The Need For Clear Communications From Purism

Hardware Librem 5
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It does work however (it’s annoying, yes, but not a show stopper just yet). Might be the cause for the last minute case redesign? I recall a couple android phones in the past having an issues like this at launch and they were all resolved in software. They never said everything would be perfect software wise on launch with aspen, but i think their reasoning for only releasing it internally from what we can tell so far is to try and buff out the last remaining sore spots before letting it into the wild. Might even be solved already, considering they don’t seem to communicate much on their issue trackers either in some cases.

Again: If nothing shows on the 22nd outside of purism, then it would be worry time. I personally am going to stick with it.

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132

I’m pretty sure that’s packing. Just out of curiosity, has anyone else here worked factory/picking work? I did it years ago after quitting a job when I found out they were hiring at a higher rate for the exact same work (never quit a job unless you have something lined up). Y’know those plastic tubs of mini cookies you get at the convenience store? Yeah, I filled and weighed those, the lady next to me put the lid and tamper proof band on, etc. etc. down the line.
It’s hard freaking work!
If it’s purism employees doing the shipping (not used to that kind of work at that) I’m betting I can tell you exactly what they’re doing:
Lurch out of bed, do family responsibilities and shower etc. like a zombie while using tiger balm or aspercream like an addict, go to work, pack boxes, break, pack boxes, lunch, pack boxes, break, pack boxes, go home, do family responsibilities still in zombie mode :frowning: , try to have a beer for a treat before bed but pass out before you finish even half of it, dream of boxes…get up and do it again.

Thank you for packing our boxes to all and whomever is doing it :slight_smile:

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133

That’s really sad this bug has been open for three months. If anything a smartphone should be a flawless phone out of the box. That’s literally core functionality. I once bought my wife an economy Samsung Phone and after some time we realized that it was just ignoring calls from people around 25% of the time. Unless the callers left a voicemail we had no idea anybody had called (no ring, no missed call notifications). After doing some research I realized that nearly every Samsung smartphone made over the last five years suffers from a similar bug.

It astounds me to no end that people are willing to put up with that kind of crap. But hey if it’s okay for Android phone OEMs to ship out that kind of garbage, its okay for Purism too, eh? LOL. You guys are in the midst of tumbling down a very slippery slope. I wish you all the best of luck with the bottom.

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@jaylittle You keep saying the same thing over and over again in different threads. I am curious as to your motivation.

You do realize that is the standard behavior for trolls, right? Is that what you are trying to be?

Or are you trying to advertise yourself in some way?

I am going to give a piece of advice. I mean it sincerely, so I apologize if you take it the wrong way.

Everything you say on the internet that is not end-to-end encrypted is a resume piece.

Everything.

Ive been developing software for over two decades. I’ve been on teams where things go wrong. In one case we had core data set up in such a way (with fields set as an optional in the model but not in the corresponding Swift file) that worked just fine in Swift 2, but when we recompiled in Swift 3 some customers (many actually) that had corrupted data on there phones started experiencing constant crashes.

It was embarrassing. Our test phones and pilot group didn’t have the bad data, so the error wasn’t caught. And since the affected pieces of code didn’t actually change, it wasn’t caught in the code reviews (the app is > 300,000 lines).

You can handle those situations in 2 ways. We said, “Okay, we have a lot of crash logs (you can access them through Xcode). Let’s examine them, fix it, get it out.” We had a fix in review within hours.

The other way people react is to point fingers, and try to tear others down. I’ve seen that too. And, based on your recent interactions within these forums, I would put you in the second group.

The people I’ve brought onto our various teams, That I’ve mentored, I tell them to be the first type of guy, not the second type.

I hope in your job you are the first type, the “okay something is wrong let’s fix it type.”

If not, you are just going to tear your fellow employees, and your company, down.

I think you might take this advice wrong, but it is meant kindly. I really do hope in your work life you are constructive and help your coworkers to succeed.

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135

You do realize purism basically made the software from nothing? I mean yeah, the kernel and a few odd libraries existed, but otherwise they were pretty much on their own. It’s amazing they got it to a state where with a few more months of dev time could mean it might be pretty dang fine, in about three years, which is rather small considering the fact that they are a small company. They also told everyone that it’s not perfect yet, and that aspen is for those that are antsy to get one.

Pinephone hasn’t made their own software, and are leaving it up to the community.

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136

I’m not a troll. I’m just somebody who feels ethically compelled to warn you all before I depart. That way after this thing blows up and all of you are down and out at least $599.00 USD I can say to myself, “Well I tried to warn them”.

I realize that from your perspective there appears to be precious little difference between the two motivations. Unfortunately I’m not in a position where I can have a 100% frank conversation with you all about this and even if I was willing have that conversation, I certainly wouldn’t do it on Purism’s own forums.

Honestly given the level of zealotry present here, I doubt anybody would believe me anyway if I went into more detail. Everybody here is so dead set on the idea of this phone, no amount of damning reality will shake the core belief as it seems to be paired with a very sympathetic and understandable form of desperation. On some level I get it. I really do. I’m just as tired of this terrible user antagonistic smart phone ecosystem that we are all forced to live with. But I refuse to be part of a lie or a scam and this Librem 5 project has devolved into both.

As for my job, I’m a problem solver. I write code. People come to me with problems and I code tools which help to solve the stated problem (when possible). I’ve been doing that for the last 20 years. I hate pointing fingers. I am a doer. It pains me that in this situation, knowing what I know, this approach is the best I can muster. Maybe a year from now after this has blown up and its all over but the crying, feel free to reach out to me on reddit @ /u/jaylittle and I’ll be more than happy to explain in more detail.

Until then, take solace in the fact that I’ll be disappearing in short order. Just as soon as my Librem 5 refund clears. Once that happens, I have no intentions of coming back to this forum. What I am doing here is not fun and it’s not entertaining to me in any way, shape or form. It’s an ethical compulsion. Once my ties to this project have been severed, my ethical compulsion will dwindle significantly as it’s no longer my money on the line. Sniffing out the scam will officially become everybody else’s problem.

TLDR: The world is full of decent people, scammers and suckers. What kind are you?

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137

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t entertained. Sorry, but it’s the truth. @jaylittle You’re definitely adding PR value given your style of presenting totally unresearched extreme stretches and baseless accusations (no potential customer at this price point is really going take that seriously anyhow so it’s not like you’re doing any damage). I’m absolutely sure that if you have a valid reason for requesting a refund it will be honoured, but if I were Purism marketing I would just ‘loose the cheque’ for a few weeks to keep this going. After all, no publicity is bad publicity.
Gonna go make more popcorn now…

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138

I love how you trust a company to act in your best interests while simultaneously encouraging them to act against mine for mere comedic value. Your lacking sense of irony is quite stunning.

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@jaylittle You’re the one who keeps writing comments like that…
Oh, also, it’s all about the funny, It’s always all about the funny ! :smiley:

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I would like to see Purism’s communication with the community be like PINE64, which is much more open and direct.

However, we need to recognize that PINE64 has a different development model. It is trying to develop the hardware and it is relying on communities to provide the software, so it needs to talk publicly about every roadblock and setback it encounters, because it has to communicate with its development partners. Another difference is the fact that PINE64 produces products are mostly geared for tinkerers and developers, whereas Purism is aiming more for end users who may not have much technical knowledge. People who buy from PINE64 are more likely to understand what it means when PINE64 says that it has to switch the digitizer and not freak out and cancel their orders.

Purism is facing a very different situation than PINE64. The PinePhone is less of an investment since it only represents 1 year of development and less likely to break the company, since it it just one of many new products. Purism ~20 developers who have been working 2-3 years on the Librem 5, so it needs to be more careful and more reserved about what it says.

Purism has taken a much greater risk, trying to develop a new mobile OS, and investing in components that don’t require proprietary software. Look at the amount of work that Purism has invested in the Linux drivers for the i.MX8MQ vs the amount of work that PINE64 invested in the Linux drivers for the Allwinner A64 and Rockchip RK3399 for its projects.

What you have to think about is whether you support Purism’s goals vs PINE64’s goals, because they are fundamentally different. Purism’s mission is very important to me, which is why I preordered the Librem 5 instead of the PinePhone.

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141

I have muted this thread.

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142

Back to the phone echo issue, none of that discussion seems to focus on what I suspect the cause might be. All they talk about is feedback. I don’t see traditional feedback as the issue, even based on what little I read of that three-month old thread.

Traditional analog feedback manifests as a cascading, increasing tone (microphone/speaker squeal in the audio frequencies), not a faint repetition of speech, two seconds later. For a two-second propagation delay of an actual voice to occur in an electronic system, something entirely different has to happen. Even the Apollo astronauts didn’t experience quite a full two-second delay in their communications between the earth and the moon. Electronic communications travel at the speed of light. It’s possible that the feedback system involving the dev kit includes the phone carrier’s system in the active echo loop. There are digital switching delays (in silicon, not physical switches as most people think of switches), especially in a ‘TDMA’ time-division multiplexing system. There is error correction to retrieve lost packets. Most of that switching takes place in the carrier’s hardware. How to digitally reconstruct a digital voice signal from the carrier’s system is probably a secret that is found in the firmware blobs of each individual phone manufacturer.

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So do you think this is still a unsolved issue they are scrambling to fix? @StevenR

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Not sure where you live, but these are not mere buzz words in California.
They define the way company operates and it’s legal obligations to the state as well as to it’s shareholders, partners, employees, etc

http://jeremychenlaw.com/what-is-a-california-social-purpose-corporation/

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145

LOL - yet this company operates however it wants. We don’t even know who the shareholders are. We only know that we are not one of them.

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Oh but this part of that page I found VERY interesting…

Unless previously reported in the annual report, the board of directors has an on-going duty to send a special purpose current report to the shareholders within 45 days when the SPC (1) makes any expenditure of corporate resources in furtherance of the SPC’s special purpose objectives, (2) withholds any expenditures in furtherance of the special purpose, or (3) determines that the special purpose has been satisfied or should no longer be pursued.

To further transparency, the annual report and any current report must be made available on the SPC’s website and upon shareholder request. In addition, the annual report must be written in plain English.

Is this annual report accessible from Purism’s website?

Edit: It doesn’t appear to be. Surprise, surprise!

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Obviously, you mistook it for “mission statements” companies usually have on their websites. .
And this is your humble response?
This only shows how genuine your intentions are here.
I regret engaging in the first place.
Good luck with your refunds. Can’t come soon enough

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148

What’s your purpose here @jaylittle?
I really don’t understand you, i’ve read some post you wrote, and basically you dislike purism, that’s fine, but i do not understand your purpose, i don’t like nvidia because they don’t love open source but i’m not in their forum writing how bad they are, i just buy amd cards, and i vote companies with my money.
I don’t know if you are a troll, or you are a legitimate guy who wanna say something, and i don’t even care, they didn’t scam anyone, if a backer is not happy from something can get a refund, so respect their work, and since they made nothing wrong with any customer expecially you, stop feeding this forum with bad feelings as someone else do.

Thank You

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149

Looks like the first modem emails have been sent out!

This is from a user on the librem one support channel.

image
image1427×537 44.2 KB

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@Tatatirci While I am skeptical about a lot of what jaylittle has written, on this specific issue he is making a good point. According to the explanation by Jeremy Chen at the link that you provided, a SPC is required to produce a report every year, and make it available through its website. Jeremy Chen’s statement is a commentary on the law, and not the actual law, so it is possible I guess that there are exceptions and/or exemptions from this that may apply to Purism. However, on the face of it, it seems that Purism’s annual reports should be available through its website.

As for the rest of what jaylittle is saying, this is how I understand it:

  • he has some non-public knowledge about Purism that leads him to believe that the Librem 5 project will inevitably fail
  • he is not able or willing to share this knowledge with the rest of us
  • he cannot or will not tell us why he cannot share this knowledge

This is open to more than one interpretation, and I am not going to get into any discussion about the relative merits of those interpretations. Obviously, I hope that the project will succeed and I generally take an optimistic view. However, I got burned by the Jolla tablet project. At the time I made the point in a couple of places that patchy communication on a project like this is liable to be heavily interpreted, and opens up a space for speculation and doubt. I hope that Purism is aware of the Jolla tablet project, and is able to draw some useful conclusions from it about how to communicate with crowdfunding backers.

EDIT: While I was writing this, a sign that modem e-mails are being sent has appeared. Yay!

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