Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

Yes, and this is at least partly because parts of Sailfish are not (yet) open source, and need input from overworked Jolla devs to integrate new features properly. I'm guessing that this won't be a problem with the Librem phone.

I agree with the sentiment, but there are a lot of deficiencies in Sailfish OS with support for open-source and/or privacy-respecting apps/services too. Try getting a fully-functioning Matrix app for Sailfish: there are problems or deficiencies with all of the currently available clients for Sailfish users. I don't think that that will be a problem with anything that Purism put out ;)

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

What makes you say that? There quite simply isn't a mobile oriented matrix client to be had on a linux system anywhere. Matrix keeps spawning features and so 'fully functioning' is a reasonable treadmill for any app developer to keep up with.

What exactly is the difference you're expecting to see between this currently mythical purism mobile os and sailfish?

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

Well, Purism have hitched their wagon to Matrix ("Purism is making the Librem 5 the first ever Matrix-powered smartphone"), so they are presumably going to make some effort to support a broad set of features, even if a feature-complete mobile client isn't feasible. With Sailfish, there is nothing available that supports (for example) VOIP on Matrix, and little prospect of anything much appearing in the foreseeable future. Even the new Transponder project won't. If you have a commercial version of Sailfish with Android support, you might try Riot, but receiving VOIP doesn't work with that and notification is very unreliable, even with Android apps notifications installed. (I'm not pointing the finger at anyone here BTW.)

I have read elsewhere on this forum and on TJC that some third-party Sailfish app development has hit problems at the point that developer resources from Jolla are needed, and that this is at least partly to do with dealing with the closed-source parts of the OS. It seems to me that this specific issue won't be such a problem with the Librem phone.

I do understand of course that the Librem phone is some way from delivering, and like any project of its type it could fail. I also understand that for all sorts of reasons developer interest may be low, even if it does deliver. However Purism's approach is different from Jolla's in some important respects, and I would expect to see some differences in the user experience as a result, for example:

* Matrix support (as I have said)
* Sailfish's native e-mail client has some crippling problems with rendering speed that have really surprised me. I would imagine that Purism will do better.
* Being able to choose which search engines to add to the native browser without having to do any coding

This is largely speculation on my part of course and I might be proved completely wrong ;) but I am very interested to see how it will work out.

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

Yeah i'm fairly skeptical about the whole 'matrix-powered phone' thing, matrix the company hit funding issues not that long ago and status.im just threw them a cool $5m presumably to try and fight off telegram and so I would expect that development effort will go into that rather than into purism's offering.

Purism have a huge problem in that they want to meld old school telephony and new things like matrix into the same stack, which there is currently no obvious solution to and so they'll have to invent one. And don't say telepathy because theres a very wide gulf between what matrix can do and what telepathy has support for.

As for Audio/Video calls on Sailfish, theres a couple of developments. The latest gstreamer has a native webrtc plugin I've been investigating getting it working with gst-droid. Theres also qtwebengine support which is on the list for Sailfish 3 which we might have better luck with plugging into the android camera HAL.

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

Not that I disagree (I honestly do not) but it's sorta the same type of folly of thinking that you can create any ****ing device now that will access any part of the Internet and offer some privacy.

We've long since traded convenience for privacy. Let's see if these guys get it right.

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

If you are overcautious with privacy matters and choose Purism only to maximize yout privacy, then yes. I'm not that worried about privacy, and yes I use Facebook. (No whatsapp but mostly because it is not available for Sailfish/Maemo). The reason I would choose Purism might be having a Linux phone. To support open source. To have a phone which is capable to do everything I need. In my list, privacy is not in top 5.

Like I said about being different, I also think that the privacy thing also isn't big enough for a marketing argument. It is better than just being different, but not much.

Also, the having a smartphone mostly means being connected to online services. Many of them require account registration. So just having a smartphone isn't the thing you should do when overconcerned about privacy. Just stick to that old Nokia 3110, and keep it shut down and to be sure, wrap a piece of tin foil around it!

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

mmm... No.

Ever heard of pipng your stuff via vpn to and from a secure location... better yet, use tor to totally hide where's the other endpoint?

And as for services that require registration, well many don't and even some quite a few that do won't track you maliciously, services that are not run by companies but by community... :D

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

Well, a big difference I see is that Purism is trying to sell a phone (or more precisely a platform : selling hardware with up-streamed software support), whereas Jolla tries to sell an OS.
Good default software/upstream for purism is a way to help to sell more hardware.
For Jolla it is the product (at least as seen from the community. Corporations/government may see the product as the service/support around it, like RedHat does).

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

Well, they is still some work required to review the contributions and overall running a real upstream project. But there should be in general lot less friction when stuff is open and there is an upstream - provided the Librem project delivers something people can contribute to.

Re: Purism Librem Phone
 

mmmm... Yes. But I said "mostly". And I still think that even as it is possible to hide yourself completely, most smartphone users are not doing that. I don't know if they should, but anyway. But I think that the biggest problem in one's privacy is the person himself and how he acts in the Internet. Not any secret FBI backport hidden to the code, or Google's / iOS's forced account registration but the user. So I think that advertising Librem phone as most secure smartphone is almost lying, as it doesn't make most people act any more secure so nothing changes :D It's like saying to a customer that just buying that excercise bike will make you lose weight :D I'm joking but also got your point. I know that there is several options to make your browsing/internet using more secure. But I was originally speaking about the predictable sales of Librem phones. How I think that Purism isn't offering yet enough reasons for general public to buy the phone. Which may make them end up like Jolla did... Good thing is that the phone is not their only product.