In that case, your options are clear:
- Buy Purism hardware.
- StartEngine campaign.
- Donate to Purism.
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I agree, you’re correct according to the current state of affairs. And I (like many people in this thread) have already performed #1.
If I were to sum up my position, I’m simply articulating a desire for some modified version of #2 or #3. If Purism provided some clarity on how they plan to deliver software maintenance for L5, that would make me much more interested in proceeding with #2 or #3.
Hopefully that makes sense.
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Sure, perhaps Purism will acknowledge and answer previous calls to action as well.
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To me VoLTE already working OK on Librem5. However some carrier require a full compatible module v.o.l.t.e to work so in this case Purism It does not have the power to solve it easily for Librem5, then this means that the librem 5 telephone module is limited to work 100% in some areas naturally. There is a option in the module to see volte profile area support.
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Trying to summarize how things stand now, the way I see it:
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Purism, for unknown reasons, is silent about the matter. Still no Crimson development happening (at least nothing seen at https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/OS-issues/-/issues/346). It would be great if Purism said something, @francois-techene mentioned the possibility of Purism creating a “fund PureOS” campaign, that would have been great. I’m still hoping for an answer on that, but in the meantime we can also consider what could be done without Purism being directly involved.
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The original idea in this thread was to handle funding independently from Purism, using something like Liberapay. I would like this to happen, but it requires at least one of the developers to step up and say “I’m willing to do some work on the Crimson issues, here is the Liberapay project you can donate to, provided amount X is donated I will start working.” I really wish one of them would say that, but so far that has not happened. I have reached out to several of the developers, a couple of them first replied that they might be interested but then they have not responded anymore. I don’t know why. I will keep trying to reach them.
One of the developers hinted to me that it would be weird to handle funding “behind Purism’s back” so to speak, that it would be better if Purism would handle the funding. I agree that would be better, but the problem is that Purism is not doing that. So then we are stuck. It is a frustrating situation where everybody agrees the work needs to be done, it’s not a huge amount of work (according to Guido), and money to fund it is there (still sitting in my bank account) but there is no way to direct that money to the developers who could do the work.
So, we need some kind of action either from Purism or from at least one of the developers.
In an attempt to convince them to act, here are some thoughts on why the current situation is bad:
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Librem 5 users like me, who enjoy being part of development and trying to help progress along by bug reports, actively testing and troubleshooting and perhaps even submitting patches, are no longer able to do that now because the software is so old. Debugging something on my L5 today is less meaningful because upstream developers will just tell me to first run a newer versions of whatever packages are involved. So this is a resource that is currently wasted, people who would normally voluntarily help development (at zero cost) are now unable to do that.
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Knowing that development has stalled makes it less likely people will recommend Purism’s products to others. I can say this for me personally, but I imagine it is true for some others as well. This hurts Purism’s chances of making new sales. Purism is losing the support of your core supporters, who would normally be helping spread the word to others.
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Anyone reviewing a Librem 5 today will get a bad impression because the software is old. If a tech journalist looks at it and sees that Purism has their own GNU/Linux distro will come to the conclusion that it is in practice no longer maintained, which looks really bad. Again, this hurts Purism’s chances of making new sales.
So, there is a lot to gain by getting Crimson ready.
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Right, and if it does not work, there are other options available.
Primarily because Purism should be responsible and not the community, but it is evidently clear that calls to action scattered throughout this thread have not been answered. Either we continue to wait around or decide to do something about it.
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Agree, Purism has NO answer for us. I fear that the project L5 is now on something like hold and slooooooow development. Maybe money is not the only issue here?
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As all the relevant source code bits are in Purism’s gitlab and the projects are open for everyone to contribute:
- Find an independent contractor to work on PureOS for the L5
(I think that was basically the option this thread started with)
This would leverage the power of Free Software / Open Source. It has the minimal risk that Purism ignores the contributions and they bitrot but I’d say that’s rather unlikely if they’re of good quality.
I’m aware that the other alternative would be to ask Purism to switch to Mobian, pmOS or something else but in contrast to the above I’d assume that’s rather unlikely as it would make it harder to support the same stack over all devices.
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@dcz suggested talking to @evangelos.tzaras about working on Crimson, but @Skalman already did that. I also suspect the remaining candidates have already been contacted with as well.
Outside of this list, I only know about former Purism staff who dealt with firmware.
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I think … maybe better if the L5 will be developed further by Mobian. They HAVE a running version of newest Debian with phosh/pmmobile
Why not bundle the efforts and not work parallel on 3 places for the same thing
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I just wanted to say thank you for all your efforts on this thread and for taking the lead in many respects. Much appreciated. I am only willing to have my wallet open in case somebody leads this and tells me about a “plan” I can get behind with my good vibes and wallet.
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Because there isn’t. Go and check out Debian On Mobile · GitLab and see how people from Mobian, PureOS and Debian cooperate on the same set of packages.
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Why then not take Mobian as a base for the L5 and let the people wait here on a hopeless old Debian base?
We all understand that the resources on Purism are smaaaallllllll. But since some time no commit on the future of the L5’s software and much more?
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Because mobian allows non-free software in a way that pureos doesnt and that is part of Purisms goal, to be so hardlined against non-free software.
The bigger confusion for me is what work has Purism done to PureOS to make it more functional than Mobian that hasnt made its way upstream to debian and back down to mobian and why.
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All sounds logical - BUT leads ATM to a totally old and problematic PureOS base. And for sure Purism does not use any “blackbox” modem or other driver binaries on the L5 ?
There is non ONE piece of NON-OSS on the phone in its OS and the original environment?
Maybe making a real daily running phone was a BIG effort for the L5.
And now there is no more capacity to develop it further? That we already have to use an really old OS makes me thinking about what will - or NOT will come for the L5
Therefore I think it would be better to switch to Mobian where we can see real and active development.
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I’d rather stick to an old OS instead of selling my soul to the devil.
Swichting to (some parts of) non free software would make the whole L5 project a waist of money and time.
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Yeah, then open the phone and throw the WiFi card and the modem out… because of a BLOB closed SW on it
Or has Purism a control about the firmware on this cards/modules
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Which software are you referring to here?
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I guess that depends what you mean by “more functional”. I have been running Mobian on one of my L5’s for a couple of weeks now, and I think it functions at least as good as PureOS + being more up to date. Surely, there are some things that don’t work as good, e.g. waking up the cell modem after suspend.
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Aside from the modem/system wakeup the Mobian on the L5 runs astoningly good!
I hope greatly that the suspend/wakeup problem will be solved in the future
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