While I generally don’t ‘pile on’, you state that you invited yourself.
Enough said.
We can all hold our heads down if you might be right, but continuing to rant here about unconfirmed suspicions is not helpful to anybody and you are done with your prophetic attempts already. Bickering as to whether you are right or wrong wastes my time as well as that of others.
Get a life. You are not welcome here to my judgment and I expect to a good many more. You have had your say. Celebrate, in the event, should you be correct. Otherwise please: Good Bye.
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I think it’s time for @jaylittle to move on and stop looking in the rearview mirror. You tried your hand at journalism on your website. You had some valid concerns but it relied on us to put trust in you. After seeing your tirades across Purism’s forums I no longer have trust in you or if any of your concerns are valid.
I got super excited about the phone when Lunduke started to do the teaser videos, he did a very good job. But as expected with any large project they hit issues and only wanted to announce when they had confirmed the issues.
I lost some of my trust with Purism, but they have improved and are keeping the community more up-to-date. I am now happy with them and trust them to deliver a great product. I am not too sure where the line between transparency and consumers desire for 24-hour news is, but short of having cameras on the team, like in The Circle with Emma Watson, I think they are showing a good level of transparency.
The point of transparency is not perfection but vulnerability. Purism was founded on privacy, so there is always going to be this dichotomy.
Edit: when I say rearview mirror, just turn away from your hate and attacking behaviour. You can still be part of the Purism community, just conduct yourself nicely and constructively.
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The issue with the modem is definitely a mess up on their part. Even now, it’s not showing differentiation in pricing between the 2 modems when you wanna buy the phone. Either take it off the list til price is set or just leave the asterisk next to it with a short explanation underneath. And for those who pre-ordered it earlier this year , there was no mention of potential extra cost , when alternatives become available.
I can see why some folks can see that as misleading. Though, it’s more than obvious it wasn’t malicious.
The way it looked, is that your phone would come with Gemalto by default and anything else available you would pay extra from outside vendors. Later, there was some talk about having Purism offering more options, just unclear what, when and at what extra cost (if any).
If you see just gemalto on the spec sheet you expect that the price was calculated in - has to be by any standard.
Now, for most of the people Broadmobi is way better option (better lte coverage) and I’m happy that I’m getting it without having to run around and spend additional 60-100 $ outside, wondering if it would properly work.
Those who have a Chinese scare and compatible w carriers / willing to compromise on coverage, are justifiably mad. Is it worth the outrage ? Hell no. The price difference shouldn’t be more than 30 - 50 bucks.
Again, Purism messed up on this one. They should own it. And maybe try to make it right & offer something to those who feel strongly about it (still select Gemalto b4 shipping). Idk, maybe free 3/6 month full subscription to their services - mail, VPN, etc.
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Publish more frequently, but let people know earlier, you’ll ship in batches. Knowing that it would ship in batches last second is not transparency. Gamers Nexus has a smart phone manufacturing tour, and shows that it usually usually takes some trial and error even with large companies, infact thats usually the case. Any way I thank you for being open. Thanks for working hard. I know that ya’ll are all in crunch mode right now hopefully things go well after evergreen launch and ya’ll can relax for a second.
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Neither do you. I haven’t read your blog articles, but I did catch your recent interview on one of my subscribed podcasts (I believe it was either Linux Unplugged or Destination Linux). On the podcast, you were pretty reasonable regarding Purism. If that were my only exposure to you, it wouldn’t be a bad one. Unfortunately, I’ve read most of what you post here, and the contrast is… stark. Reflexive contradictions and baseless assumption of bad motives. Day and night, two faces. No joke.
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I’m curious on two points.
- What do we actually know about the origin of the Gemalto modem?
Sure the BGA package is embossed with “Made in Germany” but is that where the chip is actually fabbed?
- How much does a Chinese modem really matter when the phone itself is assembled in China?
In an ideal world yes maybe China would have no involvement in any part of the process, and the phone would be completely desinofied. We live in a far from ideal world, with intricate supply chains involving many countries.
This general question is addressed fairly comprehensively in a post from some time ago: Ambivalence of Librem 5 being made in China
Even if the phone is completely desinofied, you are probably going to connect it at some point to another device that has a number of parts that are made in China.
I’m satisfied that Purism is doing as much as it realistically can for v1 and, who knows, maybe future versions will take further steps towards my ultimate goal.
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I wondered if it could be helpful to add some kind of “label” to every post, color-coded maybe, so that people can somehow distinguish between “nightly” and “stable” informations, but then i realized that if something big happens and you need to rectify a “stable” post, people would just consider you unreliable and get angry. 
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Tee hee, I actually meant it as in ‘we do it better’ (your biggest MCU fanboy has nothing on a BTS fangirl !) so I’m probably guilty of something too 
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Just a note regarding the modem pricing issue, even if it was mentioned here earlier: The phone is still offered on your website/shop at a fixed price with two modem options (I see no indication whatsoever about one of these options being more expensive):
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I agree with you that the Gemalto option should be noted as one for higher pricing if honesty is to be addressed adequately.
As to modems, Broadmi may be made in China, but so is most anything now in electronics. I would appreciate some side by side comparison of units of a Birch or Cedar phone with each of the two modems, suspecting that the difference in function is likely to be immaterial in general. For those in areas such as Australia or much of Asia, obviously a comparison is irrelevant. Further, while the attachment of a Gemalto modem to an M.2 card is not likely to be faulty, a question exists as to how this alters the warranty of the modem in its employment and the application to which it has been made to function by the process (legal rather than physical alteration of concern here) as well as the durability of the fixation to the M.2 card manufacture process. Adding extra steps not directly controlled by Gemalto may alter their feeling of their responsibility to address module failure, whether we agree with this or not. Does Librem have some clear documentation as to what Gemalto might exclude or not from its general liability assumption? This you may know better than I do, but I always wonder about the factors that are not made clear to me, even if not considered of major importance at some present time.
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Well, yes, there’s implicit trust to ‘made in germany’ vs ‘made in china’ but there should be something more than that to make conscious (not emotional) choice. Eg. if BM uses open firmware but gemalto closed and prepackaged on chip - despite all the mistrust I’d probably consciously choose BM just to support openfw initiative. If both are closed - then yes, there are technical (bands, reception) and emotional (trust) factors. Technical are still not quite known (only bands) and I hate making emotional choices.
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Well, given that much of the “Made in Germany” products are simply components from China assembled in Germany, there is not much inherent trust into these products warranted. And I say that as a German living in Germany. Designed in Netherland, “Made” in Germany does not mean the chips haven’t been stamped out somewhere completely different…
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Personally, I don’t understand the “Made in china”-problem. If this were a real problem, we would also have to talk about purisms corporate headquarters in the US and I guess most of the people here know the legal situation over there.
Its quite simple - we don’t know wether something produced in China is secure or not. But producing or assembling in another country doesn’t help either.
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Yea I know as living not far from there. I’m saying that trust still remains under assumption at least quality control is still in place, as R&D in germany is still strong.
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“Made in China” is a problem for multiple reasons, namely abysmal quality control, the strong possibility that the Chinese government is putting backdoors in their electronics, and the inhumane working conditions imposed on the workers who do the manufacturing.
Realistically, it’s virtually impossible to avoid having any Chinese components in a complex electronic device, but if I have the choice between getting a modem from a reputable country versus one whose current technological advancements have been made largely by corporate espionage, I know which one I’m going to pick.
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Of course you are right, I was just referring to the security aspect.
It’s a good point. We were going to wait until we knew what the final price would be (because that would be the first question someone asks support) but you make a good argument for at least updating it partially.
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Just write “we do not know the price yet and will update this article once we know” problem solved.
But one question is still nagging me most. When you pitched for the final pre-order before the price increase. Were you really still believing those pre-orders would be delivered in Q3 as advertised?