I'm all for a Linux phone and I'm extremely worried about the state of corporate (and governmental) surveillance we're forced to live in.

But I can't trust manufacturers who focus on hardware, don't pick a software ecosystem to focus their efforts on, and don't contribute meaningfully to said ecosystem.

Software alone is a HUGE budget to get a successful phone.

Relying on volunteers won't cut it.

@thibaultamartin As it always has: software sells hardware.

@thibaultamartin Please define "software ecosystem", as it feels quite ambiguous:
- if that's the GNOME/KDE/whatever ecosystem, then I beg to differ: those seem to be flourishing and do mostly fine by themselves (more contributions always help, ofc)
- if that means Linux-based software at large (including the kernel, systemd etc...) then I agree; but I'd stress the importance of a fully working, upstream/mainline kernel (and bootloader) as kernel hackers are very scarce in the mobile community

@thibaultamartin You're talking about Pine64 right? Hard agree if so

@bart @thibaultamartin Well... Feel free to buy Librem 5 or other hardware from Purism. They do the right thing.

They did some things right, and many things (terribly) wrong. I’m not just talking engineering but also business.

I bought a L5 during the initial crowdfunding campaign, and I’m friends with some of their (former) staff.

@pavel @bart

@pavel @thibaultamartin @bart I wish you were right.

@pavel I don't agree with them rolling their own OS (PureOS) but otherwise I agree. Sadly they layed off most of their developers (at least the relevant ones for the Librem 5) and seem to be in severe financial trouble.

@bart yes, and the upcoming Liberux phone.

I don’t see anything in their communication or in their team indicating that they will contribute meaningfully to KDE, GNOME, or the upstream their os depends on.

@thibaultamartin Yeah I fully understand your worries. Them rolling their own OS is already a bad idea imo, and they should instead focus on writing and upstreaming their drivers and kernel changes and work with an existing distro and UI community.

@bart Well, software development is hard. Hardware is hard as well. Some people buy cheap hardware and do the development themselves. That's PinePhone, and that's ok. Some people want to sponsor development, so buy from Purism. That's also okay. Of course software developers won't agree with each other _how exactly_ to do the development :-). But mainline Gnome is slowly getting phone support, and so is KDE (AFAICT), so things are moving in right direction.