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An Interview With Zlatan Todoric, Open-Source Developer & Former Purism CTO

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  • #11
    Originally posted by loganj View Post
    why does it feels like that phone is a big scam (considering also all other articles on phoronix)
    I don't know. You tell me. Are you saying they are not actually shipping the phone? Have they promised a phone that would be as powerful as the latest Samsung Galaxy phone? No. Have they promised a phone that would have a software stack as mature a feature-rich and polished as Android? No. Are they late? Yes, their original schedule has slipped. Big surprise. I'll start to get upset if I don't receive my phone in Q2 next year. Not before that. Then we will see if the phone is "a big scam" as you say. Not before that.

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    • #12
      Originally posted by 144Hz View Post
      Very biased but an interesting read! Purism can’t work with Qt because of the CLA. A social purpose company shouldn’t be pressured into non-free.
      Biased? Maybe but the opinions expressed all reflect what the average person saw of the company through its public behavior. Many seem to be blinded to this questionable behavior due to the lust for an open cell phone.

      I have nothing against a Floss cell phone, but i do believe that it is a lot harder to do than many believe. Further I really doubt it see an open phone as offering any real security advantage. The big draw for me would be running any software that I would like on such a phone and frankly i probably wouldn’t use it as a phone. Which brings us to the real desire where are the truely open Linux tablets?

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      • #13
        When talking about security I have to wonder if people realize that cell phones communicate over radio frequencies. As such most of what you do on a cell phone can be monitored by anyone with a suitable receiver. I really have a hard time with people that think that there is a magical way to deal with that reality.

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        • #14
          Originally posted by tomas View Post

          I don't know. You tell me. Are you saying they are not actually shipping the phone?
          Well, yeah. This is exactly what's going on. For about a month now Purism says in public "we're shipping", but they haven't actually done that yet. Just a few days ago they even repeated the "we're shipping" line in a blog post, and that blog post even had a "LIbrem 5 in the wild" section with photos, claiming more or less that these are from customers. However, they haven't shipped out a single phone to a customer yet. The "in the wild photos" are all from people affiliated with Purism. In other words, they are straight up lying.

          The reality is: the hardware isn't ready yet, not even close, from what we've seen and heard. They need a major redesign of the thermal solution, power management, antennas, and probably various other bits and pieces. The software is in a bad state as well: rumor has it that not even phone calls work correctly yet (they've never shown a phone call, even though they promised to demo this), bluetooth and cameras don't work yet, and apparently battery life is a disaster (a charge doesn't even last half a day).

          Have they promised a phone that would be as powerful as the latest Samsung Galaxy phone? No. Have they promised a phone that would have a software stack as mature a feature-rich and polished as Android? No. Are they late? Yes, their original schedule has slipped. Big surprise. I'll start to get upset if I don't receive my phone in Q2 next year. Not before that. Then we will see if the phone is "a big scam" as you say. Not before that.
          It's not about not having high-end specs or being late, at this point: It's about lying to your customers and misrepresenting the state of the project. It's especially damning for a "social purpose company" that supposedly should value honesty, transparency and openness.

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          • #15
            Finally someone is willing to talk about Purism honestly.

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            • #16
              Originally posted by wizard69 View Post
              When talking about security I have to wonder if people realize that cell phones communicate over radio frequencies. As such most of what you do on a cell phone can be monitored by anyone with a suitable receiver. I really have a hard time with people that think that there is a magical way to deal with that reality.
              Not if you are going purely through software. That's why app to app communication is so powerful. You can of course correlate metadata like when two people were connected to cell towers and transmitting data, but if your data is encrypted well by the applications, then the only way they are getting the data is through access to the phone somehow, like a backdoor or social engineering.

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              • #17
                Receiving further information from another (and more recent) Purism employee backing up what Zlatan Todoric says.
                Michael Larabel
                https://www.michaellarabel.com/

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                • #18
                  Michael, is this information going to result in another article in the coming days?

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                  • #19
                    Anyone who has ever worked in a startup company knows that this sort of chaotic atmosphere is very common. Very little phases me about what he said and to be honest I think he made some mistakes like giving up his bonus and accepting a pay cut which lead to resentment and other problems.

                    I'm not convinced that based on testimony that it's possible to draw conclusions. Anyone who has operated a business knows how inefficiency and miracle your ass every day to stay professional is a reality of both business administration and sales.

                    Clearly Todd has delivered Developer Kits and shown a working device on TheLinuxGamer YouTube channel
                    Follow me for biased opinions about Linux and gaming. ✨✨ I'm a Maine native and resident of Vacationland.


                    If they said it was shipping and had a last minuet snag I wouldn't be too surprised.

                    Are the phones going to be perfect? No

                    Are they going to have odd problems? Likely -- it is Generation 1 -- that is understood by most technology consumers when they buy a Generation 1 product.

                    Is Purism a bitch ass crazy place to work at? Probably

                    Does it a democracy? No

                    Is there a singular decider of what happens and when? Apparantly -- this is common with all mega companies, CEO's -- Visionaries with strong visions -- as I understand it Steve Jobs divided up his company into teams and have them fight with eachother and they worked themselves to death long hours, sleeping in the office, etc... I am not surprised to hear about these Elements at Purism -- I take them as a good sign. Every major successful person has a uphill battle on the way to becoming a success even Elon Musk, and once they achieve it on some level it appears so obvious in hindsight.

                    Anyways, I hope I'm not wrong to maintain this level of optimism but I think a "lets wait and see" attitude is appropriate, when they have general availability to ship if there are not too many problems I plan on buying one. $700 is not too much to ask for a device that offers freedom from the mega phoneOS slavery world we live in.

                    Also as another poster pointed out -- their achievements on wlroots, wayland, chatty (messenger app), dialer (phone call app) etc... are permenant so worst case scenario they will have paved major roadways toward the singular goal of a Vanilla Linux Phone.

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                    • #20
                      Originally posted by ElectricPrism View Post
                      Clearly Todd has delivered Developer Kits and shown a working device on TheLinuxGamer YouTube channel
                      https://www.youtube.com/user/tuxreviews
                      What I find surprising is the lack of people who have admitted to recieving an Aspen batch device.

                      The Device in that video was taken to the vblogger. I think he kept it and I am looking forward to seeing more.

                      Other than that all other videos have been from Purism. For a shipping device even in small quantities, I would expect more confirmations/videos about it being recieved.

                      That said, I do think Purism is doing a good job with how they operate on the software front, working with upstream. Even if they fail, the software will still exist and the gnome stack has recieved a lot of work allowing it to be used in mobile settings. This work will not be lost and probably will even help GTK4 development. There are lessons though:

                      1. Why not go for a Qualcomm chip? There was already upstream driver work, so less effort needed (and I am still not sure if the current GPU is properly hardware accelerated).
                      2. They want to use flatpaks, so the base system should have been an image (potentially using something like OStree) to store images like Fedora Silverblue does.

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