
Librem 5 Is Calling - yepthatsreality
https://puri.sm/posts/your-librem-5-is-calling/
======
freedomben
I really do hope the Librem 5 is a success, and I'm extremely grateful to
Purism for moving forward with this. I will absolutely make Librem my primary
phone provided it has a reasonable price tag for good hardware specs and is
usable.

That said, a little while ago I looked into developing some apps for the
Librem, and I don't think they intend to either now or in the future provide
any sort of a paid app store. This is a massive problem IMHO. I write lots of
open source and will continue to do so, but without a means of funding it will
never take off like the other major platforms. I would love to see free-as-in-
speech app store that also allows payment. As has been repeated ad nauseum,
free-as-in-speech doesn't have to also mean free-as-in-beer.

That said also, I don't actually think Purism needs to do this themselves. In
fact it may be a lot better if they _don 't_ and we had an independent org
running the "app store." It would obviously require some collaboration with
Purism tho, so I hope I'm wrong about their apathy toward the idea.

In related news I have the PinePhone Braveheart edition and am super pleased
with it. Hopefully between the different companies going for it, we'll have
some fully open alternatives to Android/iOS soon!

~~~
exolymph
> I would love to see free-as-in-speech app store that also allows payment.

The problem here is payment processors, and the problem with payment
processors is pressure from banks, and the pressure on banks comes from
regulators. So it's not really a problem that Purism / Librem can solve.

~~~
haydn3
Um, bitcoin, anyone?

~~~
exolymph
The problem with BTC is that demand to spend it on normal commerce is close to
nil. Most people don't have it, and the ones who do are HODLing.

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tracnar
This is what I hoped the Ubuntu Phone would be: a full-featured Linux
distribution running on a phone! It also suffers from not capturing the
Android app ecosystem, but at least it might drive Gnome to get
responsive/phone-ready apps. Plus using the same base could enable some nice
computer-phone integration.

~~~
zerocrates
I'd rather Gnome focus on _computer_ -ready apps a little more rather than
chasing a phone future that will likely never come to pass.

I don't mind Gnome 3 but it has taken, in my opinion, too many steps toward
mobile already.

~~~
tracnar
While I would tend to agree, it's now already pretty much phone/touch ready,
so it might as well make use of it. I feel like Gnome's UI is finally getting
some consistency after having a lot of random changes from version to version
in the past years.

I don't really use many of the Gnome apps as I'm mainly in the browser or
terminal, but various things like the video player, image viewer, document
viewer, recorder, webcam app, process monitor, all seem to have converged to
being very narrow focused and simplified. I usually like the simplicity, and
if I need more I turn to specialized software.

~~~
zerocrates
Actually I'd agree that changes have mostly been positive in the last several
versions.

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winslow
Awesome progress by the purism team!

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stamps
Maybe the majority of people who pre-ordered these brick sized devices will
finally start to received them after they've been "shipping" for 9 months
after already being more than a year late.

Thankfully there's more competent companies like Pine64 pushing alternative
devices.

~~~
fsflover
You do not seem to acknowledge the huge task they untertook. The internal
Dogwood batch has already come to Purism [0], so the progress is made all the
time.

[0]
[https://social.librem.one/@purism/103968824971000879](https://social.librem.one/@purism/103968824971000879)

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teddyh
I keep waiting for news about their RYF certification.

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dogma1138
So it’s capable of doing the bare minimum required for a device to be called a
phone?

~~~
brnt
On the one hand, I thought the same. On the other, this is area is a minefield
of proprietary non standards and walled off chips and protocols. Embedded is
bad, communication even worse. Having an open source phonecall is a real
achievement and a testament to the endurance of the people working on it.

Its impressive and not at all, at the same time.

