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Ars Technica recently tested the current version of the Purism Libre: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/librem-5-phone-hands-on-a-proof-of-concept-for-the

Ars Technica recently tested the current version of the Purism Libre: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/librem-5-phone-hands-on-a-proof-of-concept-for-the-open-source-smartphone/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/librem-5-phone-hands... It seems that it's still more a prototype than a functioning phone, where even basic functionality like replying to a SMS is not implemented yet. That's not really surprising or discouraging though, it's simply a lot of software that you have to reimplement, so even attaining feature parity with current phones seems quite difficult with this approach. I think we need a political/organizational solution to the privacy problem, fighting back with technology will not work. Taking aside the usability issues I think these initiatives are fantastic though and while I don't think they will replace current smartphones they might find unexpected markets that can benefit from the open approach. For example, I think an affordable, fully open mobile computing device could become as successful as the Raspberry Pi and provide a great platform for many innovative, data-driven mobile applications.

dmos62 7y ago
> think we need a political/organizational solution to the privacy problem I agree, and I'd add that that's because there isn't much money in privacy at the moment, and there's a lot of money in violating privacy. And, that's probably because there's too many people who don't understand privacy in technology, or don't consider it a priority. I think that regulation can't come soon enough. Anyone who helps privacy and tech politics move faster is a hero.
- ThePhysicist 7y ago
  Yes, I think there's a trend (maybe fake, I hope real) that people become more savvy in respect to privacy. As the article says, 70 % of people say they learned more about privacy last year. We can already see the first large corporations that use this for their marketing (though with mixed real committments I'd say), and I think more will follow. Also, there are so many privacy legislations now and more are coming, not only in the EU but also in other parts of the world. It's a real problem and it will get more prevalent the more data we collect. I think we're only at the beginning of the data-driven economy and there's still so much potential for harnessing data to improve things, but we have to ensure the security of the data and the privacy of the persons that it belongs to.
jseliger 7y ago
I think we need a political/organizational solution to the privacy problem, fighting back with technology will not work. We don't have one because most people (voters) don't care: https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebook-crisis-or-media-narrative-about-facebook-crisis https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo.... When/if people change their behaviors, we'll see change.
kleer001 7y ago
> I think we need a political/organizational solution to the privacy problem, Like https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/ ?
r00fus 7y ago
> I think we need a political/organizational solution to the privacy problem I think Privacy as a right comes when we get rid of politicians beholden to corporate interests. Luckily there's a lot of interest in that right now. Once we start to remove Corporate interests from the loop then legislation enshrining privacy can allow startups like Purism to really shine, and force Apple and others to step up their game.

dmos62 7y ago

> think we need a political/organizational solution to the privacy problem I agree, and I'd add that that's because there isn't much money in privacy at the moment, and there's a lot of money in violating privacy. And, that's probably because there's too many people who don't understand privacy in technology, or don't consider it a priority. I think that regulation can't come soon enough. Anyone who helps privacy and tech politics move faster is a hero.

ThePhysicist 7y ago
Yes, I think there's a trend (maybe fake, I hope real) that people become more savvy in respect to privacy. As the article says, 70 % of people say they learned more about privacy last year. We can already see the first large corporations that use this for their marketing (though with mixed real committments I'd say), and I think more will follow. Also, there are so many privacy legislations now and more are coming, not only in the EU but also in other parts of the world. It's a real problem and it will get more prevalent the more data we collect. I think we're only at the beginning of the data-driven economy and there's still so much potential for harnessing data to improve things, but we have to ensure the security of the data and the privacy of the persons that it belongs to.

jseliger 7y ago

I think we need a political/organizational solution to the privacy problem, fighting back with technology will not work. We don't have one because most people (voters) don't care: https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebook-crisis-or-media-narrative-about-facebook-crisis https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo.... When/if people change their behaviors, we'll see change.

kleer001 7y ago

> I think we need a political/organizational solution to the privacy problem, Like https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/ ?

r00fus 7y ago

> I think we need a political/organizational solution to the privacy problem I think Privacy as a right comes when we get rid of politicians beholden to corporate interests. Luckily there's a lot of interest in that right now. Once we start to remove Corporate interests from the loop then legislation enshrining privacy can allow startups like Purism to really shine, and force Apple and others to step up their game.