
Librem 5 general development report – October - ProfDreamer
https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-report-21/
======
newnewpdro
The decision to develop the first GNOME phone while also developing a hacker-
friendly privacy-respecting physical device is going to be the death of this
project.

I don't understand why they didn't just focus on the hardware, make it very
hackable for the community to develop the GNOME (or any other) OS for it.

Isolate the baseband from the application processor and all the other privacy-
respecting hardware decisions, land all the changes required for a mainline
kernel to support everything upstream, and release it with AOSP running on it.

Then invest in the community to replace AOSP (and sell more of your hardware
to said community as it grows).

~~~
kop316
I purchased both an OpenPandora ([https://pyra-
handheld.com/boards/](https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/)) and a Novena
([https://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page](https://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page)).

The OpenPandora came out with a fairly good OS to start out with, and they
have continually supported it, so it has still been useful even 7 years after
it was released. If it wasn't for the fact that I can no longer find it, I
have no doubt that I would still be using it. I am a supporter for the
Dragonbox Pyra, and I am hoping it will have the same support.

I cannot say that I regret buying my Novena (as I learned a lot from it), but
I rarely use it. I have to manually update the kernel and bootloader myself,
and it is stuck on Linux 4.4, as the support and community just aren't there
to help. I was able to figure out how to update it to the newest Debian, but
there is no official support for it, so I imagine most folks are still on the
previous version. As it stands, it marginally functions, but if I need to use
a laptop again heavily, I will simply just buy a new laptop.

I relate these two stories because I think the Librem 5 will need to show that
it has a polished software stack day one to gain traction and grow a
community. The Open Pandora was successful in that, and that allowed the
creator to make two iterations of the Open Pandora and create the Pyra.

The Novena did not have that nearly has much, and as a result, I am very
doubtful that there will be a Novena + 1, and frankly after seeing the support
it got, I am hesitant to purchase any other products made by Bunnie.

~~~
newnewpdro
None of the devices you mentioned were polished physical products competitive
with their contemporaries, while also costing significantly more.

What the community needs is a compelling physical piece of hardware with
first-class upstream driver support for everything and relatively modern
specs.

We can iterate on the userspace as a community. But there won't be a growing
community if you don't sell us a compelling open piece of hardware to run it
on. We can't easily iterate on the hardware as a community, this is the part
puri.sm should focus on delivering.

Sell us a modern device that respects our privacy and ability to replace boot
loaders and run mainline kernels. Give use first-class driver support for
everything included from the GPU to the cellular modem and cameras and all the
APIs necessary to speak with them.

It just seems like a total disconnect from the reality of mainline kernel
support for smartphone hardware, to be off in la-la land working on a GNOME
phone OS before delivery. Pavel Machek's talk from 10/22/2017 [1] comes to
mind as representative of the state things are in, in mainline.

I'm far more confident in the GNOME/free software community's ability to write
dialers, messengers, email and photo apps than its ability to quickly bring up
low-level support for such hardware and develop the new kernel APIs where
things like V4L2 fall short.

[1]
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/10/21/181](https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/10/21/181)

~~~
kop316
"None of the devices you mentioned were polished physical products competitive
with their contemporaries, while also costing significantly more."

I would actually argue the Open Pandora was a polished physical product. It
worked incredibly well when it just came out.

"What the community needs is a compelling physical piece of hardware with
first-class upstream driver support for everything and relatively modern
specs."

Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't the Librem 5 folks trying to do just
that? They chose an imx8 because it has really good upstream support, and then
they can add upstream support for the peripherals.

------
gehsty
I really worry about the sustainability of this company? Is it a sustainable
business model? How secure will your phone be if they can't afford to pay
developers or go under? Who do I contact if there is a hardware issue? So many
questions.

Also why do they have 'Buy now' links that take you to their kickstarter page,
where you can 'pre-order' a phone that may or may not ship in Q3 2019? Seems a
little shady. Also price jump of $800 for a compatible 24"monitor and a
keyboard + mouse is insane...

Does anyone think this has any market appeal outside of its kickstarter
audience?

~~~
gue5t
The point of the Librem 5 is not to make the most popular possible phone, it's
to make a _better_ phone than what is currently available.

Markets only matter to capitalists. Real hackers share with each other to make
things happen that markets do not comprehend. Whether this project will be a
success, only time will tell, but it has nothing to do with the market.

~~~
xoa
> _The point of the Librem 5 is not to make the most popular possible phone_

That's a strawman of GP's words. "The most popular" is absurd, but "minimally
viable" is not particularly since security in a major Librem selling point and
security is an active process, not a one-off. In turn sustainability matters,
and for a hardware project that requires significantly more capital then a
pure software project. It's not at all unreasonable to question that or
attacking the company, Librem should have good answers there regardless.

> _Markets only matter to capitalists. Real hackers share with each other to
> make things happen that markets do not comprehend._

What a ridiculous load of bunk. The Librem is not powered by good intentions
and hacker ethos it's powered by silicon manufactured in an expensive
capitalist fabricator, battery which is the same, etc. Ongoing development
will need some capital, as will repairs and replacements and infrastructure.
Nothing like a huge company but it's there, and it's rightfully utilizing the
wider world.

"Real hackers" are _hacking_ , they're doing cool stuff utilizing things for
purposes beyond what was intended, pushing the limits in ways not imagined
perhaps even by the original designers. Sometimes this has no wider effect
beyond a subsect, sometimes it subverts markets, sometimes it creates entire
new markets. It's symbiotic with the wider world not cutoff from it! This can
be true of not just tech but even law. When RMS and co worked out copyleft,
they didn't just rage against the sheer existence of IP and seek to destroy it
all or somehow fruitlessly deny that it existed, they hacked it to their own
ends instead.

~~~
AsyncAwait
> When RMS and co worked out copyleft, they didn't just rage against the sheer
> existence of IP and seek to destroy it all or somehow fruitlessly deny that
> it existed, they hacked it to their own ends instead.

You mean like people who per-ordered the Librem5, because it's a practical
cause they believe in, instead of just raging in the semi-frequent HN threads
how awful Android is?

~~~
xoa
> _You mean like people who per-ordered the Librem5, because it 's a practical
> cause they believe in, instead of just raging in the semi-frequent HN
> threads how awful Android is?_

Can you explain what point you're actually arguing against here, or in sibling
posts you've replied to? That's a good example of using the market to achieve
a good goal, which is just what should happen. That's not an argument that
"markets only matter to capitalists."

~~~
AsyncAwait
A product like the Librem5 is currently not viable to manufacture by any known
OEM in the smartphone market, just as it wasn't viable for a company to
develop a free-software UNIX, so RMS had to come in and start it even if it
wasn't necessarily "market viable" at the time.

People sometimes do things out of passion, precisely because the markets would
not support their ideas, at least initially.

So, it is not known at present whether the Librem5 would prove viable at all,
but Purism are doing it despite this and there are people who pre-ordered are
trying to make it viable, despite there being no guarantee that they'll get
security updates or even a viable product at present.

In essence, this phone is probably non-market viable at present, but there are
people who are per-ordering anyways, in order to eventually make it viable for
the wider market i.e. taking practical steps for a cause they believe in. Such
causes are not a good fit for "markets" in general.

------
nsomaru
The last news I read on this, the Librem 5 was slated to launch in April of
2019. Is this still the case? Is it usual for an ambitious project like this
to be doing this sort of development (i.e. core dev, not polish) within 6
months of release?

I'm really looking forward to this phone and will almost certainly move over
if there is are decent mail, Whatsapp and Signal clients. Despite the cost and
early adopter pains I'm likely to face :)

~~~
9712263
This phone is basically a Gnome Phone, so mail client will be Geary, which is
decent enough. The anbox project is able to port Android apps into GNU/Linux.
Though last time I tried, not very stable and crash very often. Whatsapp could
be installed. Hope at release the project could be more stable and able to
port to Librem 5.

~~~
beatgammit
WhatsApp isn't open source, and they don't have a client for that chip AFAIK,
so getting WhatsApp working would require work from Facebook.

Apps like Signal that are open source will likely be available.

------
shmerl
They should have used Plasma Mobile and Qt. Not Gnome/GTK.

~~~
craftyguy
[https://dot.kde.org/2017/09/14/plasma-mobile-and-purisms-
lib...](https://dot.kde.org/2017/09/14/plasma-mobile-and-purisms-
librem-5-free-smartphone)

~~~
shmerl
Sure, but I'm talking lack of resources concentration because of all these
parallel efforts. Things will move slowly or too slowly.

