Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs • Hacker News Board

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#271

Post by mises » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 4:37 PM UTC

bubblethink wrote: post #265

mises wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have released the source for their fork: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel . Linux specifically does not use the GPLv3 for exactly this reason. rms et al. complained about "tivoization", which came from tivo shipping boxes that contained the code but were locked down. Linus didn't really care as much, or at least not enough to re-license. He didn't like the restriction, and new that such a provision…

That's orthogonal though. WSL would be fine even with GPLv3. It runs on a hypervisor. WSL poses no restrictions on modifying the source of the kernel. You can fork, rebuild and run. You can't on a tivo device.

Not exactly. Microsoft is trying to expand functionality in certain places to allow things like CUDA acceleration, AF_PACKET support, and other important hardware-y things that WSL can't handle. You're right that you can run a different kernel, but Microsoft has modified theirs for WSL. For that reason, they have to release modifications.

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#272

Post by fataliss » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

chupasaurus wrote: post #167

fataliss wrote: post #161

While I like underdogs and developing a 3 player in the smartphone OS market. That $700 seems like high cost to contribute to R&D.

It's a small (2.5k to 3k) batch and unusual tech specs (i.e. last time completely detached from SoC cellular/wi-fi modems were made in 2012 according to Purism). If there was a demand for 100k batch, it would be cost closer to $350 I believe.

That makes sense. I guess there is always a community of Early adopters with disposable income willing to pay high dollar to play with the phone and contribute to it's development. Guess my idealistic mind wants to shortcut to the part where the phone is in an iPhone hardware/UI polish level with a linux OS solution, at which point I'd be happy to pay top dollar for it!

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#273

Post by 8881 » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 8:33 PM UTC

The key question here is : can the phone be booted from the removable storage card ? Without such final control of your data, you can be pressed to decrypt your internal disk by any repressive acting party - and those are rising steadily. Hence the only save way to give users REAL control of their data, privacy - and safety from torture, repression etc, is a removable storage which holds the OS and user data. Anything less looks like cosmetic pseudo privacy and security.Can Librem boot the OS from the sd card, then ?

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#274

Post by grumpy-cowboy » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 8:05 PM UTC

Endy wrote: post #268

moftz wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is that confusing for you, just go buy a Samsung or iPhone from your carrier.

Unfortunately, as long as the standard response is dismissive like yours, that's what the majority will do. When someone expresses confusion, the goal shouldn't be to send them to the mainstream product, it should be to go back and explain your product more clearly. Stop being an elitist and start recognizing that helping people is a basic requirement of supporting a product or service.

Why? What is wrong about having a product dedicated to elitists? Not everything have to be accessible to everyone and it's a good thing. :)

Re: Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs

#275

Post by Endy » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 7:29 AM UTC

grumpy-cowboy wrote: post #274

Endy wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, as long as the standard response is dismissive like yours, that's what the majority will do. When someone expresses confusion, the goal shouldn't be to send them to the mainstream product, it should be to go back and explain your product more clearly. Stop being an elitist and start recognizing that helping people is a basic requirement of supporting a product or service.

Why? What is wrong about having a product dedicated to elitists? Not everything have to be accessible to everyone and it's a good thing. :)

When you have a piece of consumer-focused hardware which could help bridge the gap for mainstream users into a world of Free & Private, what you should be doing is actively seeking ways to bring them in. Besides that, it's an expensive commercial product. It needs to sell very well, or else it will make no impact where it needs to - in the mind of the average user.

Focus on the high-level person if you want. But have a simple version so you extract as much money as you can.