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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

#2
Awesome. Props to the Purism Librem team for excellent ongoing progress on the superb laptop, new phone, and this new Librem One software offering.

The offering is a bundle of services that respect you and your privacy. $7.99/mo for a software suite: Librem Chat (Riot), Librem Social (Mastodon), Librem Mail (K9), Librem Tunnel (OpenVPN), and more services coming soon e.g. Librem Files, Librem Backup, Librem Contacts, Librem Pay, Librem Dial.

The key value for me is all of these are curated, updated, available/accountable via one vendor, etc. Other people who prefer free-as-in-beer versions can still get Riot, Mastodo, K9, OpenVPN, etc. as is.

And if any of you are product managers or technical marketers, have a look at the Librem products matrix and explanations area-- in my opinion it's the among the best in the industry: https://librem.one/#mce_1

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#3
First sentence is "Purism is a Social Purpose Corporation (SPC), which means we put social good above exploiting people". I've never heard of a SPC before (probably because I'm not from the US) so had to look it up. It seems it's still a for-profit corporation, just that it "enables, but does not require, considering social or environmental issues in decision making".

Which means that "which means we put social good above exploiting people" should really be "which means we can put social good above exploiting people" as it's not a requirement.

So, what's the purpose of a SPC instead of just a for-profit company? A for-profit can also consider social and environmental issues, AFAIK.

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#5
post #2

Awesome. Props to the Purism Librem team for excellent ongoing progress on the superb laptop, new phone, and this new Librem One software offering. The offering is a bundle of services that respect you and your privacy. $7.99/mo for a software suite: Librem Chat (Riot), Librem Social (Mastodon), Librem Mail (K9), Librem Tunnel (OpenVPN), and more services coming soon e.g. Librem Files, Librem Backup, Librem Contacts,…

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 between 500MB and 3.8GB of ram constantly, eventually OOMing.

Edit: Also, the support channels for Synapse exist, but you will rarely get any response.

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#7
Privacy isn't fixed by technical products, it needs to be fixed at a legal level.

The existence of crypto near any product makes me immediately do a double take anymore, because there are tax implications there that you're kinda forcing on people.

The design of these apps needs to be much more refined if you want to charge money for them. I'm usually willing to give a bit on it when it's for the right cause, but... this stuff feels so off that it's tough to look at. If you're gonna play in the iOS app store, you need to be willing to invest in this.

End hot takes, I guess. I want Purism to succeed but I feel like they're just making the same mistakes every "year of the Linux desktop" scenario made, wherein they're not competing on the features that draw eyeballs. It doesn't need to be the focus, but you can't neglect it either.

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#8
post #3

First sentence is "Purism is a Social Purpose Corporation (SPC), which means we put social good above exploiting people". I've never heard of a SPC before (probably because I'm not from the US) so had to look it up. It seems it's still a for-profit corporation, just that it "enables, but does not require, considering social or environmental issues in decision making". Which means that "which means we put social good…

Seems quite similar to Public-benefit Corporations, though with a looser set of requirements in the states that permit SPCs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-benefit_corporation

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#9
post #3

First sentence is "Purism is a Social Purpose Corporation (SPC), which means we put social good above exploiting people". I've never heard of a SPC before (probably because I'm not from the US) so had to look it up. It seems it's still a for-profit corporation, just that it "enables, but does not require, considering social or environmental issues in decision making". Which means that "which means we put social good…

Fiduciary obligations perhaps? The administrator of a corporation has legal obligations to its shareholders. Maybe an SPC can skirt those.

Re: Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

#10
post #3

First sentence is "Purism is a Social Purpose Corporation (SPC), which means we put social good above exploiting people". I've never heard of a SPC before (probably because I'm not from the US) so had to look it up. It seems it's still a for-profit corporation, just that it "enables, but does not require, considering social or environmental issues in decision making". Which means that "which means we put social good…

With "normal" corporations, shareholders can sue if business decisions are not made to maximize shareholder profit.
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