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I think the distaste is for rent being charged on a device that you've supposedly bought out right. Charge a subscription or sell the phone outright but don't
by Lio 10mo ago
I think the distaste is for rent being charged on a device that you've supposedly bought out right.
Charge a subscription or sell the phone outright but don't do both.
I feel the same way about cars where you pay for the engine or the heated seats but can't use them without paying rent.
- fweimer 10mo agoI think it's an interesting model. Somehow, the maintenance needs to be funded, and that is an ongoing effort. Charging for security updates is not ideal, but I'm not sure what the alternative would be.
- layer8 10mo agoI don’t think they can charge for updates, at least not in the first five years where the EU mandates that updates must be made available.
- lucb1e 10mo agoAlso if it's mandatory? I would also say it's desirable to prevent the situation in which users just choose to have zombie devices because security is more expensive, but making them free or making them mandatory paid would both work for that
- protimewaster 10mo agoHow would they make it mandatory, though? The only way I can think of making it mandatory would be if the phone bricks itself when the subscription ends. Or if you just lease the phone and the lease includes updates. It seems like the best approach would be to just include the cost of updates in the price of the phone, which I guess is what every other phone maker does.
- protimewaster 10mo agoIt seems like it would be cheaper and more effective to just keep in sync with GrapheneOS rather than maintaining a custom fork. I understand that maintenance still isn't free in that case, but it seems like they went out of their way to make more maintenance work for themselves, and then they asked their customers to pay for it. As a potential customer, I would've rather it just come with standard GOS rather than paying yearly for a fork that probably isn't as secure.