7 ms·

As someone who backed them in 2017 I'm so happy to finally see the specs. It's amazing to follow their progress, I love what they are doing with Gnome/Phosh, th

As someone who backed them in 2017 I'm so happy to finally see the specs. It's amazing to follow their progress, I love what they are doing with Gnome/Phosh, that gives me hope that there will be many native apps for the most important tasks and not just some web-app mess. For the people complaining about the price/specs ratio: this phone is no standard off-the-shelve system, it had to be designed with user privacy and openness in mind while having a ridiculously small market. I'm amazed they did it so cheaply. Personally I hope that they will be able to sell enough to continue development. Maybe this will lead to a second generation with multiple models for different market segments. I'd love a librem phone with a good old blackberry keyboard in the <1500$ price range with a little more RAM/CPU power and screws holding the back plate.

ThreeFx 7y ago
I'd go even a step further: Since they open-sourced all their work, maybe other vendors can pick up / fork where they left off and we may actually have more than one Linux phone in the future! Two years ago that seemed like wishful thinking to me, but I am very excited about how far Purism got in an even shorter timespan.
- dastx 7y ago
  > fork It'll probably be a closed source fork. Defeating the whole purpose of Librem.
  - mbowcutt 7y ago
    I think the Librem5 will have a CC-by-SA 4.0 license, aka copyleft, so it'd have to be open source.
    - meruru 7y ago
      That's a weird statement. Why would they use a CC license, rather than a software license like the GPL?
      - swiley 7y ago
        Have you read the GPL? It makes very little sense for hardware (it’s actually a pretty weird license full of all kinds of software specific things. “Linking” to “operating system components” for example doesn’t make them a derivative work, whatever all that means. There’s quite a lot of other stuff.) The argument for using the GPL when creating copyleft software is that most copyleft software uses the GPL and you want everything to have a compatible license, that’s not really the case for hardware.
  - ptx 7y ago
    GNOME and Linux are under the GPL. So are phosh (Purism's shell), Chatty (their messaging app) and probably a lot of other components. So you can't make a closed fork.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Linux kernel is GPL. Now try to get the right version sold with an Android phone.
      - ryukafalz 7y ago
        It often seems to take some persistence, but typically it is possible to get the kernel sources. The manufacturers can drag their feet for a while but ultimately they have to give it to you. Compare that to the rest of the software on an Android device; you'll have no luck convincing Samsung to give you the source to any of the UI bits on their phones, for example. The GPL is a huge improvement in this regard.
      - justinclift 7y ago
        Semi-related, but apparently Win10 WSL now includes the Linux kernel. Being as that's GPL, it seems strange the GPL license isn't somehow "virally" infecting windows, making other things OSS.
        mises 7y ago
        They have released the source for their fork: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel. Linux specifically does not use the GPLv3 for exactly this reason. rms et al. complained about "tivoization", which came from tivo shipping boxes that contained the code but were locked down. Linus didn't really care as much, or at least not enough to re-license. He didn't like the restriction, and new that such a provision would prevent exactly what MS is now doing: allowing more freedom for the users.
        justinclift 7y ago
  - m463 7y ago
    > > fork > It'll probably be a closed source fork. Defeating the whole purpose of Librem. wouldn't that also defeat sales too? might not, system76 comes off like purism and sells well, but I believe they have hardware that requires binary blobs.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- beatgammit 7y ago
  Like PinePhone? They're pushing for a ~$200 phone in Q3 this year, same as Purism. The difference is that Pine64 doesn't seem to be putting nearly as many resources into development, just enough to get functioning hardware out there and then leaving it up to the community to build the ecosystem. It's an exciting time! While I'm waiting, I'm setting up my own PBX to hopefully take control of my phone service, and I'm going to experiment with using VOIP over data instead of going over the "regular" voice channels. I'm super excited to see what's possible with an open platform like this.
  - solarkraft 7y ago
    Isn't Pine64 also compromising security more than Purism by being more lenient regarding unfree blobs?
  - mises 7y ago
    Having set up a PBX before, what does it give you that allows you to "take control"? You've still got to connect to some phone provider. It's basically just a highly-configurable alternative.
iamnotacrook 7y ago
"For the people complaining about the price/specs ratio: this phone is no standard off-the-shelve system, it had to be designed with user privacy and openness in mind while having a ridiculously small market. I'm amazed they did it so cheaply." How does that affect the price tag? Would it be less secure if they charged less?
- MayeulC 7y ago
  Well, using an off-the shelf system like many of the cheap smartphone companies do allow you to keep development costs down, and leverage economies of scale even for small batches. For one, they are bringing up a stack that's quite different from the one usually found on smartphones, which sounds quite costly. From the security point of view, I am not sure it would be less secure on the sw side, but it would be less open. On the hw side, they have kill switches, isolated the firmware on ROM chips (RYF-compliant), and have a pretty strict security-first approach. Unfortunately that places it out of reach for me, financially-speaking. I'll continue with postmarketos, and keep an eye on the pinephone.
- hedora 7y ago
  > How does that affect the price tag? Would it be less secure if they charged less? Price = cost of goods sold (hardware) + (profit + development overhead + marketing + ...) / number of units sold So, yes, if they didn’t bother spending r&d resources on security, they could charge less. Also, the marginal price of security is much higher than with the big two, since the number of units sold is smaller. I wish them well, but they picked a tough fight.
  - iamnotacrook 7y ago
    Isn't it mostly all off the shelf hardware and software though? I think they're going to discover that a lot of people say they want security but when push comes to shove when they're buying a phone they first and foremost want a good phone. If you were really bothered about security and privacy on a phone you'd just use tracking blockers, a disposable (google) account, not log into facebook, turn off location, use tor, or existing encrypted chat software to talk to other people who are also using disposable (ie not their main email accounts to sign up to google) accounts etc. But do all this on a regular phone. I'd always been concerned about timely security updates, software that's been written by people with no experience with security and who have no reputation to damage by cutting corners.
butterNaN 7y ago
> I'd love a librem phone with a good old blackberry keyboard If the form factor is anything like Blackberry Priv, I'd order is instantly

ThreeFx 7y ago

I'd go even a step further: Since they open-sourced all their work, maybe other vendors can pick up / fork where they left off and we may actually have more than one Linux phone in the future! Two years ago that seemed like wishful thinking to me, but I am very excited about how far Purism got in an even shorter timespan.

dastx 7y ago
> fork It'll probably be a closed source fork. Defeating the whole purpose of Librem.
- mbowcutt 7y ago
  I think the Librem5 will have a CC-by-SA 4.0 license, aka copyleft, so it'd have to be open source.
  - meruru 7y ago
    That's a weird statement. Why would they use a CC license, rather than a software license like the GPL?
    - swiley 7y ago
      Have you read the GPL? It makes very little sense for hardware (it’s actually a pretty weird license full of all kinds of software specific things. “Linking” to “operating system components” for example doesn’t make them a derivative work, whatever all that means. There’s quite a lot of other stuff.) The argument for using the GPL when creating copyleft software is that most copyleft software uses the GPL and you want everything to have a compatible license, that’s not really the case for hardware.
- ptx 7y ago
  GNOME and Linux are under the GPL. So are phosh (Purism's shell), Chatty (their messaging app) and probably a lot of other components. So you can't make a closed fork.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Linux kernel is GPL. Now try to get the right version sold with an Android phone.
    - ryukafalz 7y ago
      It often seems to take some persistence, but typically it is possible to get the kernel sources. The manufacturers can drag their feet for a while but ultimately they have to give it to you. Compare that to the rest of the software on an Android device; you'll have no luck convincing Samsung to give you the source to any of the UI bits on their phones, for example. The GPL is a huge improvement in this regard.
    - justinclift 7y ago
      Semi-related, but apparently Win10 WSL now includes the Linux kernel. Being as that's GPL, it seems strange the GPL license isn't somehow "virally" infecting windows, making other things OSS.
      - mises 7y ago
        They have released the source for their fork: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel. Linux specifically does not use the GPLv3 for exactly this reason. rms et al. complained about "tivoization", which came from tivo shipping boxes that contained the code but were locked down. Linus didn't really care as much, or at least not enough to re-license. He didn't like the restriction, and new that such a provision would prevent exactly what MS is now doing: allowing more freedom for the users.
        justinclift 7y ago
- m463 7y ago
  > > fork > It'll probably be a closed source fork. Defeating the whole purpose of Librem. wouldn't that also defeat sales too? might not, system76 comes off like purism and sells well, but I believe they have hardware that requires binary blobs.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
beatgammit 7y ago
Like PinePhone? They're pushing for a ~$200 phone in Q3 this year, same as Purism. The difference is that Pine64 doesn't seem to be putting nearly as many resources into development, just enough to get functioning hardware out there and then leaving it up to the community to build the ecosystem. It's an exciting time! While I'm waiting, I'm setting up my own PBX to hopefully take control of my phone service, and I'm going to experiment with using VOIP over data instead of going over the "regular" voice channels. I'm super excited to see what's possible with an open platform like this.
- solarkraft 7y ago
  Isn't Pine64 also compromising security more than Purism by being more lenient regarding unfree blobs?
- mises 7y ago
  Having set up a PBX before, what does it give you that allows you to "take control"? You've still got to connect to some phone provider. It's basically just a highly-configurable alternative.

iamnotacrook 7y ago

"For the people complaining about the price/specs ratio: this phone is no standard off-the-shelve system, it had to be designed with user privacy and openness in mind while having a ridiculously small market. I'm amazed they did it so cheaply." How does that affect the price tag? Would it be less secure if they charged less?

MayeulC 7y ago
Well, using an off-the shelf system like many of the cheap smartphone companies do allow you to keep development costs down, and leverage economies of scale even for small batches. For one, they are bringing up a stack that's quite different from the one usually found on smartphones, which sounds quite costly. From the security point of view, I am not sure it would be less secure on the sw side, but it would be less open. On the hw side, they have kill switches, isolated the firmware on ROM chips (RYF-compliant), and have a pretty strict security-first approach. Unfortunately that places it out of reach for me, financially-speaking. I'll continue with postmarketos, and keep an eye on the pinephone.
hedora 7y ago
> How does that affect the price tag? Would it be less secure if they charged less? Price = cost of goods sold (hardware) + (profit + development overhead + marketing + ...) / number of units sold So, yes, if they didn’t bother spending r&d resources on security, they could charge less. Also, the marginal price of security is much higher than with the big two, since the number of units sold is smaller. I wish them well, but they picked a tough fight.
- iamnotacrook 7y ago
  Isn't it mostly all off the shelf hardware and software though? I think they're going to discover that a lot of people say they want security but when push comes to shove when they're buying a phone they first and foremost want a good phone. If you were really bothered about security and privacy on a phone you'd just use tracking blockers, a disposable (google) account, not log into facebook, turn off location, use tor, or existing encrypted chat software to talk to other people who are also using disposable (ie not their main email accounts to sign up to google) accounts etc. But do all this on a regular phone. I'd always been concerned about timely security updates, software that's been written by people with no experience with security and who have no reputation to damage by cutting corners.

butterNaN 7y ago

> I'd love a librem phone with a good old blackberry keyboard If the form factor is anything like Blackberry Priv, I'd order is instantly