Birch batch shipping size is ~100

Hardware Librem 5
52

Interesting discussion but ultimately fruitless. Why?

Because as far as I know, Todd owns 100% of the shares of Purism. Without Todd there is no Purism. It is impossible to fire him or to kick him out. I wish it were possible, but short of Todd himself deciding to step back, it ain’t gonna happen.

This is all academic anyway. If Birch phones don’t ship within the next 36 hours or if they do ship and end up being absolutely terrible, Purism is going to start experiencing real problems. The mainstream tech media (e.g. Arstechnica) has started to pick up the scent of a real floater here. Sooner or later the bad publicity is going to explode and short of real progress Purism won’t be able to stop it.

Once that happens pre-order revenue will bottom out and a few weeks or months later, that will be the end.

53

In the ex-CTO’s opinion, rather. You have yet to present an original idea here, everything you’ve said came straight from his responses in that interview.

2 Likes
54

That’s fair, however that’s also credible though. Like nothing i said was original. But it didn’t have to be.

1 Like
55

What the hell, do you think this is the right place to utter your odd political views?

7 Likes
56

A commie? Come on. This has taken it to ridiculous levels. The vitriol directed at the OP is also getting tedious but this equating of opinion to ideology is too much. Back off.

2 Likes
57

Wait, didn’t you leave?

EDIT: yes, you apparently did.


How come you’re still around slinging vitriol?

2 Likes
58

Hmm, while this certainly is in the range of possibilities, I find this rather unlikely.

(not the additional shipping delay)

For starters I don’t think there are that many pre-orders anyway beside the initial crowd fund campaign. Else I would have expected a much much bigger outcry from the Q3-lie.
And second, I can’t believe they were that delusional to risk their whole running and functional business on this extremely challenging borderline-insane endeavor. I rather believe they fully knew their initial deadline was ludicrous and I can imagine that evergreen release will be even much farther in the future. But I don’t think he played it this stupid to have no buffer to protect his whole business.
So unless they managed to move the “Librem 5” into it’s own company entity that they can bankrupt without affecting the main company, I guess their main business will, if necessary, slowly feed this project until all backers have at least “something”.

Only thing I could imagine would be, that they stop the option for initial backers to get their money back, in case too many request a refund. But the only strange thing here would be that they even had this option in the first place. As normally being a backer means “no refunds”.

59

Hmm, just checked and read the most recent article on arstechnica. I can not see what you mean, from merely reading it. But I found two interesting points in there.

  1. He calls them prototypes himself.

  2. Seems like every batch until evergreen hast to be small by law. Anyone who knows how small? I fear this means the vast majority will have to wait for evergreen.

  1. 5000 seems to support my feeling that there were not many pre-orders. I think the initial campaign went up to something about 4000

  2. I can not bring myself to believe he did lie to the press, about them receiving the Birch batch. This would be suicide. So maybe it is usable after all and we will soon see some actual reviews.

60

He’s been lying prolifically for quite awhile. Purism’s story about Aspen being shipped to backers off the production line was posted on a number of tech news sites, Arstechnica included. We know now that this was a complete and utter lie. That 5,000 phone number? It was 50,000 less than two months ago. Todd specifically made the claim in a YouTube video with the Linux Gamer in which he went to his house in Maine and allowed him to toy with his two Librem 5s.

EDIT: Of course some guy who got a pre-shipment email a few weeks back is now posting on reddit in /r/purism that he got a shipment confirmation email and that he’ll have the phone tomorrow. Guess we’ll finally see just how usable the phone is now, won’t we?

62

That’s big talk for someone who made multiple assurances to everyone here that he would leave as soon as he got a refund. Why are you so obsessed with Purism that you post here, on Reddit, and on your personal blog non-stop? Do you really have nothing better to do? Do you not have a job that takes up at least part of your day? You’ve violated the rules here multiple times and I’m honestly surprised you’re not banned yet.

3 Likes
63

But wouldn’t you agree, that telling journalists, they will get a device soon and not following through, would be on a completely new level and outright suicide?

I mean, every project has angry customers one way or the other. But pissing of journalists directly? Instadeath!

64

That omits where he said something along the lines about responding when being tagged. While a reply/quote isn’t a direct tag it is someone talking to/about him so I see no reason he shouldn’t show up when that happens.

As such if you don’t want him here don’t talk about/respond to/quote him; he’ll go away faster that way (not that I care one way or the other just pointing out how that works).

This I don’t completely agree with, and there are others who have “violated” the guidelines in more severe ways that are still here as Purism, so far, appears to take the view that free speech should be allowed and instead of silencing an individual they lock a topic to give people time to cool down and either move on or come back with clearer heads.

From what I’ve seen the majority of people’s issue with Jay is the way he communicates rather than the what.

Generally my view is if the way someone communicates bothers you, either have that conversation one on one to find a common ground or don’t engage. This is not a directive, just a sharing of my personal viewpoint.

1 Like
65

I love how I’m called out for lying about quitting this forum, which is fair. Yet all of you repeatedly refuse to call out Purism on easily provable lies.

If Purism wants me gone, ban me already.

1 Like
67

That’s all well and good until he goes back on his word there too:

I’d argue he’s done more than s3ns0r did. My issue is not with valid criticism of Purism. I was very vocal about the cop-out of shipping in batches being a third missed shipping deadline. My issue is with people spreading FUD with false information.

68

Credit where credit is due. @Dwaff desisted like 6 hours ago :slight_smile:

The guard who works at the building next to me is a New Canadian and is pretty communist. I get where he’s coming from. Yeah, if @mstdnuser wasn’t aware, that’s the perspective that was being presented by their writings. That being said, I have a friend I’ve known for years who outright proudly identifies as a communist (because her son turned 18 and all of a sudden all autism support was ripped away and she sees a better way). As a low income earner myself (40 + hours a week for below poverty wages), I see the fairness appeal…not gonna lie; Capitalism works against me. Anyhow, not so sure “communist” was meant as a bad thing here. Though in a capitalist company forums, the venue we’re in, I do see the issue.

1 Like
69

Well, they are pros, they know PR stunts in and out, expectations were limited, so from their point of view, this was not that much of a surprise or especially newsworthy. But now they are told, they will get something. This is getting personal. If this really were a lie as well… but I repeat myself.

70

Uhm… ok… I might be wrong, but I think the term “commie” alone is already degrading.

1 Like
71

I think that’s only a USA thing. I could be wrong, but I don’t think @Dwaff meant it as an insult, maybe a caution, but not like a dismissive insult. Anyhow, I’m not psychic and I’m only speculating, but that’s my take on what I saw.

72

Read the post @Dwaff made. Context clues will tell you that he clearly meant it as a slander.

1 Like
73

It is hard enough convincing ordinary users (think family and friends) to use free and open source software when Microsoft, Apple and Google have ingratiated themselves into all aspects of our private life and business affairs. In their business model, we are their product and they give us very powerful, reliable and useful tools (iPhone, Facebook, Google services) in exchange for spying on our every word, action and thought to sell on to the advertising sector and others. Their products are addictive, hence the alternatives that respect freedom need to be compelling and just as easy to use.

The problem is that it’s hard to develop and maintain FOSS alternatives in this precarious world that will be adopted by users who neither understand computers or the freedoms they loose.

Ordinary users who might be interested in the freedoms and privacy the Librem 5 that is meant to help protect would be put off by a) the delays and b) FUD around the project. These problems are not due to external malicious forces, but Purism itself poorly communicating problems at best or mismanaging the project at worse.

Much of the insults flying around here are off putting to ordinary people and unhelpful for the cause of protecting users freedom and privacy. However, it is bound to happen with such an important product that is not having an easy birth.

Our brothers and sisters who are ensnared by their iPhone and Google spybricks will look at us as fools due to the delays, problems and childish behaviour of some. Purism’s conduct may hurt their own reputation, but it also bleeds into the free-software / open-hardware movements too. Normal users will laugh at us waiting for our GNU/Linux FOSS open hardware phone … in 2020, 2021, 2022… that overheats. :wink:

It could and should have been so much better than this situation.

In the end we loose both our freedoms and dignity.

We collectively need to ask Purism for clarity on what is happening. They have lost a lot of goodwill over the past few months. If they had said up front (say in June) that the phone won’t be ready until Q2 2020….most of us would be cool with that. Saving many pages of heated debate here and elsewhere.

Lets hope it works out well, but hope does not fix problems.

2 Likes