Legally we are just customers who preordered a product. We can get our money back if we want it, but we don’t have a legal right to more information. Convention, however, holds that crowdfunding campaigns should release regular updates to convince customers to not withdraw their pre-orders.
We feel like investors because we are helping to finance the development of the Librem 5. Purism has issued private stocks and reportedly did take out a loan, but its primary means of financing the development of new products has been crowdfunding and it charges higher prices for its products, so the customers who preorder are investing in the development of a new product, but we don’t have the rights of investors who buy stocks or bonds or banks who give loans.
If thousands of us decide to demand our money back, however, we could cause the bankruptcy of Purism, so we do have more power over Purism than over an ordinary tech company. Due to its SPC charter and its mission of promoting user digital rights, Purism will have a hard time trying to get financing by venture capital or by issuing public stock. Plus, the public pressure to make a profit for stock holders or venture capitalists can also undermine Purism’s mission.
People who watched Gardiner’s videos on the Librem 5 say that Bluetooth and the cameras don’t yet work. I would assume that Purism thinks that the Bluetooth and camera problems will be solved shortly. See the latest video.
As a computer programmer who has worked on product releases in the past, I know that unexpected problems often arise, especially when dealing with new hardware, and it often takes far longer than expected to fix them. Purism only has roughly 20 developers and it is trying to also prepare the Librem One services and PureOS store, plus the next generation of Librem 13/15, so its staff is likely overwhelmed at this point.
As customers eagerly awaiting the Librem 5, we are chomping at the bit, and demanding to know what is happening, but making these demands won’t help Purism get the Librem 5 out the door any faster, and only distract the Purism staff who should be focused on solving the issues.
As a programmer who has worked on both microcontroller code and web software, I can tell you that it is often impossible to tell someone how long it will take to solve a problem. You think it will take 2 days, but it might end up taking two weeks or even two months. You often go through a very frustrating series of trial and error, and you just have to try lots of different hardware settings until you figure out what works. Purism probably doesn’t have a developer who is an expert at Bluetooth and cameras, and it is probably going back and forth with engineers at Redpine Signals, NXP and the company that makes the image sensors, trying to figure out how to solve the problems it has encountered.
I have looked at the progress Purism has been making in terms of the Qemu images for the Librem 5 and the commits that Purism has made to the Linux kernel and at https://source.puri.sm/Librem5, so I’m not worried, because I can see that Purism is making solid advances in the code. I have seen crowdfunding projects fail before, but all the evidence that I can see shows me that this project is succeeding and we just need to be patient to let the Purism developers do their jobs.
You can get a good idea about what is being worked on by counting the number of commits on the different projects at https://source.puri.sm/Librem5. Also read my post about why Purism has to be more careful about what it says publicly about the Librem 5, compared to what PINE64 can say publicly about its PinePhone.