@ruff non-soldered pads: I think your proving my point: They use the same board for different versions or potential future enhancements. But that means that the board layout already has to account for those potential enhancements.
@kjadkajdk: I think you have some of your technical assumptions wrong. As @ruff pointed out, the baseband chip is only a baseband chip. Else, it would be a integrated multi-function chip with builtin baseband support. The whole point of using a separate chip is for it to not have access to anything. And if you don’t take my word for it, take the word of Todd Weaver.
Also, I’m not sure if you imply you can be located via the GPS chip. You can’t. GPS is a passive technology. And the baseband chip will not have access to it, so it can’t send your GPS position (which also would be of limited use, as your phone provider can calculate your position based on the towers around you if turned on)
So, the only way you can be located with the baseband disabed would be via WiFi (unless you know for a fact that the WiFi Hotspot does not track you by your MAC address), and mybe BT in a similar fashion.
Now, Todd Weaver has always thought of the Librem 5 as a phone that can be used without baseband - calling it a no-carrier-phone, dreaming of a future where “phone provider” is no longer a thing, doing calls via Matrix or thelike. But still, they didn’t plan a stripped down version yet. Why?
- Because it’s not really simpler. To get synergy effects, both should use the same board and the variant just doesn’t have the chip soldered. But the chip is probably $5 at the most, therefore the variant costs more if you only produce few units. It only gets cheaper (by those $5) if you come up with several hundred new (like in not-yet-backers) customers. I don’t see that potential.
Variants take a lot of extra effort and customers. That’s why all the laptops only have two keyboard layouts yet. Offering more variants is complicated, because for each variant they have to estimate the market potential and order a significant amount of that variant (MOQ).
If the boards were different OTOH, Purism would have to pay for two different, custom-tailored boards, two times for tooling / Entry-Fee. Todd talked about it here. - Because it’s not sooner. They don’t have a manufacturer yet, the hardware design is far from being final and they just begun to port the PureOS packages. As the dev board is planned to be shipped in June, the specs + layout will surely not be final before summer. If they would have all that by July, you might get results in September, but that seems rather optimistic. Purism experienced that with the small quantities they order, production is often delayed a lot because other orders are more important to the manufacturer.
But if it works out as Todd thinks, you might see baseband-less version down the timeline - if marketshare grows and a significant amount of users actually begins to communicate without baseband.
The exact details of isolation will tell me if Librem5 without baseband is same as Librem5 with baseband turned off. Its a topic to be revisited after the release and its not as obvious as you point out to be.
To me, it’s 100% clear after what Todd has said. Otherwise it would not make any sense to have a separate chip for that.
Now, about stretch goals: Deblobbing is not mainly about how much money you get. It takes time! It’s about idealism. You have quoted Nicole, so do you doubt what she said? Even if they had a 100 million dollar budget, it would be unrealistic to have free firmware for the baseband by next January - which, again, is the reason why Purism will treat that chip like a leper. 