[deanhills]

I was wondering whether anyone has come across this "new" phone.  It really has me curious.  Librem 5. It seems to be part of a family of devices belonging to Purism who are using the products to create a "digital rights movement":
https://puri.sm/products/

Here is more information about the phone:
https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

It claims to have a completely free open-source OS.

This is the message that comes with its marketing - sounds very attractive as it is hitting all the right buttons - wonder how successful it will be:

As a social purpose company, Purism believes building the Librem 5 is just one step on the road to launching a digital rights movement, where we—the people—stand up for our digital rights, where you place the control of your data and your family’s data back where it belongs: in your own hands. Let’s declare, “We will no longer allow unfettered access to our photos, videos, email, text messages and application and usage data without our permission.”

Today, the news are filled with articles that show how tech companies are exploiting your data and weaponizing it.

By purchasing a Librem 5 phone you are supporting a future of digital privacy, invested in supporting an open, community-driven environment. Vote with your wallet to support a future safe from digital exploitation and create a secure and respectful environment for you, your children and society as a whole.

[tiwil]

Uh, another phone OS. It's going to be same like how PCs OS. More and more OS are going to be developed and so many phone OS developers around the world. This is pretty good for users but no for phone OS developers.

Phone developers with will have less users with their OS (and maybe cannot any longer get their customer data ) and users will have more and more OS to choose.

Anyway, sometimes open source application may harm your own electronic devices as it's open source and hacker can easily check and find where's the part that's vulnerable.

[Mashiro]

PureOS is based on Debian by the way (even on the phone!). The phone is basically running Debian. So if everything they added to it is open source then their claim "fuilly open source" is of course valid. Privacy wise Debian by default is very good but I don't know about their modifications.

The problem I see is mostly that the phone is a rather low-mid end device for the price of a flagship.

[rudra]

@deanhills
i am following their progress for a while now. They aim to make it all transparent and open. But did you check their prices ? I can't even think of touching one. Ouch.
It is rather easy to check our pc by analyzing traffic that it is safe. much more cost effective.

That company is engaged in reverse engineering those closed systems and writing code that functions same way. to avoid lawsuits. That is very costly. Also it will neither keep up with latest developments in hardware nor with software/firmware patches.

I just wish a company made a line of hardwares totally open. But the unfortunate reality is the huge amount of intellectual property / patents is owned by a few big chip makers. you can count them on one hand. they are behemoths and behemoths hardly ever brought on disruptive tech. Our only hope is someone like elon mask comes along and does that. like hugo bara did by setting up xiaomi for affordable electronics market.

tiwil,
really wrong assessment. There will always remain bugs and it will rather increase until and unless some kind of provably {machine provable. that will work like compilers. did you ever stop to think how the first compiler got compiled. haha. also how a lang compiler can be written in that same lang. haha. read and you will know. what fun } safe language is used. there are. but then i dont know if its widespread usage is even practical or possible. not everyone is computer scientist in dev world. A lot of people working on parts is bound to make things with bugs with our normal languages. There is tens of thousands of lines of code. millions ?

So it is always better to be opensource. Even for farmware and such. I am sure it would generate huge interest and big following.


thanks

@HR
yes. extremely costly and not that high spec to jusgify for us normal users.

[tiwil]

tiwil,
really wrong assessment. There will always remain bugs and it will rather increase until and unless some kind of provably {machine provable. that will work like compilers. did you ever stop to think how the first compiler got compiled. haha. also how a lang compiler can be written in that same lang. haha. read and you will know. what fun } safe language is used. there are. but then i dont know if its widespread usage is even practical or possible. not everyone is computer scientist in dev world. A lot of people working on parts is bound to make things with bugs with our normal languages. There is tens of thousands of lines of code. millions ?

So it is always better to be opensource. Even for farmware and such. I am sure it would generate huge interest and big following.


thanks

Yup, I know there will be remain bug in every single application that have been made. We also know how volunteer all around the world working to fix Linux-based OS.

But, we all know that in this kind of world, you also met bad people that want to harm your PC/phone. That's the point I'm talking about.

From my newbie point as a user, I think it's way faster for hacker to hack a system that's open-source than the one that's not open-source. Take a look on Wordpress, it's open source, and we see how many attack in Wordpress and Wordpress need to be updated to prevent hackers.

[Melvin]

dam man the price is too high comparing with the phone features you can deal with a low price and much more better performances such as the note 9 or the s9 plus they are the gangster of the market now none of the 2019 products can deal with them for now.

[rudra]

Yup, I know there will be remain bug in every single application that have been made. We also know how volunteer all around the world working to fix Linux-based OS.

But, we all know that in this kind of world, you also met bad people that want to harm your PC/phone. That's the point I'm talking about.

From my newbie point as a user, I think it's way faster for hacker to hack a system that's open-source than the one that's not open-source. Take a look on Wordpress, it's open source, and we see how many attack in Wordpress and Wordpress need to be updated to prevent hackers.

You didn't get the point. Hackers , especially state actors will spend all their efforts to hack. But when the code is opensource, everyone interested can take a quick look anytime they want and the whole bug swatting gets a lot easier and really fast and efficient for popular systems. Just see what happens with Android ( not getting update is OEm issue) and also how Intel processors had so much poo in them behind closed doors.

Now in case of wordpress, that is a behemoth and mostly used by web developers and normal users and not computer experts. Also the errors mostly come from incompatible plugins and themes. the core is well and good.

So your points do not count.

Security in obscurity is really really futile.

[LightDestory]

Nowadays smartphone's market is filled by Android & iOS devices, speaking of Android you can find low-mid-high price range.
I don't think that a new OS will likely survive on the currently smartphone jungle. Why

• How many people will buy it? Common smartphone user doesn't know what means "open source" anyway. It will be a products for a very few geek people.
  
• Thinking about the previous point, Do you think developers will port their app on this new OS? Developers don't work for free, if they can't earn any money they will not support it. We got an example from the past: Windows Mobile/Windows 10 Mobile was affected by lack of apps, the few apps that WM's user got were ported by developer with Microsoft Support behind them. 
  
• "Common smartphone user" lives with apps, if you tell someone that on this particular phone there isn't "instagram/facebook/what's app/telegram/ <any mainstream application" it will not buy it. (Please don't count as apps the web form of services such as Telegram Web).
  

We got examples also from the past:

• Ubuntu Touch was a project with the aim to port a Ubuntu on smartphone. It didn't live for long: abandoned by Canonical and then by UBPorts it is now faded away from our mind.
  
• Tizen, born as a smartphone open source OS, currently used only on Smart TV or SmartWatches with very few app available (read the list of disadvantages up there.)
  
• PostmartketOS, it was good project, but currently we don't know how it will end: started as a smartphone OS replacement currently it is a geek linux distro for smartphone that doesn't support any smartphone features.
  
• Sailfish OS, currently the most "usable on daily device" project but still lacks on apps. IT can emulate and run Android apps it doesn't work every time. Don't except to run on it games or heavy apps. What did I forget? Well, It owned by Jolla and the last phone shipped with this OS was on 2016. There are also VERY FEW smartphone supported and almost every planned device is now a ghost.
  

PureOS, the OS that will power up the smartphone of this thread is almost like Sailfish. I can't predict the future but I think it will end like Sailfish.

We have also a example from our time:

• The "new" Huawei OS called HongMeng that was like "hidden weapon" of the OEM it is still an alpha stage for smartphone usage. HongMeng was developed as a TV OS and as a "chinese-market" OS, so they weren't developing any Android emulating for apps because almost every app was intended for chinese people. Huawei is not ready to use it as an Android replacement, in fact on few articles Huawei CEO stated that HongMeng will land of smartphone ONLY if US block will be actived.
  
• Pinephone is like PureOS/SailFishOS. I don't know how it will end but it is another project in development.
  

[sagher]

Day after day we heard about new OS , once Huawei announced to launch Hongmeng OS, and Google wish to go on there own system "Fausia" which is betting more efficient then any other Android OS. but i have a question. can we able to convert OS of our Smartphones in future? or people bought many phones to enjoy different OS's

[deanhills]

@deanhills
i am following their progress for a while now. They aim to make it all transparent and open. But did you check their prices ? I can't even think of touching one. Ouch.

Aha, great you've been following them. The message is probably just your kind of message. Yes I did notice the high price, and yes that was a big ouch for me too.  I'll never be able to afford it.  Even if I could afford it, I'd have to find really good arguments for justifying the expense.  Like for a company to go against the big behemoths in the market, they'd have to have a very solid philosophy with lots of integrity to back it up with, and not just a marketing message that sounds good to the masses.

That company is engaged in reverse engineering those closed systems and writing code that functions same way. to avoid lawsuits. That is very costly. Also it will neither keep up with latest developments in hardware nor with software/firmware patches.

I just wish a company made a line of hardwares totally open. But the unfortunate reality is the huge amount of intellectual property / patents is owned by a few big chip makers. you can count them on one hand. they are behemoths and behemoths hardly ever brought on disruptive tech. Our only hope is someone like elon mask comes along and does that. like hugo bara did by setting up xiaomi for affordable electronics market.

You're right about this.  And even if they would make a little progress (which I doubt in retrospect), they'd probably be bought out to silence them by one of the big corporations.