About hiring a media person: it is not incompatible with open source. I just said that I don’t mind them not having a media person because I can get my answers from staff directly. And for the most part, all a PR person would do is spend all day on the forums and reddit answering frequently asked questions and forwarding any specific question to a staff member that can answer it. Might not be the best use of Purism resources (I know I can be wrong on that, the ROI on that is hard for me to estimate).
Most of your points are valid. I question the scale of the problem.
Purism staff, individually, are doing the best they can under the situation.
Purism as a company, not so much. They could definitively be more proactive in PR by not dealing with a crisis after it blows over.
Reputation is hard to measure. The forums might be biased, after all it is where all the drama takes place. Just for some perspective, consider the community sourced list for shipping estimates. Less than 5% of actual customers end up posting there. And that is considering very heavy delays, which makes people more anxious about their orders.
As for my experience with Purism: I first heard of them 3 years ago through the Qubes community and they are my dream PC manufacturer ever since. I never really went into the forums, but still got some news from Purism and it was mostly positive. As soon as I started actively checking the forums, I quickly became aware of all the drama that I never imagined existed.
The fact is it’s easy for us to judge from behind our keyboards. We deal with the forums.
Purism staff, on the other hand, deal with the reality of production and must tender to the silent majority of customers, not the loud minority in the forums. And as I mentioned in my previous comment, I believe they are doing an acceptable job at answering the most pertinent questions that pop up here.
Finally, whether or not you are happy with them will depend on what you expect from them.
I think most Librem laptop customers want the most secure modern laptop they can find and that’s why they picked Purism. These are people that are choosing to buy a $1500 laptop that doesn’t even have dedicated graphics. Most are running Linux (I once saw a L13 on ebay with windows installed, it made me want to throw up). They know they are buying a product that no other company can provide, so they are willing to ignore small issues if that means getting the best security.
For the Librem 5 customers, the issue is not only of security but also of privacy because of the current scenario of generalized tracking in smartphones. This makes for a potential wider audience, but the Librem 5 is nowhere near as mature a product as the Librem 14. The competitors in this field are also stronger. Add that together with the supply chain problems and huge wait times on pre-orders, it’s not looking as pretty anymore.
I think Purism needs more Marketing than PR. They could be able to better appeal to a wider audience by generating some hype about their products that actually hits the mainstream laptop consumers. This is not so simple
Maybe Purism should take a page from CryptoData’s playbook (irony intended. CryptoData sells a terrible product, but they use buzz words and market to a more general public much better than Purism does).
