When reading this, it feels like the goal of those projects have derived?
For me, the "goal" of mainline GNU/Linux smartphones is that we get like PCs. I prefer fedora, you prefer Debian, they prefer Slackware, all is well, we are all free to choose whatever we want for our computer.
Here I'm reading it's all fragmented? And if it's fragmented, I guess it means it doesn't rely enough on Linux drivers, so long term support won't be there?
Is someone "wrong"? Like Librem is saying they are going mainline but actually aren't? Or is it Pinephone? Or I'm misrepreaentating what mainline should mean?
The two projects (Pinephone and Librem) have definitely diverged in terms of their goals, but that's fine.
I don't see any lack of contribution to the mainline kernel or upstream code from either community. The main divergence between the two is the price point and how the communities are run. As for fragmentation, well, if you want a choice in distro, then fragmentation does kind of happen as a result of that.
But overall a lot of the momentum is in the same direction. The biggest sticking point I see happened years ago, when Purism opted to make Phosh + PureOS and make it GNOME based instead of rallying more effort to the UBPorts project. That said, it's free software, so this happens all the time.
(Don't get me wrong though, I really love what Ubuntu Touch has become, and the UBPorts community too!)
The pinephone can run the mainline kernel so it will probably have support for a while. There are several distros available for it because people are excited to develop free/libre mobile devices and they are experimenting.
The Librem 5 can also run the mainline kernel. Enabling all the component drivers upstream is of course an ongoing process, but it's going rather well.
For me, the "goal" of mainline GNU/Linux smartphones is that we get like PCs. I prefer fedora, you prefer Debian, they prefer Slackware, all is well, we are all free to choose whatever we want for our computer.
Here I'm reading it's all fragmented? And if it's fragmented, I guess it means it doesn't rely enough on Linux drivers, so long term support won't be there?
Is someone "wrong"? Like Librem is saying they are going mainline but actually aren't? Or is it Pinephone? Or I'm misrepreaentating what mainline should mean?