Today I’m going to tell you a sad tale of a device called the Librem 5 and the company behind it, Purism. As of right now, this story does not have a happy ending. I am writing this series of articles as a protest against the behavior of Purism, a company which claims that transparency and openness are their core values. If they won’t tell the world the truth about the Librem 5, then I’m willing to at least give it a go.
Everything in these three articles – part two and part three are available as well – reads like the usual kind of stuff that goes down in mismanaged crowdfunding campaigns, especially those for computer hardware. This is why you should always be extremely skeptical of crowdfunding campaigns, and doubly so for ambitious ones.
Worse, though, are the claims that the Librem 5 will, in fact, not be entirely open source as promised. This is a big promise to make, and to the people supporting open source projects such as the Librem 5, this is a massive breach of trust.
It’s sad to read this. On the surface I find librem products very intriguing, though they were always well outside my budget. I also have trouble trusting the crowd funding model where one pays to backorder products that don’t even exist yet, many people loose money this way.
I would like for these guys to succeed, but it’s certainly an uphill battle for them. If the tables were flipped, I don’t believe that I would do any better. It takes a lot of money to get something like this off the ground and investors aren’t knocking at the door to fund fully open products. Investors want to see user lock in and potential to sell the technology to proprietary companies with deep pockets. It is in this way that money corrupts.
I completely lost faith in all these projects of open hardware devices managed by amateurs/entusiasts or small companies. They almost never reach a good end: Neo900, Pyra handheld; or have delays of years: Open Pandora.
What has caused you to lose faith in the Pyra? From what I’ve seen, it looks like a model example of transparency and not over-promising.
Since there isn’t any up or down voting any more I think its important that this comment is corrected. *ssokolow* is entirely correct: The Pyra project is a model of transparency and managing expectations. Hardly anyone who backed it has lost faith in it, it is very much in production, and Michael, the project lead, sweats bullets to keep everyone up to date with the smallest details. Please see the following forum for fascinating monthly updates which provide the rest of us working on underfunded hardware with a lot of motivation : https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/forums/pyra-news.250/
I mean for God’s sake he’s just released a video specifically about how strong the logo plate is and which company is going to paint the cases.
I’m somewhat surprised that close to 10,000 people believed an OSS phone with no FCC testing would be useful. No carrier is going to let such an uncontrolled device on to their network.
I’d assume it’s more like 10,000 people that believe the OSS phone would eventually (e.g. before it ships) be tested and approved by FCC. The fact that it hasn’t obtained FCC approval yet just implies that it won’t be released yet (and the promised release date will be pushed back again).
I would like a completely free software cell phone. Right now I think the options that even are in the vicinity are using an old phone with Replicant, MAKERphone, and Librem 5. So I hope that Purism succeeds with the Librem 5 since it basically is the only project that is trying to make a free software smart phone on current hardware.
No FCC certification? Source?
The article. If you don’t trust that, try finding Purism on the fcc site.
https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/reports/GenericSearch.cfm
It’s not in the article itself but here –> https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-shipping-announcement/
I see the initial batches are just FCC certified for the radios.
Its not on the FCC site. I’m a bit skeptical of their claims at this point. FCC certification is public information, it has to be listed on the FCC site.
MJ,
I realize that the author indicates that they’re failing on their budget and timelines, which bad. However the entirety of the article is 3rd party hearsay, which has to be taken with a grain of salt even if it sounds plausible. The author is an outsider, like us, and does not necessarily know the truth. How do we know there are no plans for FCC certification when the devices are ready?
Although it’s fair to have doubts about the project’s viability and as indicated earlier I don’t have that much faith in crowd-funded projects, I’m actually with jrincayc in at least hoping that it is able to succeed because open hardware is something that I believe in too.
I posted a link from Purism themselves stating the first couple of batches only have FCC certification for the radios which makes no sense. It’s beyond the failure of timelines as Purism announced a shipment of phones but it didn’t actually happen.
Here is interview from a non-outsider. An original employee and ex-CTO good enough? https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zlatan-Todoric-Interview
MJ,
Yes, he’s got more credibility in my eyes. I’m not optimistic, but I still hope for the best.
I sympathize with his struggles and I’ve faced many of them as well. It can really drag your soul down when you have grandiose ideas but lack the funding & resources to make it happen. You can have a big voice in a small company that doesn’t have the resources to accomplish the mission or you can go be a cog in a huge company that has more money than they’d ever need but no soul, haha. It really does bother me that such a small number of huge corporations at the top keep taking such a disproportionately large share of the pie leaving the rest to struggle economically, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that this is capitalism. Those at the top get to have everything while those at the bottom face a constant uphill struggle. … I got a bit sidetracked here, haha. It’s hard to beat the odds.
“How do we know there are no plans for FCC certification when the devices are ready?”
You are correct. It is entirely possible for FCC certification to be in the works but only ready in time as the units are shipped. They may be dotting i’s and crossing t’s right now.
It should not be a surprise to anyone that’s been paying attention that the modem divers won’t be open source. Not for Android, not for Ubuntu touch, not for anything. The Linux people have been complaining about this for years, but that’s all they can do.
As for the other stuff in this article, we see the same Linux fanboy/religion illogical thinking. They don’t want to believe they’ve been had by unrealistic promises and expectations, much in the same way they want to keep believing in the year of desktop Linux while not making any significant changes to their product.
My mine gripe; however, is they’re starting this at a $699 price point. They absolutely need to start in the low end ($200-300) segment first to get market traction. At this price we’ll see 1 Librem 5 phone, and then it will disappear into history like Ubuntu phone.
Yep. The Raptor CS Power stuff is the closest thing we have to true FOSS hardware on the market, and that gets compromised when things to make it useful are added, like video cards. Forget about a FOSS cellphone. Those things are rotten to the core, and Purism doesn’t have the juice to do anything except go with what they’re given.
A few people have been complaining about it for years. Most people dismiss them as cranks, and don’t worry about the proprietary drivers/firmware.
Their audience is probably a little more excitable them most, and they’re probably also mad the Pine64 crew got there first.
There are factions which are more reasonable then others. Like the Gentoo crowd is very pleasant.
What kind of changes could they make without compromising the core product?
$699 is a decent price point for such a niche piece of hardware. If it lasts 5 years, that’s $140 per year.
I’d rather have something like a US certified Fairphone which I could replace the parts more then Librem.
I don’t really have much problem with the price if it was a full open source phone. I do question your five years point. A phone that is so under spec’d from the start is supposed to last 5 years? Did “dumb” phones even last that long? Even if this phone is released it will probably be a one shot if a significant number of owners don’t upgrade for 3-5 years.
5 years is the minimum amount of time I expect my cellphones to last, and they generally do minus some external sources. If you have other expectations, that’s fine. That’s my criteria for evaluating a phone.
It is possible to keep things running that long. There’s a 2nd Gen Motorola G3 (2014) at my house that’s still kicking. Granted it doesn’t do anything besides phone calls, emails, and text messages. My Dad had the same feature phone for years until AT&T stopped supporting it.
The longevity of a device has more to do with crappy software, especially third-party software, then the device itself. My iPhone Xr lasts days with just the builtin software, but as soon as I start adding software the battery drops to about a day and a half until 40%.
Yea. Software optimization, and vertical integration. Neither of which Purism has the ability to pull off, which is the problem with all of this.
I’m not the demographic they’re going after. I’m happy with buying iPhones. Apple supports them for a long time, the software works well, I know cellphones are just tracking devices which should be left at home when you want to get off the grid, and I don’t buy into anything that’s not shipping today.
I would like something more repairable that’s not running Android, but that’s probably not the Librem.
In summary, I don’t care about the Librem at all. I’m not going to buy one.
I have an old Nokia feature phone, probably is a Nokia 6310i. Which occasionally is used still runs and has better battery life than any smartphone. Not sure what year it was bought, but they were manufactured between 2002 and 2005.
Lennie
I had the same phone (IIRC)! I had a motorola before that. Those phones lasted a lot longer, and the batteries were replaceable. It was still working strong after 6 years, but I was forced to replace it after switching carriers, which was a notorious problem with phones of that era.
Since then my smartphones have been much less robust, I buy them with the intention of keeping them 5 years, but in my experience they seem to be dieing around 3 years, grr. I don’t know if it’s just bad luck, or if that’s the new expected lifetime for modern phones. I have a suspicion that manufacturers are getting better at increasing profits through shorter life cycles.
In other news… The PinePhone has been shipped to devs so they can bootstrap an OS and work out any kinks. https://www.pine64.org/2019/09/05/september-update-the-pinephone-is-real-shipping-soon/
It’s been speculated the PinePhone shipping to dev is responsible for pushing Purism to prematurely release the Librem 5.
Umm….Guys?
Go to WalMart, Visit the money center and watch the infomercials about scams and how not to fall for them………..
I can understand the complaints here, but no business is perfect. Also, knowing that there are a few hardware revisions in the pipeline, it should come as no surprise – for anyone who has actually designed hardware, particularly mobile hardware – that the phone has no FCC certification, let alone CTIA, PTCRB, CE, etc, etc. – yet. That is really the whole point of hardware revisions during development: to get the hardware, power performance, and wireless performance right / optimum while also getting the FCC, CTIA, PTCRB, CE, etc.
Yes, you could say “Well, consumers will be using a phone without the required certifications”. The CEO explains that any consumers ordering the phone can expect to get the Evergreen batch, which is the first production batch. Besides, for enterprise applications, these certifications will be required.
As for the original backers, you do have a point there, but I could see Purism, maybe, providing a return policy on early phones in exchange for those from later batches.
I’m amazed what kind of epectations people have about such devices.
It’s obvious to me it would never be easy to do such a project.
Lennie,
Agreed. It’s not easy to do, and even if you were to somehow succeed, having easily updatable and repairable phones puts you at a financial disadvantage in a capitalistic economy that pushes more profitable companies higher and less profitable companies lower. Wall street doesn’t have a social conscience and without regulation the free market incentives can end up pointing in the wrong direction.
“dark2
It should not be a surprise to anyone that’s been paying attention that the modem divers won’t be open source. Not for Android, not for Ubuntu touch, not for anything. The Linux people have been complaining about this for years, but that’s all they can do.
As for the other stuff in this article, we see the same Linux fanboy/religion illogical thinking. They don’t want to believe they’ve been had by unrealistic promises and expectations, much in the same way they want to keep believing in the year of desktop Linux while not making any significant changes to their product.
My mine gripe; however, is they’re starting this at a $699 price point. They absolutely need to start in the low end ($200-300) segment first to get market traction. At this price we’ll see 1 Librem 5 phone, and then it will disappear into history like Ubuntu phone.”
And what alternate reality are you from where a $200-300 U.S price tag for what’s basically a $30.00 U.S Tracfone is not even laughable?
Have you actually looked into those $30 tracphones? They’re over 3 year old phones, probably refurbished, and will not be getting any more updates. If I pay $200-300 for a new smartphone model from a current year, I get a 1080p screen, 3000+mAh battery, usb-C, a manufacturer warranty, updates for 2-3 years depending on brand, etc. $699 is flagship price for an under specced phone, Also even though my Galaxy S7 has most of the specs, still $200 via tracphone. The $30 ones are super low end models from 3 years ago that don’t even come close, still have Android 7, etc.