Definitely worth reading this one.
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We will start with a list of highly requested applications based on customer feedback, triage for complexity
Would certainly like more info on this e.g. does the list currently exist? what’s on it? how do we influence it?
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Oh, great; the return of Win-OS2. 
The year of the Linux phone will be the year of Android on a Linux phone?
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Todd says that:
Apple overtook Microsoft a short twenty years later.
Am I missing something or is Todd delusional?
The context was “the desktop OS market” (with the keystone of the “app gap” being Microsoft Office). Apple hasn’t overtaken Microsoft on the desktop in the office ever. Apple did capture the “graphics dept” OS installs, but Microsoft still “owns” the office desktop. I believe that Microsoft still has 70% of the OS installs vs Apple’s 10%-15%.
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Possibly iOS overtaking Windows Phone?
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At least the blog article is not written by AI this time.
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I’ll stay tuned, but my initial reaction is sadness. Is compromising on freedom really the only way for Purism to succeed?
The only way I see this being a good thing in any way is if LibremOS will be based on PureOS, so that improvements can be pushed upstream to PureOS. Otherwise, developing LibremOS would take development time away that could be used for improving PureOS.
EDIT: also, the name for this new project is misleading. Would be better to call it ImpureOS or CompromiseOS than LibremOS.
EDIT2: if you wanted to differentiate it from Android and iOS, you could call it LessEvilOS.
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Also, this whole idea is a flagrant violation of Purism’s charter (Section 2.1):
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”).
The document even goes so far as to summarize this sentence using the term “General Social Purpose”, indicating that this sentence captures the meaning of Purism’s purpose, defined in more details that follow.
Even if this wasn’t completely at odds with Purism’s founding documents, I don’t think the blog article describes anything that will even work. For example, the article states (emphasis added):
We are excited to share our plans to include a greater number of applications available across all our devices.
So this won’t be based on Android, it must be based on some GNU/Linux distro (PureOS?), in order to work on Purism laptops.
But what can this strategy accomplish? For example, WhatsApp currently does not work on the Librem 5. Even with Waydroid, I know that in at least one case WhatsApp blocked access for using a non-official APK, and then when an official APK was used, blocked access for using a non-supported device. What magic does Purism imagine that will allow this new LibremOS to enable WhatsApp? Make an agreement directly with Meta to allow it? I’m skeptical that Purism will be able to make this happen. In order to make WhatsApp run, Purism is totally at the mercy of Meta, as they can change their APIs at any time. This will always be a losing battle, and I don’t see Meta suddenly wanting to support ARM Linux as a first-class citizen.
To sum up, this flagrantly violates Purism’s codified values and it won’t even work if Purism tries it.
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The Death of Purism is Coming
Super evil Librem 16, 14 v2?
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I’m Dlonk, a bad Purism customer and a person highly “used” by Google, as they would say. Since receiving my first Librem 5 more than two years ago, I’ve nearly exclusively used Librem 5s as my phone because I like the idea of them, and I run standard PureOS Byzantium on those Librem 5’s like a scrub, although I moved to a Liberty Phone to get the sweet extra RAM and once I already bought that I’ve found myself in at least one conversation with a guy who said, “Yeah the people who make our phones are in sweat shops surrounded by suicide nets,” and I pulled out my phone out of the blue and was like, “Actually my phone was made in the USA by some guys in California and cost as much as three iPhones” which completely took him off guard.
But I was able to daily drive Librem 5 because Google controls our thoughts and minds, and I put the Google Fi SIM card from my old Android in there and that way Google’s AI always knew where I was going so it didn’t make my friends and family attack me like how people with a less evil phone plan on a Librem 5 might be attacked. And Google Fi intercepts all my texts and calls so I can get them on a laptop and then not need the phone as the arbiter of our dominant communication anyway. I’ve bricked a spare Librem 5 by trying to install Android on it, and I bought a Librem 14 and briefly booted Windows on it because the social factor around me pushed me to do it.
But in all of this time being a “used” and having the freedom to make bad choices, the bad choices never really panned out. Even if I’m compromised, I have a sense that having other non-compromised people further up the ladder than me makes for a better world. And when someone tells me to stop using what I use, it seems valuable if I don’t listen to their advice. Common examples of this include the numerous family and friends who “don’t get it” with regards to a Librem 5, and will tell me to “buy a dumb phone or flip phone” because they think that’s the same thing or a better thing closer to what they want me to have. And yet if I don’t stop, and I don’t give up on the aspects of how I was living that I already changed, then eventually there’s a chance I might get to the good future.
Running ImpureOS feels quite a bit like giving up. I have a desktop computer that runs ImpureOS in the sense that I broke and tainted a PureOS install on a PC with expensive hardware so that it could use nVidia drivers. And that makes it run fast, in a world where nVidia intentionally made noveau run terribly. But at the end of the day, with a little bit of code optimization and care in my software, and by buying a ton of RAM in the Purism shop dropdown, it turns out the Librem 14 is generally a sufficient hardware to do the graphically and computationally intensive hobby stuff I was doing anyway.
Set against the backdrop of that, why should Purism give up even if I “give up” momentarily at times? A big corporation like Google would detect that me as a user was using the “bad” tech and that means they should accept it to go along with users. But in the case of Purism, I feel a bit like… why not just say screw the users like me and keep to the stated mission of the SPC? It’s one of the things I find when I buy Purism hardware, that it’s good and seems like quality even though reading through the forums would have you believe that Purism was just peddling garbage. Maybe sometimes listening to users is not good.
I am also highly curious about the Purism take on this point. It seems to me that the problem with Purism devices is the social landscape and bad technology culture of the planet these devices are existing on, and not the devices themselves. Signal’s software works badly on Librem 5 because Signal developers made it work badly and/or neglected making it work well. I can’t order food at Chick-Fil-A App on a Librem 5 because their app only works on Google Play Androids and on iOS.
These are not problems that give over the power to Purism to solve those problems. That would seem to be the issue… so it’s difficult for me to see how the Librem 5 would become more able to solve those problems without ceasing to be a “good and not evil” device.
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Honestly I understand Purism choices! They’ve to sell as much as possible L5s and allow us, actual L5 owners, to use it as daily driver, so they’ve to make PureOS compatible with Android/iOS to fill the gap allowing to run, at least, the most common used apps! To do that they’ve to allow PureOS to run also proprietary softwares!! No other way! For example I’ve all my friends 90% of them on WhatsApp and 10% on Telegram! Should I buy and carry an Android/iOS second phone as side to my L5 just to use common socials? All my family is on WhatsApp too! Everyone of my job clients use it! It’s mandatory, for me, to use WhatsApp and in full mode! Socials are just an example: my online bank uses app only (no website)! I’d move to another bank? Some of my service Companies (eg: water supplier) use app to communicate real time general info (eg: emergencies,..) I need it!
Another example: the app connected to my impedance scale: there is no web version! Without it, I would no longer be able to use the scale!
So yes! I understand and I like Purism idea: open to proprietary SW still maintaining PureOS FLOSS!
I don’t understand your concerns 
To leave L5 Pure means leave L5 totally isolated from reality and that’s the death of it!
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Yes, I think so: detail. It’s one of those statements that, without any detail, is impossible to evaluate as true or false. It may have been arrived at correctly once qualifying detail is included or it might not. There’s no way to tell.
I actually took the context as being more the Librem 5 but the article is ambiguous on this point e.g.
While the Librem 5 or Liberty Phone running PureOS can already function as a daily driver, we understand that closing the App Gap is crucial to improving usability and making our products accessible and convenient for a greater number of people.
but
e.g.
We are excited to share our plans to include a greater number of applications available across all our devices.
I would say: don’t overanalyse one statement that is not core to the point of the article anyway.
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I know my Win-OS2 reference was probably too ancient for most, so I’ll elaborate. Win-OS2 was an application running on IBM’s OS/2 operating system, that allowed OS/2 users to run Windows applications. This was IBM’s attempt to close the app-gap created by Microsoft’s illegal, anticompetitive, monopoly. The result was that IBM wasted a lot of resources chasing changes to Windows’ API, and never gained marketshare due to Win-OS2’s presence.
What I read into Todd’s post was Purism effort to make Waydroid and ATL work better with Librem devices. (Porting apps, browser improvements, and a cloud platform were other directions mentioned.)
As far as LibremOS, it sounds like an Ubuntu-like direction, which many privacy-focused users might not want. Why not just move to Mobian?
More details needed to see if this is driven by corporate influences or something different.
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First, to address the elephant in the room: I had drafted a forum topic last week to announce “LibremOS” to this community and request feedback from you all prior to making any decisions or publications, but asked for an internal review where it got hung up. Unfortunately, the blog post was released prior to my announcement and feedback request. I sincerely want Purism to have a closer feedback loop with you all. Moving forward, our marketing team has agreed to apply my feedback and engage more closely with this forum to make sure that the great ideas you all have are fully considered, prior to decisions being made or articles being published - where each of you has the opportunity to make a real impact.
LibremOS is not replacing PureOS whatsoever; it will only be added as an OEM OS alternative. There is currently no established ETA for LibremOS, but most likely after the release of PureOS Dawn as to not block critical development efforts.
LibremOS will be a much-needed middle rung on the freedom ladder, enabling PureOS to remain the top rung. The goal of LibremOS is to ease the transition to free software for users that need certain apps, especially communication services. All code that Purism writes for any OS will always be released as free software, even if it cannot become part of PureOS.
PureOS will remain uncompromising in its commitment to free software.
Purism immensely respects the FOSS community and anticipates some degree of resistance to this proposal given its support for proprietary software, but hopes to come to a compromise between “average user” usability while being unwavering in our commitment to progressing FOSS.
Thank you for your time, and I’m interested to know your thoughts.
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Hey all, obviously I’ve been thinking about this for a while so I have a lot to say. This is mostly about how the technicals of PureOS and LibremOS relate to policy and development.
We’re building LibremOS as the thinnest layer possible over PureOS, since our focus remains on PureOS. LibremOS won’t have an entirely separate package repository. It’s going to use the PureOS repositories, plus an additional source containing packages that PureOS can’t contain. LibremOS enables us to reach users that we otherwise can’t, when they can’t fully eliminate all nonfree services from their lives at once.
One of the biggest barriers to this is communications apps. Users that want to use free software simply can’t expect all their family and friends to leave a platform at once. We don’t want users to have to make excuses for their communication apps breaking frequently because of their choice of OS.
When native apps aren’t feasible, our top strategy is browser-based apps. That’s already a solution many people use in the browser itself. But it’s cumbersome to have all your “apps” nested inside your browser, and it’s not discoverable for users transitioning to free software without the help of an expert friend (and we care about those users too!)
Creating an app container around a web site is not a new idea. It already improves your privacy and security stance versus using the web site in the browser itself, because it isolates that app’s profile from your regular browser profile. And again, the browser and all tooling to create such an app is free software. The reason these apps can’t go into PureOS is because virtually all of them will immediately load proprietary JavaScript when you open the app. We can’t include that app in PureOS because it’s steering toward nonfree software.
The major parts of the tooling to do this are actually part of PureOS and already present in PureOS Crimson. We just can’t include the metadata to actually specify the web site to use as an “app” in PureOS. Consequently, this leaves LibremOS as essentially a combination of PureOS + branding + app metadata, at least for web apps.
We know some Android apps will eventually be part of this strategy too. It’s not easy to change banks, and many of them do not offer the same features through web as on Android/iOS. But whenever form this takes, again the infrastructure containing only free software will be part of PureOS, and LibremOS will contain the metadata telling us how to get and install that app.
Like we’ve said a few times, we can’t expect newcomers to jump to the top of the freedom ladder all at once. We need to help them climb.
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There where two “core points”. One was that if one closes the “app gap”, one can eventually “win”. The other was Purism’s plan to close the “app gap”. In regard to the former, the Apple story was one of three stories to underscore that point. That said, I did miss something: He wasn’t talking about the full “desktop space” … he was talking about the “designer space” (aka “graphic design”) subset of the “desktop”. I not sure Apple “won” there either, but it’s much closer.
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Thanks for this.
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I welcome this effort, seeing as how the Furilabs phone has some improved Waydroid of some kind, this might help make the Librem devices more viable where ideology falls short.
plenty of issues to solve like system integrity attestation. And arm vs x86 compatibility. Will be interesting how this is tackled and where the limits are.
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I have no app-gap, so I stay with PureOS for sure. But who’s reading the forum knows that some people have to carry a smartphone to run Android apps. That’s not how it should be. So I support this decision in general. I know the GNU elite soldiers do hate me for this statement, but I don’t care for a failed mission. I care for success and this is the right way to pull more people over to the more free side and at some point in future they can fully join the GNU space. GNU soldiers just don’t understand this trick, so ignore them.
I first also thought why not using Mobian as Iwriemen said. But after reading jonathon.halls post I think I understand. LibremOS would still be less compromised compared to Mobian. So I want to make a suggestion: try to cooperate with the other mobile OS communities to not make make the work 5 times, but just all together. Especially where more development effort is required than just installing a web app.
As long as it’s just seen as the ladder to PureOS, I will support it. So don’t change this view in future - people would recognize these further small steps.
In general it’s more about indie games here. Most other apps run on both systems or are just obsolete (because there are great alternatives). And I don’t know if it is worth it just for those few games (most games need more power than L5 can deliver).
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Do not lie to yourself. How will people move to full GNU if there are proprietary chains software?
Librem 5 will never support Waydroid. It doesnt meet the low-level requirements for Waydroid, i mean Waydroid it is not for L5.
This is more a honeypot for noobs.
I not support it, as it will harm Purism legacy.
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