
Librem 5 Phone Funded - mike-cardwell
https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
======
c0smic
Really hope purism finds success with this. An open phone platform has been a
long time coming, I hope they can learning from the missteps of ubuntu and
firefox.

I like the idea of managing my phone like I manage my computer; install
whatever OS and software I want on it. Of course, that comes with the
additional effort of keeping it well updated and working, and if this is a
primary communication device that effort becomes more urgent. But hey, I think
that's just what it takes to not be dependent on a corporation that takes my
data/info in exchange for device support.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> Of course, that comes with the additional effort of keeping it well updated

Yeah, but you actually get the option, and you, the owner of the device, have
the power to make it happen.

~~~
gehsty
Crowd funded, then crowd sourced security updates? Really?

I think it is a noble effort with zero chance of success, its like Linux on
the desktop, but with the further complication of expecting people to pay $$$
for out of date hardware, with what will no doubt be terrible software, with
no apps users actually want to use....

~~~
bostand
Define success.

Btw, Linux on desktop is used by many large tech companies...

~~~
gehsty
Used by a significant portion of computer users, ie Windows Phone is not a
successful platform, Android is, and if Microsoft can't make a successful
phone platform, what chance does this go fund me campaign have.

'Many large tech companies' is pretty insignificant when you look at the
number of people who use desktop computers, and then even more insignificant
when you look at the number of people who use phones, and is a very poor
metric as it doesn't really consider people actually choosing to purchase the
system when others are on offer.

There is just no value in their proposition to consumers... Have an expensive
old phone, made by a company that can in no way support your purchase should
the hardware fail...

And I don't believe for a second that it will be more secure than iOS or even
Android. Small team, custom operating system, the user can install their own
OS, sounds like a recipe for disaster.

~~~
bostand
I don't think your definition of success matches theirs. People have different
values, some value openness above market share.

\---

Speaking of openness, and since you mentioned ios: apple recently unpublished
a company's entire catalog of apps without any explanations. The word on the
street is malware (well technically fraudulent adware) but do you think you
will ever get apple to admit that?

~~~
gehsty
I think it will match their version of success when they run out of money and
are no longer able to support their users.

I don't know about the case you mention. I do not think that Apple manage
their developer community well, but most issues like the one you highlight are
generally edge cases - users doing something that isn't clearly defined by
Apple rules. What was the company and what did its apps specifically do? If it
was fraudulent adware do you not agree that they should be removed?

------
mikenew
I "bought" mine. I'm not sure what their probability of success is, but if
it's around 30% or so I'm fine with that. The world needs a viable alternative
to the big 2 mobile OSs, and even if the market share is tiny the difference
between having an alternative and not is huge.

I've been an iOS developer for years and made a comfortable living, but it
bothers me on a deep and fundamental level that my primary communication and
computing device is controlled by someone else, and the software I'm allowed
to run and allowed to distribute is entirely decided by them. I'm willing to
risk money if it helps our chances of having an alternative.

~~~
shmerl
We have free mobile OSes, but what's much harder is hardware where they can
run.

------
diminish
We really need a phone for hackers no matter how small the market is. I hope
that's Librem this time after Neo, Ubuntu, FirefoxOS.

~~~
mortenjorck
It's honestly very difficult to imagine how a small group, no matter how
talented and driven, can possibly succeed where open source giants Canonical
and Mozilla couldn't.

The only possibility I can imagine is that by leaning into a niche market,
embracing low-volume but also the community that goes with it, rather than
engaging in a quixotic quest to become a viable competitor to the established
duopoly, Librem can become sustainable along the lines of niche laptop
manufacturer System76. That doesn't seem entirely unreasonable, and it would
be pretty cool.

~~~
Arathorn
If the goals are relatively modest (e.g. a low bar of selling ~10K handsets),
and the project is well scoped (e.g. don't try to be a me-too Android & iOS
alternative, but focus purely on secure communication & web browsing), and if
it builds on the better bits of FOSS that came from previous projects (Maemo,
Meego, Sailfish, FFOS, Ubuntu Touch, etc)... I think this one stands a chance.
(disclaimer: I'm working on the Matrix side of it).

~~~
khed
I am excited for the phone but I don't get having matrix as the messaging app.
I don't see the value in matrix. Encryption is not on by default, which is
unacceptable in a modern messaging app. It leaks metadata like a seive. None
of my friends or co-workers on it. It isn't decentralized enough.

They should just use briar. It hides metadata, it's encrypted, it's peer to
peer. It's biggest downsides are no file transfer, no iOS client, no offline
messaging.

Or better yet someone should develop an app based on one of the newer concepts
like vuvuzela/alpenhorn or loopix.

~~~
Arathorn
Encryption is only not on by default because it is still in (late) beta.
Obviously by the time the Librem5 ships this will be on by default.

You’re right that metadata isn’t protected serverside: so use servers you
trust. In future the plan is to move to a hybrid p2p approach to fix this, but
usability and features are more important given you can pick the servers to
trust.
[https://matrix.org/~matthew/2016-12-22%20Matrix%20Balancing%...](https://matrix.org/~matthew/2016-12-22%20Matrix%20Balancing%20Interop%20and%20Privacy.pdf)
has more details on the tradeoff.

I’d be shocked if your friends and coworkers aren’t accessible via Matrix,
given bridges through to Gitter, IRC, Slack etc. And if you want them to be
native Matrix users, just invite them :)

In terms of “not decentralised enough”... the only bits which aren’t
decentralised are the node which hosts your account, and (currently) the
mapping DB of email/msisdn to matrix IDs. The latter is being fixed by the
community currently; the former is harder but due to be worked on next year
(hopefully solved by the time the Librem5 ships).

In terms of briar: it’s a great project, and perhaps it will surpass Matrix in
time. But right now the battery and bandwidth requirements of running a full
p2p stack on the client - as well as all the missing features you list, are a
showstopper. It’s also not really set up as an open protocol/specification;
just a library and app.

So, Matrix is probably the best bet for now. And we’re counting on evolving at
the current rate or faster over the next year in the lead up to the Librem5
shipping.

~~~
khed
Thanks for the PDF :)

If matrix moved toward pond style metadata protection I would make the effort
to move my social graph on to it and probably support it financially.

As is, I don't see the value proposition of matrix. I am genuinely curious
what it is. An update to xmpp? Is it that it is going to be encrypted AND
federated? Many popular apps now support default encryption so that isn't much
of a selling point. Conversations is federated and is not getting traction the
way signal has. Being federated has benefits but they are sort of theoretical
and aren't high on most people's list of concerns. Further the value
proposition of federated systems is attenuated by it's downsides (slow
evolution).

Meanwhile people get killed based on metadata. Seems like a more urgent
problem to tackle.

~~~
Arathorn
An easy way to describe Matrix is as a decentralised database of realtime
conversations, which are signed and replicated over the participating servers.
The main novelty over XMPP MUCs is that conversations are replicated equally
over the servers so there's no single point of control - it's really more a
decentralised than federated model. And yes, it has (beta) E2E crypto too -
albeit trying to take the best aspects of Signal (the double ratchet) whilst
also making it usable for sharing conversation history when desired between
devices, and actually clearly tracking which devices are participating in the
conversation. The "slow evolution" criticism of federation/decentralisation is
empirically fairly bogus, as long as you structure the layers of the protocol
so they can all evolve independently without cross-cutting concerns.

You're right that people get killed based on metadata, which is why it's in
our sights in the longer term. But our focus is first on features that make
the system actually compete effectively with its centralised counterparts
(encrypted decentralised Slack or WhatsApp style use cases), otherwise in
practice nobody's seriously going to use it. And secondarily on protecting
metadata, especially given there's stuff like Ricochet & Briar that you can
use today if you're doing something where you really need the metadata
protection today.

------
jordigh
I haven't had a phone mostly because I refuse to have any non-free software
controlling my life. I don't want to be tracked, manipulated, or have a
computer attached to me at all times with a second, hidden computer inside
that can do things I don't want it to do nor can even know about.

I'm excited about Librem, if it is what I think it will be: a phone I can
completely trust.

I'm also extremely surprised that it got funded. 1.5e6 USD is not a modest
goal given how stingy we usually are about freedom-respecting projects.

------
shmerl
Congratulations! I'm looking forward to the actual release. It's quite hard
and risky however, and if anything, previous failed projects are an indication
of how volatile all this is (like hardware partners pulling support in the
middle of the development cycle and so on).

It would be great to have a device running Linux with native Wayland, and LTE
modem separated from the CPU for better security. I just hope they'll go with
i.MX 8M so it will be 64-bit.

How is etnaviv for it though? I also wonder what's the level of OpenGL support
in it. I suppose Vulkan support isn't even started?

~~~
petecox
Th most interesting thing for me about i.MX is not 4K video or Vulkan. Quite
the opposite. It is the chip powering my Kobo and, I suspect, Kindles.

An e-ink phone with a 3 day battery life! But being a hacker phone, as long as
performance isn't _too_ shabby when docked to a regular 3D accelerated LED
monitor with Wayland desktop would be a nice balance.

~~~
shmerl
Good graphics stack is quite important too. I suppose they can crowdfund
missing OpenGL and Vulkan support for etnaviv. I'd support such effort.

------
tom_mellior
This crowdfunding campaign started on August 24. It was at $750000 after a
month on September 26, needed ten more days to reach a million on October 4,
and then somehow raised the remaining $500000 in five more days? This seems
weird. They didn't have that much press over this last week.

I wonder if they had investors all along and only pretended to crowdfund.

(I'm not saying this is a scam or anything. I participated.)

~~~
Arathorn
My interpretation is between some concrete evidence of actually being able to
build this ([https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-roadmap-to-
imx8](https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-roadmap-to-imx8) and
[https://matrix.org/blog/2017/09/28/experiments-with-
matrix-o...](https://matrix.org/blog/2017/09/28/experiments-with-matrix-on-
the-purism-librem5-starring-ubports-and-nheko/)) and then hitting the $1M mark
([https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-campaign-surges-past-one-
mill...](https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-campaign-surges-past-one-million-
dollars/)), the campaign finally got critical mass. These stories seemed to
get pretty major press (e.g. top of HN).

~~~
rrix2
Anecdata: I only chose to back it after they reached the 1mm mark.

~~~
tom_mellior
Fair enough. Though now that the campaign has really achieved critical mass,
is fully funded, and further people could buy in ostensibly without any
risk... it has stagnated at 107% and not moved in at least 24 hours.

------
foota
Seems like really low funding for what they're aiming for

~~~
platinumrad
Yeah, I'm somewhat worried about this as well as 1.5 million is not a lot
considering that they actually have to ship phones in the end and can't just
pour it all into R&D. I'm assuming that they'll be using mostly commodity
hardware (i.MX 8M SoC plus Alibaba-tier chassis, lcd, capacitive layer, etc.)
but even then they still have to put everything together and create a
deliverable product with reasonably workable software, although I expect that
they plan on leaning heavily on the KDE/GNOME/Debian communities. Probably
going to flip a coin later this week to determine whether I'm going to back
this or not.

~~~
JonFish85
$1.5m, and seemingly a team of somewhere between 18 and 27 people, they're
going to need more funding. If they're paying $5k/person/mo (assume for now
this includes things like taxes and overhead), that's one year's worth of
money. On top of this, they have to cover things like FCC certifications, fees
for getting manufacturing rolling and all the other fun stuff that comes with
shipping physical product.

~~~
ZenoArrow
$1.5m does seem like a low target for a crowdfunded smartphone, but it's worth
bearing in mind that the salaries of those involved will not be propped up
solely by a single device. Purism already sell a range of laptops:

[https://puri.sm/products/](https://puri.sm/products/)

~~~
JepZ
Wow, their laptops look great. Not cheap, but fairly priced. I hope they will
still offer updated versions when I have to replace my XPS.

------
madmax108
Interesting. Does this mean that I can use my phone to install all apps that I
can on my laptop? Similar to how Ubuntu phone was in principle.

Can I apt-get install something in this (assuming debian/ubuntu installed) or
have it's own app store?

Really interesting, but so many questions unanswered about what I can do with
the phone once I buy it.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "Does this mean that I can use my phone to install all apps that I can on my
> laptop?"

Yes. Any Linux app that runs on ARM. Most desktop apps don't have a UI that
works well on mobile, and some apps are pretty much a no-go just because of
performance, but aside from that you're free to install the software you want.

> "Can I apt-get install something in this (assuming debian/ubuntu installed)
> or have it's own app store?"

Yes, you'll be able to use package managers. The proposed phone aims to
support multiple distros, including Debian and Ubuntu if you want to use apt-
get. The flagship OS for the device is Pure OS, which currently uses GNOME
Software as its app store (I'm guessing they might extend it with the option
to install commercial software before launch):

[https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Software](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Software)

------
kepano
This is an admirable effort, but unless tens of thousands of units are put
into production it will be very difficult to get the attention of even the
smallest Chinese OEMs. It appears they've pre-sold less than 2000 units. I
wonder if it would be more fruitful to work from an existing phone with solid
build quality and simplifying the process of jailbreaking it and installing
FOSS on it.

~~~
wvh
Jailbreaking and installing FOSS like Jolla is doing with Sailfish on Xperia X
right this week, with some help from Sony Open Devices.

Still, it would be nice to have some hope do be able to do it without relying
on manufacturers' goodwill... If ARM gets sufficiently commoditised so it's
cheap (both time and money) enough for smaller players to create hardware,
surely there must be enough open-source and/or privacy-oriented folks around
to come up with a profitable product?

~~~
cameronhowe
Jolla/Sailfish is not FOSS, and they have no plans to be so in the future
either.

~~~
jcelerier
It's still the closest option we have to "desktop linux stack running on a
phone". Wayland, Qt, BTRFS, systemd, glibc...

------
chx
I trust they did their research but separating the baseband from the CPU will
be a major, major PITA.

~~~
closeneough
Can you explain why?

~~~
chx
Read this thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6722515](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6722515)

Baseband typically uses DMA to interact with the main system.

------
zanybear
If Microsoft would support this from a distance - thru open source and maybe
some financing - this would be their best play in the mobile space. They would
achieve way more than Windows Mobile ever did.

~~~
quickben
Ms doesn't enter markets where they have no control (OSS or closed
ecosystems).

------
noncoml
Jan 2019 seems a bit aggressive. If they do manage to pull it off thought,
even for a later date, I will be definitely placing an order as soon as
possible.

------
greenhouse_gas
Why don't they base their OS on Replicant?

It's FOSS, Linux-based, has apps and is Mobike-optimized.

~~~
uabstraction
I don't know about you, but I want to get as far away from the whole Android
ecosystem as possible. I don't want "Linux-based." I want fully fledged
GNU/Linux in my pocket. I want to take advantage of GNOME/KDE's convergence
interfaces. I want to develop real Unix software and port it to a phone
without rewriting it for cocoa touch or Android's java API.

There is so much great software available for GNU/Linux that we have the
potential to tap into, and many of them can be made to work on a 5"
touchscreen with a little bit of elbow grease. Firefox OS and Ubuntu phones
failed because they ignored the giant stack of software sitting right in front
of us. Purism would do well to leverage the software we already have and love,
rather than wasting time designing new application models and distribution
channels which nobody asked for in the first place.

There's been a hole in my heart since the day the Nokia n900 was discontinued.
I've got my fingers crossed on this one.

------
comboy
I imagine they cannot afford to do their own radio chip. And that's already
enough to track you.

Android does not seem to be the problem.

When going with custom OS if this phone gets any traction then I'm pretty sure
some helpful OS contributor from three-letter-agency will add something from
his heart, because by running it you are already signaling that you are an
interesting target.

------
andrefreitas
Seems a good phone for those that use Smartphones and have concerns about
privacy issues.

In term of applications, is a phone focused in a particular ecosystem: Matrix
for encrypted communications and HTML5 Apps. Maybe it will suffer from the
same pain as Ubuntu Phone? No native Apps being developed by major Companies?
Maybe is a tradeoff that users can live with.

~~~
rrix2
There's also plans to port KDE's mobile stack (including PIM suite) to the
librem's operating system, providing at least one fairly comprehensive set of
software.

Your bank probably won't ever have an app running on it though, you're right.
I think most mobile apps that people use elsewise have decent enough PWAs that
it won't be such an issue as long as PWAs are well supported at the UI layer.

~~~
petecox
Anbox.io is in its infancy - run Android apps in an LXC container.

------
sexydefinesher
These are great news. We are lucky to have purism bring FOSS and privacy to
the masses in a pretty package.

------
nitin_flanker
Anybody aware of the exact specifications? For camera, screen resolution,
battery?

I love the concept but being an average smartphone user I'm sure many people,
like me, would like to know more about the basic things that we use everyday
(camera for example).

~~~
onion2k
There aren't any specs. This project is to design and build a privacy-oriented
phone; it's not at the point where _anything_ is settled on yet (afaik).

------
paxy
Looking through their website I'm curious why what they're aiming for can't be
accomplished with the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) or a fork of it,
rather than trying to build yet another smartphone ecosystem from scratch?

~~~
subway
AOSP still relies on a bunch of hacked together BSPs with nasty binary blobs
and never-ever-gonna-get-mainlined device specific kernel patches.

~~~
scintill76
They could release open-source and mainlined versions of that stuff then. I
guess they wouldn't because they probably consider Android incompatible with
their other goals.

~~~
subway
The work they're doing is effectively that. There's nothing stopping Android
from running on top of the kernel work they're doing. Think of their work as
developing an open source BSP.

It looks like much of the UI work is being punted to whatever phone ui the KDE
and Gnome projects churn out.

An Android userland will likely ship in parallel or shortly after. The bits
AOSP handles are by and large boring and don't need to be futzed with.

------
earlybike
I'd love to have a BlackBerry-style phone with a keyboard and all main
features are shell-based and implemented in a POSIX-like manner (with an
optional GUI on top). But I think this will never happen.

------
fghtr
Why hasn't neo900 [0] been successful so far in comparison with the Lbrem 5?
Are there any drawbacks in the former?

[0] [https://neo900.org](https://neo900.org)

~~~
pedroaraujo
To be honest, the communication of the neo900 project is not that good. They
only made two updates during the entire year of 2017 and even those don't say
much about what exactly they have been doing all this time.

I'm not implying that they have been fooling around with the money but it
gives me the impression that they are not good at planning things and
communicating with people.

------
1001101
> Separate mobile baseband Ok, how do we know the hardware/software there
> pushes the goals of security and privacy? I2S hooked up? (that would scare
> me on a design with the stated goals, but it makes it really nice for
> getting good acoustics with your mechanicals) Simply pushing app processor
> encrypted data over the bearer?

> i.MX Love the i.MX 6/8 APs, but I would recommend prototyping/de-risking the
> power budget up front.

100% open source warms my heart. Would love to see if this could be built.

------
JepZ
Is there any special reason why they choose Matrix instead of XMPP?

~~~
subway
It feels like over the past few years most of the XMPP crowd has shifted to
Matrix.

XMPP failed to get BOSH out the door quickly enough to maintain traction.

------
s73ver_
Good luck to them, but getting the funding is only a third of the battle. Now
it remains to see if they can build something that a substantial amount of
people will want to use.

~~~
kawera
It will probably be a niche product but, regardless, I'm super happy we have
an alternative to the current duopoly.

~~~
s73ver_
Well, we don't yet. But I do wish them the best of luck in creating one.

------
legulere
How to fund a good user interface and ecosystem when even Microsoft failed at
that (see other article also on the top today)

~~~
mattnewport
Windows Phone had a good use interface, many people (including me) prefer it
to the horror that is Android UI. Lack of an app ecosystem was probably
Windows Phone's biggest problem. I think a possible solution to that for
Purism (I was an early backer of this campaign) is to focus on web apps. I
know I'm not alone in being thoroughly sick of everything about apps and app
stores.

~~~
bitmapbrother
>Windows Phone had a good use interface, many people (including me) prefer it
to the horror that is Android UI

You were definitely in the minority. The one common link between Windows 8,
8.1 and Windows Phone was that hideous and universally rejected tile interface
abomination. It was so vile and user hostile that Microsoft had to eventually
hide it behind a button in Windows 10.

~~~
megaman22
The tiles worked just fine on an actual touch device - it's not really any
different than what any of the Android mobile devices I have features.

It was hot garbage for a desktop/laptop OS, and even more insane for the
server OS.

------
s0me0ne
I wonder why none of the feature phone OSes have been open sourced? Is it
because they only work on the one device they were installed on? Cricket and
all the other feature phones before smartphones had tons of Operating Systems,
maybe that would give people a head start?

------
pacala
Somewhat related, does anyone know of a solution to run
[https://signal.org](https://signal.org) and nothing else? 5 out of 7 days I
don't really need a smart phone, I only need the signal app.

Working to break my smart phone addiction.

~~~
skymt
If you're just looking for something to help with self-control, start by
setting up parental controls on your phone. Having to tap in a lengthy
passphrase to access apps not on your approved list breaks the instant
feedback that feeds phone addiction.

------
bitmapbrother
Is the cell radio firmware also going to be open source? And if not why are
they making claims of user privacy when they cannot guarantee the capabilities
of some binary blob they have no control over?

~~~
rrix2
By decoupling the baseband from the CPU so that it can't directly access the
OS's memory+busses and securing communication on the wire (defaulting to
secure messaging over Matrix, and using SSL everywhere) so that it can't be
sniffed in transit by the modem.

I'm guessing that what this ends up looking like is a USB modem talking to the
OS with pppd or a similar model that also enables voice calls over LTE

------
hasteur
Great... yet annother Open OS phone/computer. Not like that's been done before
to "great acclaim". Anybody remember Jolla, the SailfishOS, and the Jolla
Tablet?

------
gabryys
> A fully standards-based freedom-oriented system, based on Debian and many
> other upstream projects, has never been done before–we will be the first to
> seriously attempt this

What about OpenMoko?

------
cordite
I hope it works better than the blackphone. I could barely use it for a year
before the basic functionalities like battery life were impractacle.

------
Tepix
Great news!

I‘m wondering in what parts the Librem 5 will be more open than a Nexus
running CopperheadOS.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "I‘m wondering in what parts the Librem 5 will be more open than a Nexus
> running CopperheadOS."

The device drivers for one. I'm not aware of any Nexus device with open-source
device drivers.

------
noxecanexx
Does anyone know what they mean by support now and pay later

~~~
r3bl
It means you select the amount of money and they deduct it from your account
once the crowdfunding is done.

Before they've reached their goal, it was an "all-or-nothing" campaign, so the
backers wouldn't lose any money if the goal was not reached.

------
hathym
Would be much much easier if they built the OS for current hardware.. I don't
understand why they need to build their own

~~~
Brakenshire
A phone that runs on the mainline kernel is the key part of this project, the
software is secondary.

------
maerF0x0
Will it have a GPS?

~~~
sipos
The page says yes, it is included in the list of sensors.

Whether they can deliver what they promise (I imagine GPS will not be the
stumbling block here) is not certain of course, so I can't say "Yes - it will
have GPS" with certainty.

------
lurker12390879
To the moon!

------
kakarot
> CPU separate from Baseband

 _How_ separate?

------
rallycarre
Doesn't matter. They'll be a gov't backdoor in either the hardware or the
software so you might as well get an android phone and load copperhead os on
it as it will have the same result.

~~~
ZenoArrow
The Librem laptops come with hardware killswitches. The aim is to do the same
with the Librem 5. Kind of hard for governments to spy on you using a
microphone, camera, etc... without electricity.

~~~
dingo_bat
Kinda hard to use the phone too, without electricity.

~~~
ZenoArrow
With the proposed design for the Librem 5, you can turn off the individual
features of the phone without turning off the phone. So for example, you can
turn off the camera (with a hardware switch, which is not something that can
be overridden remotely) whilst still being able to browse the web. As far as I
know there are no other modern phones with that feature.

------
sipos
It is annoying that they cannot be more committed to open hardware. (I'm not
saying they should be).

I appreciate that they probably can't commit to it at this stage, but the fact
that their laptops are not does not inspire confidence that the noises they
make about trying will come to fruition.

