Just logged in after a longer time to ask: Does it only seem so or are there currently (nearly) zero developers working directly for/contracted or paid by Purism on the Librem 5?
Miss the times checking @dos and Librem.social for updates.
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Yes - I think the right thing to do here would be:
- Have a portion of the funding for software development on these initiatives include time to create release notes (of varying specificity based on the scope and depth of the task, of course) and inform marketing upon completion.
- Marketing then publishes periodic newsletters summarizing the resources consumed and the impact of development (the compiled release notes) of this campaign.
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I’d like to preface this by saying that I mean this constructively and with due respect:
As an outsider who has already contributed twice to Fund Your App, I don’t personally believe the Fund Your App campaign would be the appropriate place for this. My rationale is this:
- There is no real transparency into how much money has been raised or is going to a specific cause. Beyond speculation by multiplying the number of votes by the most likely donation amounts, we don’t see how these funds are raised or allocated. How much is still in the coffers or has all that money been spent?
- Three of the top apps that have been voted for do not belong to Purism (Firefox, Signal and Pure Maps). Of the top 10 apps, four of them do not belong to Purism/Gnome. The only efforts that I have seen to make Firefox or Signal more usable on the Librem 5 have been community efforts (Mobile-Config-Firefox by PostmarketOS or User0’s efforts in making a more mobile friendly experience / undef’s Signal flatpak). I haven’t seen news or blog posts or indications that money donated has actually landed where it was intended. I think this diminishes trust as a result.
Those are key reasons why I believe a Liberapay or similar campaign is better suited to this. Providing evidence to dispute my concerns would be very welcome as I think that would ease some issues of transparency and trust.
@JCS Are you able to provide more information or specific sources from parties who received funding to alleviate these concerns?
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And as second question, since it’s already 2 times asked without getting an answer: can you provide information how much and where Purism payed devs are working on software (maybe with git names to follow the work)? We may just look at the wrong places.
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This sounds like something Open Collective could address, though I’m mainly concerned about fragmentation of funding between individuals. Purism might still be the best way to fund L5 development to do more than just sell hardware – as an organization, they are responsible for scouting people, distributing funds to those devs, and providing general product direction and guidance. In other words, I believe that an organization to centralize resources for multiple devs would be more effective than to fund them individually and potentially not collaborate efforts.
Aside: I suspect the reason Purism is publicly raising money is so that they can regain capital to be able to pay for the development of PureOS among other things.
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We have put on hold some software development indeed and this is only temporary.
As I said in another thread, designing and developing hardware is extremely expensive. On top of that, and besides the huge amount of money that we have already spent in developing up-streamed free/libre software only (Phosh, Phoc, LibAdwaita, Calls, Chatty…), the community is hardly giving Purism any credit and we don’t get a huge return on investment in this area.
We are currently putting our energy on hardware and will soon release new products because that is what we sell. In parallel, we are running the public offering campaign, which is doing pretty good so far. All this will help resuming software development to its full speed. That’s the plan. Crimson, Phosh, Calls, Chats, Librem One will be part of our top priorities.
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Hello. Thank you for your response. I would like to point out that it appears that users of the Librem 5, 11, and other computers, want to pay for development of software. Is there a measurable way to do that with Purism? Is it your opinion that funding the new campaign is the best way to fund development of PureOS?
I certainly understand that Purism has to sell hardware to be in business. I hope that effort is very successful. However, can we actively fund progress on the above development of PureOS and have measurable results to show where the money contributed is having the best effect on software development?
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As a Librem 5 owner and frequent donor to both Purism and other FOSS contributors, I am absolutely not discrediting the monumental effort undertaken here. I am more than happy to give credit where credit is due and I don’t believe anybody is denying that Purism was instrumental in making the Gnome parnership as well as core mobile linux software happen. I wish nothing but success for Purism.
I also do appreciate that you are willing to give more insight into why it seems that things have stalled and the intended timeline.
My worry is that I haven’t seen anything addressing my concerns above. The public offering campaign leads me to believe that Purism doesn’t have any additional Fund Your App funding to leverage. If this is true, I think every donor is still entitled to an explanation as to why this funding was not allocated to a Signal partnership or a Mozilla partnership or a Pure Maps partnership. These are the apps that we voted for and we haven’t seen any discussions regarding the funding that went to them.
Please tell me if I am out of line here but your explanation, though thoughtful and sincere, does not address that. To be fair, you were replying to another comment and not mine but I think this is a valid criticism that should be commented on.
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Purism has invested millions in PureOS, the Librem 5, Liberty Phone, and supporting libraries pushed upstream (all this was R&D funding); our source repository showcases the immense developmental effort to bring all this to fruition. That being said currently PureOS and all supporting libraries are in developmental operations (operational costs) vs investing significantly more into R&D. Use of funds from investment allows Purism to fund more R&D. Purism’s business model is simple, the more sales the more R&D spent; the investment model is also simple, the more investment the more R&D spend. We do have developers in our org, some contracted, some staffed, but size of team relates to size of revenue and/or investment.
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Thanks Purism. 
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I’ll admit that I won’t be contributing to the public offering campaign until it is close to the end of it, probably. There are matters I need to take care of first but should be resolved by then. Others may be waiting until around the end to contribute as well so the number might jump at that time. 
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The fund your app page shows us which apps are the most requested by our supporters, who invested in porting them to the mobile platform. However, before being able to invest into specific apps, we had to (and still have to) focus on the foundations of the phone (PureOS, Phosh, Phoc, LibAdwaita, Calls, Chats, Suspend, BT support…). The reality is that even Firefox and Signal users will expect a phone with solid basic phone features, good battery life and a strong OS experience. We have worked on Firefox to make it usable and be the default browser in the Librem 5 but we haven’t had enough funds yet, to allocate specific development to those requested apps on top of the priorities listed above.
I think we did this kind of per app funding campaign too early and that it would have worked once the base system was ready. We are not there yet, so I was thinking we may have to change the way “fund your app” works and become “fund PureOS” toward a pretty strong mobile experience before we can start to correctly invest into other apps.
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absolutely correct, stable functions are more important than 1034856678 features additional. If phone calls, mail, Telegram and Signal are working and the Authenticator as addon I will be happy
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Calls, calls, calls, calls, calls, calls. Please support calls, please. Calls. Where do I give my money for Calls. Anybody?
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So, you have two choices here:
- Wait until Purism releases new products, then purchase them.
- Invest in the public offering campaign.
If you do not like either options, then consider my post about funding Dorota at the beginning of this thread.
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For me at minimum 5 more 
I think sometimes that the producers of phones like Purism or Pine underestimate the importance of making reliable!!! calls. They often say us that we have a mini computer in our pocket for all the places we go.
But phone calls are at least for me the absolute base for all I do with a smartphone. Without reliable calls I do not need a smartphone - regardless who is the producer or programmer.
Just my 5 cents
Uwe
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I am actually considering to buy Sony Xperia 10 III and a SailfishOS license. It has been an interesting experiment, but I need a fully functional phone. In its current state, Librem 5 just doesn’t cut it for me.
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I also have had a Sony phone + Sailfish OS. But I have the impression that Sailfish is quite dead
Librem5 could be used as daily with a lot of love and patience
But in aspects of reliability and energy consumation and phone calls there is a lot to do!
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Oh, but I’ve been daily driving it for about a year now, with a lot of love and patience. I’ve been supplementing it with my old Motorola running LineageOS. The thing is that I’ve noticed that I almost completely falled back to the Motorola, except for phone calls and SMS, since my SIM is in Librem 5.
I have many issues with it, but most critical are:
- heat - it gets so hot sometimes, that I need to put it away to cool down, especially in summer
- battery life - it drains battery like there’s no tomorrow, during what I would consider normal usage
- new battery purchase (I’m in Europe, and my battery is at 85% health now)
- occasional reboots, loss of wifi/bluetooth, and cellular connection
Without these issues fixed, I cannot consider it a reliable phone, ready for normal daily usage.
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