USPS? 
um in case you didn’t want to sound so general i apologize beforehand … that being said … we pay taxes because we NEED Caesar to do his job NOT because we LOVE paying taxes …
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Having to pay VAT is a bit of a nuisance, but nothing unexpected. Paying DHL a bizarre amount of money for a shipping process that was supposed to be “free” is quite unexpected, and frankly unacceptable.
I do hope Purism comes up with a decent alternative.
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Seems like there is enough experience in this thread to put together a best-practice for Purism when shipping Librem 5s to EU.
Has anyone considered putting together a discussion to collaborate on how Purism can best ship to EU (provider, placement of accurate invoice - showing date of purchase, amount paid, etc.)
I would do it, but unfortunately, I am in US.
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It was always my expectation that on top of the purchase price with Purism (which includes shipping), I would have to pay
- “VAT”
- “VAT” collection fee
- Customs processing fee
If I choose to buy from a vendor in another country, I make a decision as to whether the benefit of that specific item outweighs the cost, hassle and delay of the above three bullet points. So, yes, I am willing to pay those additional costs in this case. Do I enjoy or look forward to paying those additional costs? No! (although I do look forward to receiving my Librem 5 )
I’ve bought hardware from niche sellers overseas quite a few times before and always had to pay the above. So I wasn’t expecting it to be any different this time. Maybe that is the problem here: expectations.
Yes, and that could happen if the shipment volumes are there to justify the effort.
That is a whole different ball game. For purely digital goods, there is no port of arrival to tax the goods at - and so it comes down to whether the vendor sells enough goods to your country to justify the government in your country going after that vendor.
If we are talking about Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Adobe etc., it is worth your government’s time to put pressure on the company to collect the VAT up front (at the time of purchase, at the appropriate rate - and then to give the VAT to the government). If we are talking about a foreign small-time individual digital goods seller, not so much.
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Very correct! Therefore I was thinking of what @spaetz wrote within his post scriptum input and link, but I, kind of, disagree with his statement “so I don’t think they have a European base”, yet only if there are existing some secret plans to reactivate previous cooperation! Likewise, as I know nothing about if there will be any change of current course of action coming from Purism’s logistics/operations, I might continue to speculate on why it is said something like this above, other then this is currently the fact that we, buyers, need to accept as such.
Also, it might be that someone knows more about background of mid February ending of cooperation between kernel concepts GmbH online shop and/with Purism (or vice versa) by having some kind of relevant information (that no one as outsider needs to know), but I know nothing about, and none really cares about, IMHO, other than that the recovery of such cooperation might have, for some of us within EU, preferred outcome; kind of come back in time of Evergreen’s shipping stage. Even if only for those that would like to buy Librem 5 within EU and receive it within the very same week of actual payment in advance (as we might pay for our VAT there as well, for the pre-ordered ones, if I understand related economics law correctly, but this might easily be just another idealistic opinion). Anyway, within FLOSS Shop DE link that @spaetz provided is still useful information about delivery of Purism’s products and translated it would sound (approximately) like this:
“In the course of a reorganization of the customer service and the opening of the new Customer and Shipping Center in Carlsbad, CA, USA the Purism management decided that all Purism’s devices should be ordered exclusively via the Purism Web Shop.”
“Our tip: The additional charge for delivery with FedEX is worthy (recommended to be used), as FedEx takes care about the registration (Zollanmeldung) with nearby (responsible for the particular delivery) Customs Office.”
P.S. Alike to what @nicole.faerber wrote to us; I “sincerely hope” too, that Purism “will have this sorted out until” they “start shipping the phone. If plans work out, then” they “will be able to ship from a place which has a EU VAT tax ID”.
I do not talk about the current state. I know I will be forced to pay unreasonable high tax. I am talking about ethics because other persons talked about cheating, which I admit was very annoying if not insulting.
So I do not care if the business is large or small.
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Besides all this EU talk (sorry i don’t understand the EU regulations i just know the taxes suck), will you post a video @cma on the performance and software when you get it (i understand if you’re not, people have lives and work)
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About best practice for Purism: I think that the best is to be honest. Honest in the philosophical sense and not in the EU-bureaucrats weird sense. By this I mean that they must separate the cost for hardware and software since the only thing I will own after I get L5 is the hw. The packages that will go through customs should declare a true value for the hw only! Because I pay to own. If I do not own (software or license) I should not pay tax.
This is THE difference from Apple products on this issue. For them you pay for owning both the hw and a license to use their software.
Since the software work of Purism is public domain we should not pay tax for it.
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Something more about future work. Purism must seek tax exemption from IRS for money that comes to the company for software development. If you think that this is outrageous I am ready to tell you that it is not the first time that IRS will accept this. EXACTLY the same has happened with tug (the TeX Users Group). Check their site. Money that is given from users or institutions that goes to the development of their public domain software (latex3 etc) are tax exempt from the IRS.
So please do not compare Purism with Apple…
Hmm, IMO we are getting both, software at the first pace, on top of the appropriate HW, and I agree with you that separation in terms of VAT would be nice thing to be recognized (being authored FOSS) within future invoices for EU customers. Here is why I think software is the kind of key, abbreviated, as within my previous post link is to be recognized:
- CPU = Sourced, and fused in unlocked state … Yes
- BIOS = Sourced & Developed … Yes
- Kernel = Sourced & Developed … Yes
- Operating System = Sourced & Developed … Yes
- Software = Sourced & Developed … Yes
- Trackpad Driver = Sourced & Developed … Yes
- Bluetooth Driver = Sourced & Developed … Yes
Furthermore, “Purism authored and released …”
“The Corporation shall be devoted to ensuring the security, privacy, and freedom of the users of its products, and the hardware and software offered by Purism shall conform to the philosophy of the Free Software movement (the “General Social Purpose”).” IMO, nowadays my money cannot have something like this for free of charge (by not seeing there is an exclusive separation of offered hardware and software, by guessing that software actually is the base for choosing the appropriate hardware, to develop, to work hard on top of it, as a sum, to make it usable for individuals - in order to be able to communicate in the way that respects …), I think so and certainly agree (encourage Purism to continue to live up to above statement) as not being aware that somewhere else exists something like this, to their products they offer related, within the World we live in.
“Not just for us as a company, but for everyone concerned about issues of privacy, security, and user freedom. The Librem 5 represents years of work, building the software and hardware required to make this phone a reality.” What it means years of work (explaining the difference / path that Purism follows) is, in a related issues mature and experienced way (that counts), kindly brought up here:
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I’ve seen this guys recent videos regarding Linux phones and one thing he brought up that’s not well known is the pinephone has been in development for longer than the librem so their current state of development being much more progressed makes sense from that perspective. If librem and pinephone had started development at the same time they might be closer in state to a final product.
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In addition, in one of his previous videos “Comparing Linux Phones: Librem 5 and Pinephone” he said about Librem 5: “This phone is not just a Linux phone, but it addressed the main concern of privacy! It is the only phone where the issue of privacy was well thought out and advanced as a goal.”
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That’s all well and good but some people just want mainline Linux on a mobile device, hence why I believe the pinephone will be a more popular device.
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Yeah then they could buy the pinephone, have an up-to-date kernel for maybe a month or two and then they’ll never get newer kernels because of the f***** Allwinner SoC. 
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same can be said of the librem, what guarantee do you have they will continue development after release? The pine architecture has been in development for years and it’s not just the phone that used that chipset, so yeah it makes total sense for pine to just stop all development after releasing the phone so their whole product line becomes deprecated
No, it cannot. Whereas the Librem 5 with the I.MX8 boots with a mainline kernel, Allwinner SoCs need proprietary firmware. They typically don’t release necessary source code but instead bundle a single linux kernel version with the compiled firmware. Correct me if I’m wrong. Allwinner has been violating the GPL for so long, it simply doesn’t care about the free software movement. The I.MX8 works with future kernel versions.
Does that matter? Other pieces of hardware are affected by the same problem. Librem 5 tries to not repeat that problem.
I didn’t say that. But why do you think the Pinephone will be that cheap? It’s of course because they don’t need that much development. Usual smartphone are also using this kind of SoC. The I.MX8 has not been used for smartphones before. And yes, Allwinner is always a bad idea in the free software area. Even Qualcomm would be better.
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That is wholly incorrect. First: There is the crust project which is open source. Second: It can indeed using mainline kernels, which is the whole point of the device. Right now they are using a custom kernel until the pinephone’s hardware patches are mainlined (think modem support, cameras, audio, I2C pogo pins, etc)
The A64 also was never used in phones, but rather tablets. That’s also why it’s actually performing quite well power and thermally wise.
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So am I understanding it correctly that Allwinner does not offer free firmware support and this is more ore less reverse engineering? What about the Mali GPU, does it work? Yes you are right, I did a little bit of research which shows that the A64 can at least boot headless without blobs.
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Yes, it’s reverse engineering done by the Sunxi community as i hear. They are the ones that provide all the support and tools for allwinner chips to run mainline Linux.
The Mali 400 MP2 works 100%, and there is a FOSS driver called Lima which is what the Panfrost driver is derived from.
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