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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I can agree with this issues. Especially on longer phone calls I think that my ear burns away and the battery goes empty in big steps.
I have ordered an spare battery in the US store and paid, but nothing up to now has arrived.
The occaional reboots were rare ATM and the reliability is … not perfect … but usable here. In Germany I have Vodafone with VoLTE and generally it works fine and the sound on calls is something like excellent.
But suspend has to be better and the energy consumption has a lot of room to be better
we may have to change the way “fund your app” works and become “fund PureOS” toward a pretty strong mobile experience
I think a more Kickstarter style could work where various options could be presented and funds taken if the goal is met. It would be interesting to know how much would need to be raised to realistically get Crimson over the line.
It is interesting that people are willing to pay money (I believe) and have common goals (I believe) but Purism apparently cannot help achieve those goals or help make achieving said goals a little easier. I must say that I am frustrated by the disconnect between users and the company. I have been an ardent fanboy for as long as anybody but my patience is wearing rather thin.
