People may be interested in reading my comment on Hacker News about the security of firmware blobs, and why I think Purism has the right strategy for achieving change:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25518389
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@Caliga: Thanks again for all the work on this!
One question regarding the FCC / CE Certifications: There was a confirmation that they are still being worked on, If I am not mistaken, but they are not available yet and thus also delayed?
Thanks a lot for confirming what I remembered regarding the ongoing FCC / CE certification. Your second remark left me a bit puzzled though: The statement you linked dates from January 12th - a date at which point the shipping of the final mass production batch Evergreen was already well underway - without the FCC / CE certification promised for the Evergreen batch - to me this already officially proves the delay that should be included in the promise delivery chart. In addition to that, the latest Librem 5 news summary from today does not mention any finalisation regarding this topic - and this would certainly have been the topic of a big separate advertisement post given the fact that even the adaptation of a single app can be the topic of a separate news post. Don’t get me wrong - this has nothing to do with bashing of any sorts, but if there is a delay then this should be noted here to provide an up to date view on the state of the topics.
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Finally working!
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Dev kit works on mainline Kernel: https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-support-in-mainline-linux/.
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They claim “on stock” and asking DKK 15975 (1 DKK = 0.13 EUR, i.e. 2076 EUR).
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So, now that the Librem 5 has fulfilled shipping parity, where does the promise delivery chart currently stand?
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With a quick glance… Only “release case schematics” seems to have been not done, which mostly impacts only the ability to print your own cool designs and color backcovers (personalized appearances should not be belittled). “Eu reseller” was technically true and there are a few other things on the list I’d say have been barely reached (I’m including one or two that had something change for somewhat understandable reasons and disregarding what level of collaboration may really happened) but reached none the less.
It’s another conversation (in the several other threads) whether the expectations (quality, details etc.) regarding various promises and statements were met, as well as what may be missing from that list that has later been identified as something that reasonably should have been there.
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What do you mean by that?
Only that there was someone selling L5 in Europe. They weren’t affiliated with Purism and they seem to be out of business now, but they did exist. I suppose all the eBay listings could also be considered technically resellers in EU 
In Germany there is a shop www.floss-shop.de dedicated a products around OpenSource. I’ve bought there things already: OpenPGP cards, USB dongles and such stuff. They don’t sell (at least not anymore) Purism products with this rationale:
Warum wir keine Purism Produkte mehr anbieten | Blog | FLOSS Shop DE
(use a translator to read this page in German).
It’s a pity and Purism should re-think about this.
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Here is what it roughly translate to:
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[…] solve the problems plaguing the online transaction space, removing banks from the transaction, removing all central storage of private user data, keeping transactions private between two parties […]
Not sure whether it’s smart to advertise tax fraud as a company. Sure, you keep user data from the banks and that’s great. But I would like to see options which can actually be approved by a government, like GNU Taler for example.
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That specific quote clearly highlights the broader problem: there are too many middlemen involved in private transactions. Examples include certificate authorities, e-commerce platforms, payment processors, and the payment method themselves. The quote itself does not explicitly mention tax fraud; that is your interpretation of it.
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It’s pretty much the consequence. There are currently a lot of regulations being applied to cash payments in the EU because of money laundry and tax fraud. So if you would speak to any legislative about Monero they would see the same kind of issues with it as with cash.
Additionally you get annoying transaction costs because block need to be generated, you need to pay for energy bills managing and providing the blockchain for Monero and it takes storage space to have a local wallet (which you need to take any serious advantage of the anonymity).
So in other words: Monero is in multiple ways worse than cash. The most reason for switching to Monero is because it is less regulated. That is why I don’t think any government will ever support Monero. Likely they will even try to shut it down. Which is why I would much rather see a proper long-term option. Because if there is no proper open-source solution for online payments, governments will go the proprietary route and I hate to see that happening.
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Governments already go the proprietary route: they either issue currencies they designate as legal tender or have companies under their control that do it for them.
Just so we are clear, I am not very interested in discussing about this. My focus is on Monero payment support and getting it implemented, not any of the other topics we discussed between ourselves. We can leave further discourse and objections until after the implementation is complete and sorted out.
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