I thought you guys might enjoy reading my blog post about paying the high price for ethical hardware:
I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter.
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I crowdfunded purism, but I also find the price considerably high for people like us of the neocolonised world. But I hope that some ports of purism librem5 could be done to be flashed into not so expensive hardware. That would not be perfect, but would be a good side effect of librem 5 development. Let’s hope in the future purism and other ethical hardware builders get to sell a lot and gain production scale to serve low budget consumers.
Nice article.
As a general rule of thumb I prefer to purchase 2nd hand equipment of quality with the prime intention of lowering my carbon footprint. I do this my my car, my phone (lg g4), my computers …
I inherited a macbook pro 15 late 2008 edition from my sister about 5 years back, she had got herself a macbook air. I refurbished it, swapped the dvd drive for an ssd and augmented the ram to its maximum capacity of 8Gb. I sold it this year when I purchased my Librem 15v3. The macbook is still going strong and I can see my architect friend who purchased it working with it for another 5 years.
Unfortunately Apple decided to thread the path of obsolescence for its macbook pros which was a shame.
Fortunately Purism happened to be, and this is the first time in over 15 years that I purchased a new laptop, because
- with care and hardware upgrades I hope to use it for the next 10 years (time will tell) and therefore its yearly cost is much more affordable than budget systems.
- had Purism existed for years and flooded the market I would have looked out for a 2nd hand machine, but given that their effort need to be encouraged, my investment was important for me as a means to support their work.
As for phones, I am not sure I would purchase a librem5. I would consider buying a Fairphone if I knew I could keep it working over 5 years with some upgrades.
The right solution is probably legislation which would forbid e.g. Intel from doing such things in the first place. I.e., it should be a capital offence to knowingly subvert security in such an evil way.
It’s fine if they have enterprise systems where some of these features might have some value, but deploying this on systems that users don’t know about it, is not.
Hey, interesting read. Seems like you put a lot of time into that post.
Hopefully the Librem 5 plugged into a monitor with a keyboard/mouse will lower the amount of money needed to be able to access better security and privacy.
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Well said in your article:
“If we don’t want to be pressured into buying throw-away devices with short lifespans, we will need to support new hardware companies whose business model is not based on mass-market planned obsolescence…”
Hit the Head of The Nail with the Hammer there.
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what is the price of hardware and open source digital freedom ? does it have a price ? what price tag do each of us place on our own digital life ?
should i as an individual care more about the present moment rather than what happens in the long run ? should there be a compromise between what i can achieve with 600 $ today or what 600 $ will get humanity in 2019 ?
i have reccently bought a librem 15v3 and pledged the full price of the future librem 5. i have done so because i believe that HONEST pleople deserve to be encouraged to fight for what they believe in.
i believe that Purism’s social contract and continuous dedication to giving us HONEST devices is testament enough why HONESTY has a much higher cost than LIES.
no one is FORCED and should NOT be forced to pay for software but it is SAD to see that not everyone can AFFORD the cost of such HONEST hardware.
what is the long term cost of living with a dishonest wife ? more than the price of a divorce ? depends on how rich or how poor you are i guess …