutal interview here with the former Purism CTO: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zlatan-T...

alasdair_2• 7 years ago

Annecdata: I ordered the laptop a couple of years ago (with qubes installed). They missed SIX month-long deadlines to ship it before I finally gave up and asked for a refund.

mlinksva• 7 years ago

Part 2 says (emphasis added):

Purism has long since spent all of the initial crowdfunding income and is depending on new Librem 5 pre-orders for most of their revenue.

Is it possible that a healthy laptop business is subsidizing phone development? Presumably not if Purism is turning to Kickfurther, but it seems like a possibility that ought be analyzed.

mattl• 7 years ago

No way this phone ships on time and working

marcan_42• 7 years ago

The Librem 5 has long since gone off-course. Even before all of these supply/deliverability issues, they have never really attempted to deliver a "free" phone. What it seems they're actually trying to do is deliver a phone that the FSF will certify as "Respects your Freedom".

Unfortunately, that certification is not just complete snake oil, but actually encourages devices that reduce your freedom. I made a Twitter want about how the Librem 5 is doing entirely the wrong thing here:

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1040626210999431168?s=19

TL;DR the FSF lets you have blobs as long as the user doesn't see them and the main CPU doesn't touch them (not run then, like, it can't even touch them/set them up/upload them to another CPU). This means that not only are you running proprietary firmware, you also don't know you're running it, you can't see it, you can't change it, you can't audit it, and you can never reverse engineer it and replace it with a free version.

Having a pile of blobs in /lib/firmware respects your freedom a hell of a lot more than that nonsense.

ldarby• 7 years ago

For the people complaing about closed firmware, remember that obtaining FSF certifcation can be achieved by e.g. cutting off the hardware pins to make upgrading it impossible, turning the "firmware" into "hardware". This is what the OpenMoko project did https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/task2-openmoko. Is this what you would prefer?

seba_dos1• 7 years ago

GTA04 isn't an Openmoko project (it just uses Openmoko Neo Freerunner's case), and the firmware injector project never went anywhere AFAIR.

The Sad Saga of Purism and the Librem 5

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