There may not have been a “need” to, however there was an amount of expectation that Purism set that they would release files like this and more.
So, while this is a piece that’s “better” than other manufacturers, it’s really not that special, especially with how much time has passed before release.
Not really.
It is NOT “benevolent” to change and retroactively apply a return policy to provide worse conditions for the consumer.
It is not benevolent to tout an increase in profitability after that change while continuing to ignore refund requests and hold consumers money.
Purism claimed covid, something that didn’t start impacting production until mid to late q1 2020, was part of why they didn’t meet their q1 2020 delivery times… except if they were going to meet that q1 delivery time, the manufacturing would have had to have already been completed, and the design wasn’t even completed yet.
Did covid slow down production once purism was finally ready to start production? Yes.
Was covid the reason Purism missed its timelines? No.
Also much of rossmans complaints are related to how the leadership has behaved, which does not appear to have meaningfully changed.
Well I won’t defend the refund policy change, that’s certainly a bad thing, but from the outside I don’t have all the information needed, it was a complex situation. So I’m not going to make any hard judgements on that.
I realize covid wasn’t the only delay factor too, but when I purchased I knew and expected that there would be delays. It turned out a lot worse than I expected, of course. After learning more about the unique challenges in hardware engineering, even more so.
We don’t have full information so we can’t be too sure, but I suspect that they ended up in a lose-lose situation where they could either stop refunds, or “bankrupt/cancel” the project (maybe even the entire company). The latter would’ve been a much worse loss for everyone, other than the “early exiters” who were less patient, less committed to the project, or just could no longer afford the financial risk (for the latter I don’t blame).
In that scenario if they had perfectly honored all refunds, even after the money had been spent on research, development, and production, they wouldn’t have been able to refund everyone and there would be no product. Their more loyal/dedicated/patient customers would be left with a big financial loss. Instead we at least have a real product and the damage was mostly reputational.
I’m willing to listen to counter arguments for this line of thinking, but if the unconditional refunds crowd had gotten their way, I (and many others) would probably be left with a financial loss with no device at all. Would that be preferable? I would argue no.
Yes we can’t be certain, that’s just where my current opinion is rounding off at.
Let me add a different thought. There’s a big battle with privacy advocates vs …lots of various interests that are opposed to a free/open/private world for the general public. And the privacy end of it is losing pretty bad right now. There are things to criticize among the privacy advocates, I could add to the list myself, but friendly fire isn’t the most productive use of our time.
It’s also pretty easy for anyone (or Louis) to criticize if they’re in the comfortable position of having little or nothing to lose if the L5 project were to fail. Maybe he would actually have decided to go bankrupt and fail, giving everyone a partial refund, out of this customer service principle… I don’t know. But I’m glad the hardware aspect of the project made it to the finish line.
It has been a while since the video I saw so maybe my memory is fuzzy. But I think I remember holding the actual device in hand while he used the word “scam” or something in one of his videos. A scam that delivers the actual product (albeit late, but still)? If I’m remembering that correctly that’s just accidental slander. I’ll still be one of his viewers because I know he has good intent, but I think this was a disappointing error.
Why do you need to get the attention of a person who is sponsored by Google to tell us what to think? Maybe Google/YouTube don’t want him to speak opposite to their message.
Conversely, it might be more accurate to state that we need to not give him the time of day of letting him be relevant if he’s going to take money from Google/YouTube to tell people what to think, because that puts him in their pocket.
I haven’t seen a lot of communication from Purism itself about this happening, which means that all the info and “leaks” and people complaining about that could have theoretically all been internet trolls. It’s not that I’m saying they are, but that I’m saying I don’t know.
I ordered hardware from Purism and that hardware seems like it really seriously is better than the alternatives.
It is true that’s where some of his income is coming from, but I don’t have any reason to question his integrity. I’ve followed him for a long time (back when he just did pure hardware tinkering and repair videos, before he was doing any kind of activism). Also remember he has multiple incomes with a well established repair business. IIRC he’s even said before that if his YT channel gets shut down because Google doesn’t like something, he’d still be fine.
So that is a good thing to watch out for, but I don’t think this is about attacking a competitor. I doubt most of Google even knows about L5.
I’d like to see it corrected because 1) well…it’s wrong… and 2) he does have a lot of influence nowadays, whether we like him or not. I think we can guarantee some potential supporters or customers were turned away.
I do agree when people say Purism needs to work on their public image and establish better confidence. Getting someone a lot of people trust on your side would be a good start.
That may be your opinion, that doesn’t make it actually wrong, and it isn’t being written in a way that indicates it’s an opinion.
Based on the evidence, Louis was correct at the time, and the video is a snapshot in time, and while releasing one file that most other companies wouldn’t is more open than tthose other companies in that one way it doesn’t refute the overwhelming majority of complaints and issues.
There are many ways the scam debate can be taken, I’m not going to go through all of them primarily because most people have already made up their mind on which of the perspectives they’re taking and no amount of sharing other perspectives will matter. Suffice it to say, this is not a simple black or white issue.
Also just because a person or company did something wrong then eventually got to a point to stop doing that wrong thing doesn’t mean they didn’t do that wrong thing and doesn’t mean they wouldn’t do it or something worse in the future. If anything it’s evidence that they are capable of choosing to do that, or worse, again in the future.
How about holding each other accountable so that we are able to be seen as self governing rather than a group that criticizes those outside its group but turns a blind eye to the wrongs of those inside the group?
Yet I still find myself in this position where if refunds hadn’t been paused (apparently paused I guess), I and many others would likely have no device and no refund at all because the money just runs out at some point.
Then they shouldn’t have promised refunds. That’s Purism’s fault.
I would argue that the only moral step for Purism to have made if they could not afford to provide promised refunds would have been to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Bankruptcy reorganization exists in order to have fair rules in determining which creditors get paid and how much with the goal to still have the business continue. This may be news to foreigners, but this is standard US business school “this is how it should be done” knowledge. The bankruptcy rules would have put customer debt (people who had paid for a phone) ahead of investors’ debt (e.g. convertible notes). I simply don’t see how people can justify putting investors ahead of consumers???
That’s your opinion. I think he was absolutely correct. Fact: Purism is a for-profit company who is advertising and marketing directly to privacy and FOSS advocates. How much is “real belief” and how much is “just marketing”? When I deal with for-profit companies, my default assumption is “just marketing”. Furthermore, IMO, Purism’s marketing and other promises has, IMO, almost always exceeded their delivery. Frankly I don’t understand how anyone can see the video where Todd Weaver says something to the effect of “… we’re talking 50,000 units by Q1 …” and not see what is clearly, IMO, “the grift”. COVID or not, that was IMO a lie. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDOHk8GB00M&t=1065s ). Also, do you not remember the Phoronix interview with the former Purism CTO? https://www.phoronix.com/news/Zlatan-Todoric-Interview ???
One the odd things about being a senior citizen is hearing in the news celebreties I’ve never heard of. Usually from the entertainment industry. I see their pics the news tabloids in the supermarket, and I ask myself “Who is that?” Although when Harry Belafonte and James Earl Jones died, I took notice.
So, who is this Louis Rossmann and why should I care?
If you chose to write this post instead of puting the name into a search engine you already don’t care, why should I (or anyone) care more than you do to tell you why you should care?
Basically you put more effort into asking someone else to tell you what to think than to find information for yourself, why should I care if you care unless my goal is to manipulate you?
Maybe I’m just more forgiving or willing to give the benefit of doubt and we’ll have to disagree. That does have its limits, but we’ll see how they do going forward.
He’s a very talkative and opinionated tech reviewer, electronics repair shop owner, right-to-repair activist with a popular youtube presence. But you could just as easily looked at wikipedia: Louis Rossmann - Wikipedia
He is a guy who freely admits that “he could be clearly talking out of his ass” when dissing Purism.
Based on the depth of his information (i.e. lack thereof), I conclude that the answer to “why should I care?” is: you shouldn’t.
He is a guy who says that if a big-time politician sent a computer in for repair and, while repairing the device, he discovered politically-relevant emails, he would leak the emails. For the record, I get where he is coming from with that but that is grossly unprofessional and a gross breach of trust.
OK, sure, if you send a device in for repair, you should either wipe it or encrypt it (well, it should already be encrypted) - but if you are not sufficiently technical to know that, should your repairer take advantage of that?
Once your device is sent out for repair, whatever happens to it during/after transit is out of your control, regardless of whether it should happen or not.
Gardiner (linuxgamer or something like that I think) used to, not sure about recently. But it was always about technology, not policy or support.
This seems a little like the early days of Microsoft/Apple/Facebook etc. startups… messy, questionable decision making, controversies… of course they had the advantage of insanely larger markets to cater to.
I don’t know if this is what happened here, but when you’re unwilling to compromise on principles at all, sometimes all you end up with is “well at least we stuck to our principles” as you file for bankruptcy and lose a bunch of investor funds. And then worse people end up winning again.
Possibly the biggest mess up was doing this as a “pre-order” instead of a kickstarter/investment thing where the risk was transparently obvious to everyone. Maybe I’m less critical because I realized I was taking a risk from the start. But also when I think about this in contrast to the horrible crap big tech has forced on us, it pales in comparison.