New Post: Librem 5 News Summary: January 2021

True, but the signal-to-noise ratio is low. In fact, I waste too time scrolling past, what can only be described as tirades. At this point I have a sense of whose comments I should scroll past, which required wasted effort on my part.

As an unsecured creditor, when I ordered and paid for the L5 over two years ago, I put a reminder on my calendar to check on progress every month since I knew that the hardware challenge that Purism had set itself was very difficult and it would be a long, hard slog with many setbacks.

I only joined and started coming to the forum last year when it became clear to me that Purism was getting tantalizing close to its goal and I need to start preparing for its arrival. In that time, I have found the technical discussions extremely valuable and implemented several, but the “business” discussions to be repetitive and generally of very low quality.

Finally, I have to say that I admire @Kyle_Rankin’s patience; I could not do what he is doing in this forum.

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I would make the post and then lock it from comments …

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You changed the time for new orders from 6 months to “a few months” back in Nov 2020 when Evergreen was released. After two months of production you can say that late Oct 2017 pre-orders will be shipped only in May 2021. That makes it to be at least 6 months for Nov 2020 orders, and very optimistically, it can be 9 months (with shipping in Aug 2021).

But, you’re saying in the blog that "it turns out we have been able to ship more than we initially predicted".

So I can assume that “our best estimate at the time based on the information we had at the time” was worse than my already optimistic estimate of 9 months for orders placed in Nov 2020, which you called as "a few months".

Can you see your deception deceiving stunt, yet?

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I too, have seen Purism make many attempts at conveying more information. I still see room for improvement, but I think they are doing what they can. I think maybe the feelings of dishonesty are quite possibly language barriers as well as acquired customer attitudes perpetuated by marketing and consumerism. The finer points of speech in any second (third, fourth) language take the longest to become familiar and accustomed to, and before then can often be misinterpreted in subtle but important ways. Likewise where it exists that better wording could have been used, does not automatically imply that something shady was intended. Sometimes, we simply say something without fully thinking it through. It happens to all of us.

On Mastodon, everytime Purism shares something, that should be praised, I see the same whiners complaining. The comments are always about price and shipping.

There is a prevalent attitude that anything expensive today is unfairly out of reach, if the individual can’t reach in their pocket right away and pay for it. It is entitlement 101. Saving doesn’t hurt you. It is good for you, and a necessary tool for acquiring the things you’d like in life.

Shipping is something that I can more easily understand, but at the same time cannot. Maybe because I more fully understand the challenge of what Purism is trying to do (and is doing) with the Librem 5, I am able to see this for what it is. The L5 can’t be rushed. The Pinephone might be available now, but they have not had the same struggle, and if Purism hadn’t pushed so hard with Phoc/Phosh, etc. they wouldn’t have a working phone even if the hardware was done.

The fact of the matter is, if you want a mobile computer phone with hardware kill switches you HAVE to wait. All the whining in the world will not speed anything up. Bad mouthing and spreading negative attitudes towards the company, just lowers the tide for all boats in the harbor. You aren’t doing anyone any favors with your self righteous entitled out bursts. This is not directed at anyone who wanted to be patient but has suffered a change in their situation due to the current world issues.

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Better test them before use, like this. Call her and say:
-“Mom, I’ll come visiting in a few months, ok?”
-“Sure, darling, Spring is a nice time to visit.”
-“Mom, I mean, Automn.”
-“What? you son-of-a…!”

I was referring specifically to the 7th post post in the thread.
Not intended to derail anything.

How is this contributing to the quality of the discussion?

It is easy to expect perfection from others. Doesn’t mean it is not 100% hypocritical and impossible.

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Kind of, yes, we are all unsecured creditors, (meaning we’d be behind secured loan repayments in the event the company folds and goes to administration. But that doesn’t mean we all lack of further protection.

I ordered with a credit card, so my order is not without protection, if the device doesn’t arrive, I have an expectation that the credit card company will refund me, and then they (or their insurance company) will pursue Purism. (as mentioned in the other thread.)
Stupid as it sounds the backers technically got what they paid for as soon as they sent the money, the intent was to fund open source development and potentially get a phone, if that phone could make it through the process to an economical manufacture process. - if you are a backer you might not be a creditor.
If Purism stop tomorrow and say, couldn’t be done, we got so far, but that was it. you got what you paid for (development of ideas) but I didn’t get what I paid for (product)…

The customers bought a phone, (product) - that’s the point I was trying to make in the thread where a guy was saying he’s sell his spot in the backers line. - the backers have no real recourse, but the customers do…

This is what I keep saying, there is a general assumption amongst a lot of people that we’re all the same class of consumer, and that we all purchased with the same information, and that’s not correct.
We’re not all backers. we didn’t all fund an idea, and we didn’t all know about either the delays or the history of delays… and it is crazy that some people seem to want others to believe that all people are as unprotected as they are…

We are all unsecured creditors - yes, well maybe, possible no.
We all have no protections - no.

I see two reasons for this:
1, people assume things.
for example, assuming everyone is a funder/backer, assuming we all lack protections. - there are different views for different reasons. but conversations about business appear low quality because there is a lack of good information at the input side. (garbage in, Garbage out applies to more than information systems)
Like your statement that we’re all unsecured creditors, yes that is (or could be) true, but no it is not the whole story. for one group of people that is high quality information, to another group, it is low quality.)
When we’re making assumptions and offering advise based on our assumptions, our advice is only as good as our education, experience and capabilities to convey advice, and can only be as good as the assumptions we start with- if those assumptions color the advice…
(and yes, of course, I’m guilty of this as well!)
.

2, nobody knows any other persons background…
for example This is touched on in the other thread where Kyle said he thought that the frustrations were because people don’t know how hard it is to do things. -which is potentially true in some cases, -but not all cases.
(so for some people they might think, “fair, I don’t know how difficult it is, and my frustration is at least partly rooted in that ignorance”, whilst others look at that and think, “no, I know all about that, my frustration is rooted in …[insert gripe here]…”) and for the second group of people, the statement “oh, you are frustrated because you don’t understand how difficult this is” feels like a shitty position to take, it’s condescending. -and the response to calling that out is to double down and blame the customers! - you see how personal knowledge changes the reception of the statement without the message changing at all?
There are some things that are universally true, (for example in all communication there are senders, who encode and send a message, the the receiver who decodes the message.) - and you should consider the reception of your message, -and if it is proven not to work, (like your statements are misinterpreted again and again and again, just maybe the problem could be fixed by say hiring a copy writer.)
If you know this already, you’d consider it low quality information (no benefit to you) if you don’t know it, it’s high quality information…
.

There is a huge difference between some kid living in parents basement and some captain of industry… (for sourcing business advice.) - and (unless I tell you) you’ve no idea where I sit on that spectrum. (and even if I did tell you -how could you believe me?!)
If I start talking about sales projections, planning horizons, roadmaps, milestones, critical path/flow, customer experience gap analysis etc… - Then you will also need to asses (for yourself) does this (guy?) know what he’s talking about, or is he playing buzzword bingo with a bunch of crap he just googled.

The quality of advise a person is able to give is going to depend a lot on their education, experience, view of the problem and their starting assumptions, especially if they are offering one thing as a simple solution. with the more people don’t see, the lower quality the information becomes…

It would be incredibly difficult for anybody to share business advice meaningfully to help Purism without a significant buy in from Purism. - and then they have the same problem… who’s advice should they listen to? because there is no way to verify who has what credentials. - and they would be playing a much higher risk “game” sourcing any business advice to use in their actual company!
You have no idea whether what I say about business practices can be trusted or not.
and worse they have no idea of peoples motives…

So… you can see, it becomes really difficult to get into the detail of a 5 point customer experience gap analysis, without Purism wanting to participate publicly. Critical incident technique to evaluate customer experience (as a methodology) has been poisoned from the start.

In short, it is not surprising that Purism aren’t following advice given for free on a forum, but that does not necessarily speak to the quality of the advice being given.

Locking the thread as I personally don’t have anything new to add to the off-topic discussions that we continue in each of these news posts, and it doesn’t seem that anyone else that continues those threads in each new post does either.

Everyone who wants to continue in those discussions is free to create a topic in Round Table.

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