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....
I definitely agree re: Grandmother problem, but I'd rather it configure services for you they aren't selling you. There's no shortage of services that already exist Librem could make easy to work with.
I mean that is a significant reason mobile development is fragmented. Some things have to be tailored for the device if you want any kind of mass appeal or reliability.
I think it would be a huge mistake to NOT tailor a specific experience for a Linux phone since it would then be doomed to obscurity (more than just by fact of not being Android or IOS) like the million Linux desktop distributions that never "just get it" out of the box for 99% of people.
I agree with your second paragraph. The Librem 5 isn't just a "Linux phone", and Purism is trying to build an ecosystem with strong expectations of privacy and end-user control, which is something we don't have today.
If all you want is a "Linux phone", you could buy a PinePhone for $150 or work on porting postmarketOS to an Android phone. The Librem 5 clearly has higher ambitions and could prove to be a more mass-market product.
