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Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

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Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#31

Post by _red »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #14

I like Librem, though I am a little concerned here. I prefer if hardware and services comes from different companies. Even well intentioned, it can be easy for a company to fall into vertical integration... Imagine a Librem 5 working best with their own service, and support for alternatives being a little weaker or less prioritized.

>I like Librem, though I am a little concerned here. I prefer if hardware and services comes from different companies

I actually agree 100% with you, however I think at this stage of the market development, its enough to have a 3rd choice who's apps and services are open.

Librem is facing the "Grandmother problem". In order for this concept to actually succeed, it eventually needs regular folks to buy it. Its not enough to tell thousands of grandmothers to "buy our phone hardware and simply download and install any of the dozens of confusing and competing software stacks by following these 20 instructions on github". It needs to be marketed and sold as coherent integrated product, otherwise just buy an old Samsung and root it yourself....

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#32

Post by arendtio »

1023bytes wrote: post #16

This is quite dishonest, they make it seem like they develop the apps themselves. But they don't and they give no credit to the actual original apps. Librem Chat = Riot.im Librem Social = Mastodon (specifically the Tusky app) Librem Mail = K9 Mail Librem Tunnel = OpenVPN

I wonder if they just took those apps and rebranded them or if they contacted those projects and asked for their permission (even if legally not required).

I mean, I like what Librem does in general and I also think that marketing those apps as a uniform service (without distracting attributions) is definitely a pro for consumers, but if I would be one of the contributors to those projects I might be a bit pissed off if they didn't ask for permission.

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#33

Post by mxuribe »

frenchman99 wrote: post #24
1023bytes wrote: post #16

This is quite dishonest, they make it seem like they develop the apps themselves. But they don't and they give no credit to the actual original apps. Librem Chat = Riot.im Librem Social = Mastodon (specifically the Tusky app) Librem Mail = K9 Mail Librem Tunnel = OpenVPN

I actually think it's great if there is commercial use of open source. That means they can reinvest development time into the projects, because their customers will depend on those projects. The alternative seems to be walled gardens. Other companies do similar things, such as Fastmail which develops the open source IMAP server Cyrus [1]. I've been a happy Fastmail customer for years. Cyrus is still free for anyone t…

Fully agree that it is great to see commercial offerings which help to further decentralize the internet - and by using open source software - as well as ensuring that their is a business model which will keep them available for customers. (Note, that i stated customers and not merely users.) From a capitalist perspective: the more choice, the better it is for consumers - and in this case it generates the side benefit of decentralization. The only thing i nitpick on here is that they really should disclose the underlying open source software that their platforms are based upon. I mean, it really shouln't take much more than a few entries into their FAQs.

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#34

Post by arendtio »

mtgx wrote: post #29
1023bytes wrote: post #16

This is quite dishonest, they make it seem like they develop the apps themselves. But they don't and they give no credit to the actual original apps. Librem Chat = Riot.im Librem Social = Mastodon (specifically the Tusky app) Librem Mail = K9 Mail Librem Tunnel = OpenVPN

They should've gone with WireGuard anyway.

And it should have been possible as Cloudflare showed with Warp: https://blog.cloudflare.com/1111-warp-better-vpn/

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#35

Post by Boulth »

1023bytes wrote: post #16

This is quite dishonest, they make it seem like they develop the apps themselves. But they don't and they give no credit to the actual original apps. Librem Chat = Riot.im Librem Social = Mastodon (specifically the Tusky app) Librem Mail = K9 Mail Librem Tunnel = OpenVPN

Yes. It struck me as odd too seeing familiar apps rebranded. Does Librem publish source code of their modifications?

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#36

Post by seba_dos1 »

jaydouken wrote: post #28
1023bytes wrote: post #16

This is quite dishonest, they make it seem like they develop the apps themselves. But they don't and they give no credit to the actual original apps. Librem Chat = Riot.im Librem Social = Mastodon (specifically the Tusky app) Librem Mail = K9 Mail Librem Tunnel = OpenVPN

This is something that I've noticed too. I really want to like this but they are claiming to charge people for apps that they don't own and are already free. If they said that they simply take care of all complicated hosting or simplified the process I'd be more optimistic about this.

They are charging for hosting, administration and development, not for the apps that are just branded and provided for the convienience. You can use any app you want, or use Librem-branded apps with other servers for free (both as-beer and as-freedom).

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#37

Post by StudentStuff »

Arathorn wrote: post #17
StudentStuff wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be wary of Librem Chat being viable long term, Synapse (the server software for matrix) is a real ram hog, we see it hover at ~2GB of ram with 5 active users and have bumped its VM up to a dozen gigs of ram to deal with it OOMing (despite having 4GB of ram). The documented switches like SYNAPSE_CACHE_FACTOR seem to cause wild oscillations in ram use and worsen the OOM problems, when enabled Synapse would jump bet…

Speaking as the project lead for Matrix; we are continuing to work on Synapse's RAM use, and it will only get better over time. One big misconception is that somehow RAM usage is related to the number of users on your server - instead, it's related to the size & complexity of the rooms your users are participating in. In other words, one person who joins thousands of rooms with thousands of users in them will use a l…

Looks like we are using sqlite and Python 3.5.3, synapse cache factor is currently not set in our config, any pointers for how to migrate to Postgres? This box has basically been given to me after the person who set it up gave up in frustration.

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#38

Post by seba_dos1 »

jclay wrote: post #22
1023bytes wrote: post #16

This is quite dishonest, they make it seem like they develop the apps themselves. But they don't and they give no credit to the actual original apps. Librem Chat = Riot.im Librem Social = Mastodon (specifically the Tusky app) Librem Mail = K9 Mail Librem Tunnel = OpenVPN

I agree and this strikes me as odd as well. I really want to like this product and it’s squarely in the area of a service I would pay monthly for. But, the Social app looks exactly like a twitter screen shot, and the VPN looks identical to PIA’s iOS app. The chat UI isn’t great, and the Mail app is even worse. They all look like apps you would find on F-Droid which are great, but I wouldn’t feel excited about paying…

Two things - you're not paying for apps in any way, they're FLOSS. You're paying for services - infrastructure, administration, "cloud" space etc.

Also, while Purism is indeed a for-profit company, it's actually an interesting case since it's a Social Purpose Corporation - it's not there to maximize profits, but to maximize its social purpose. It legally can't do anything that would be at odds with its legally defined social purpose: https://puri.sm/about/social-purpose/

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#39

Post by dmix »

1023bytes wrote: post #16

This is quite dishonest, they make it seem like they develop the apps themselves. But they don't and they give no credit to the actual original apps. Librem Chat = Riot.im Librem Social = Mastodon (specifically the Tusky app) Librem Mail = K9 Mail Librem Tunnel = OpenVPN

The VPN isn't a hosted service? Just the client software? A few others mention they are connected to subscription systems, such as the back-up service. So it seems to be more than just repackaged software, but software + service + support (the big barrier for most OS adoption - requiring the customer to set up and configure 6 different services).

Either way, anything that gets people using more encrypted open-source software is totally okay with me.

As long as they are transparent about their stack and the authors of the software are cool with it - why not have it bundled with clean packaging and a slick donation model?

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#40

Post by nickelcitymario »

Lots of great criticism on this thread. Lots of great reasons to maybe stay away from Purism.

However...

What I personally think is really interesting here is the bundle. I don't want to pay $10/month for a Twitter clone. I don't want to pay it for VPN. I don't want to pay it for email, or file storage, or contact manager, or payment system.

But as a bundle?

$10/month to actually solve all of my digital privacy concerns?

That's a rather appealing proposition. I'm not sold Librem One truly solves this, for all the reasons in this HN thread. But I think the idea that I could make a single Netflix-sized monthly payment to simply solve privacy across-the-board is something I could get behind. And I'm cheap AF.

They're onto something.

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