But as you move from vague language to more specific language, you are also indicating (perhaps without meaning to) more confidence in an estimate which then could also lead someone to an incorrect conclusion. Compare:
They could all be describing the same date, but as you get more specific, you subconsciously communicate to someone that you have more confidence.
Kyle, that’s exactly the thing:
You NEVER had to say “January 2019”. That was absurdly specific. If it had only been “2019”, you’ve had much less backlash, because the first “correction” to April 2019 would not even have been needed. And nobody would have not ordered because of “January” omitted.
Also, note that I didn’t write Q3. I wrote “current estimate: Q3 or later”. You’ll not hit shipping parity in Q2, and you know that. Please say so.
We all who are rooting for the success of your company and the Librem 5 just wish it would receive more press / comments on it’s awesomness and not defend it against needlessly bad press.
Why don’t you use the same English language you used here in the blog:
Chinese New Year, which cause essentially everything in China to shut down for a few weeks.
That few means 2 weeks in normal year and 4 weeks in pandemics.
Wait…
So you cannot give an estimate. you say any estimate would just be a guess.
But still link to the shipping FAQ in the store today (I literally just went to the order page today.)
Purism knows the information is wrong, but still tell new customers it is right around the corner so they can secure the customers order??
it still says order now, and get it in a few months.
it still links to the FAQ release in november,
which still says shipping parity is expected for USA devices in a couple of weeks.
still says early backers should be fulfilled last year.
still says that you’ll have information to send out updates in two weeks.
I really like that this shipping update thread dissolved into questions of morality… and I agree with you deceptions appear to be borne from optimism rather than malice.
but there does come a time when a C level is saying in public We’ve got no idea when we can supply. but the company still keeps inaccurate information in their shop that optimism becomes malicious.
I’m happy to be generous and believe that the company perhaps forgot that an update from November is linked in the shop. perhaps they forgot the wording that was used in a shop that promises an inaccurate time frame, that Kyle says they definitely cannot commit to now.
But it’s been weeks since this was pointed out, and the information remains in the shop.
At some point inaction to remove false information does become a lie.
at some point telling people that devices are being mass produced (when you know they aren’t because you don’t have enough CPU.) stops becoming optimism, and starts becoming fraud.
I wasn’t aware that some outdated update was still linked in the shop. That’s a fixable thing. When information changes we do attempt to update things where appropriate but one of the downsides of trying to publish more frequently and with changing information, is that sometimes you cross-link to that “new” information that at some point is no longer new. Then you have to follow up and fix that and in this case it looks like we didn’t.
exactly!
https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+few
determiner · adjective
Similar: a small number, a handful, a sprinkling, one or two, a couple, two or three, not many, hardly any
Opposite: a lot
The difference between Q3 and “few months” is that you are giving hope to the customers that it might be quite soon. If you know it’s not gonna be soon, you should not say that, because some customers will be upset. You probably have a hope in that yourself, which is why you are giving such estimates. I suggest to stop doing that and deliver earlier than promised as a result.
Q3?! Is that for real?! That would be a truely and utterly depressing estimate.
If end of October 2017 order results in delivery in May 2021 then, we can guess, November and December 2017 orders may ship in June 2021, all orders later in July and August 2021. In this case it’s already Q3, isn’t it?
Honestly this nonsense is why the reputation of Purism out on other forums is absolutely horrible, it’s difficult to find anyone that doesn’t believe that as a company, they just keep promising and never deliver.
Just like "we will begin shipping the liberem 14’s in February yet no one has gotten any email address confirmations (it could happen, just no reason to think that based on past experiences).
In reality the answer is more likely the last week of February into March is the estimated start time for shipping.
And the honest answer for parity in shipping for the L5 is no sooner than the end of 2021, anything earlier than that will be met with heavy skepticism at best. To order an L5 now and expecting in less than 6-8 months is a pipe dream at best. So, prove me wrong Purism.
But to be clear, I firmly believe in what Purism is doing and I will eventually be ordering an L5 when funds become available, WHEN shipping times are accurate and short.
I am sorry to say that, after having been dissapointed time and time again over the last two years, for me, by now all of the intitial joy and optimism have seeped out of this project.
Except that we are currently shipping Librem 5s each week. Each step of the way we’ve published estimates based on the best information we had at the time. Unforeseen problems happened at various steps along the way that caused delays and each time we’ve communicated that. If we could have foreseen those problems then we would have (by definition) factored them into our past estimates.
We’ve also tried to communicate the status of things more and more, in particular over the last year. As we get firm dates we feel we can stand behind, we share them, when we don’t think we can make a good estimate, we say so. When things change, we share that. We’ve even shared a potential CPU supply chain issue that might affect things in the future.
And when we have a better estimate for when a brand new order will ship than “in a few months” we’ll update that too.
So what’s the Purism definition of “a few”? More specifically, what’s the minimum in our context?
I’ve always personally thought of “a few” as meaning generically “three or more” because you’d say “one” or “two” if less. If someone told me they’d pay me a few thousand dollars for my used car, then showed up with $1000 or $2000 I’d be surprised.
In the context of months I suppose personally speaking the range would be (this is not some official Purism statement here, so please don’t jump to conclusions) I’d reasonably conclude “a few months” to range from as little as 3 months to maybe as many as 9.
I am doing my best not to offend or blame anybody personally, or even Purism as a company.
It’s just that all the waiting and hoping and checking his forum is starting to take its toll. I had my hopes up before, but at the end of last year, I was thinking this time it would really happen: the L5 might arrive in a ‘few’ months.
Now I am faced with another 6 to 8 months (which is definitely more than a few) of the same. And I am really not looking forward to it, to say the least.
That triggers me to ask, what is the definition of “reliable estimates”? Reliable is not the same as conservative.
Is this thread really devolving into a debate on semantics?
If it is, at least point out that in order for the word “lying” to be accurate there has to be intent to deceive, something that so far hasn’t been demonstrated here, instead of trying to find loopholes to justify one’s displeasure (read: impatience) by demanding that this company adhere to one’s personal dictionary.
If people were half as patient waiting on the phone that’s never been built before during a globally-affecting event that’s never happened before as Kyle is in defining his interpretation of the word “few,” they could actually happily go about their day.
“Backed by shipping data and other estimates through our supply chain we feel are reliable.” This is why we only sent out some shipping estimates instead of all–we had confirmed CPU supply for those orders and feel we can stand behind those shipping estimates as long as some unforeseen future crisis doesn’t hit.
As we secure more CPUs and have confidence in that and all the other timelines that factor into when a particular Librem 5 ships, we’ll send out more estimates.
You can see it that way. You can also see that lots of the community/backers/customers (directly or indirectly 
) share the sentiment, that it is a negative surprise to them if “few” takes on to mean “5 or more” (ordering today) or even “7 or more” (ordering in November).
Instead of taking that into consideration (replacing “few” with “several”, “some”, “at least 5”, …), Purism again insists that they did their best to communicate to the best of their knowledge, setting up more upcoming customers for frustration, shared in social media.
The only light at the end of the tunnel here is that “few” is a self-repairing statement. End of Q1 it will (hopefully) be pretty accurate. So, it affects only the new customers of the next 60 days, and of course much less than those of the last 60 days 
Seriously? You say a few months and you think nine months is part of that? Nobody thinks nine months when you say a few months! 