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Comment by fabrice_d | Hacker News Reader

I applaud and support the HW side of this, this is absolutely needed and could be a game changer. Keep also in mind this is a v1.

However I have reservations on the software choice. Mobile OSes live and die depending on the app ecosystem that is available. If you want lots of people to use your system, your need the popular apps to be on board. That will be hard with a KDE or Gnome based UI, and a second class citizen web support. The developer community has millions of iOS, Android and Web devs, but likely only thousands of Gnome/KDE ones. Getting top-notch PWA integration could ease that but that's unlikely to be a high priority.

That being said, I feel they are happy with not being mainstream and that's fine too. Just different expectations.

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In first wave we plan to have couple of working apps such as dialer, mail, browser, audio/video player but gradually community will hop on and port/create apps for it.

Sure, we start against millions of apps in other ecosystem but on average people don't use more than 20 apps often and I for one dislike that every website out there has created their own iOS/Android app when I can simply use one app for all them - browser.

Also never underestimate the power of GNU/Linux community - it has by far most of hackers on it and it is doing their thing for decades already without slowing down at any single point.

Also, we will try to help and support any community that will work on getting their OS/app on Librem 5. It would be phone produced by Purism and supported by us, but it would truly be one from people for people. :)

"Sure, we start against millions of apps in other ecosystem but on average people don't use more than 20 apps often and I for one dislike that every website out there has created their own iOS/Android app when I can simply use one app for all them - browser."

And yet, Windows Phone took that same philosophy, and failed miserably. It's not so much that people only use a handful of apps, but they want to know that they'll be able to use the next big apps that come out. They want to know that, when the next big social app or game comes out, they'll be able to use it. That wasn't the case with Windows Phone, which had huge struggles just getting the main apps that people wanted then on their system.

And you may wish to use the browser for all that stuff, but most people don't. They like apps.

"Also never underestimate the power of GNU/Linux community - it has by far most of hackers on it and it is doing their thing for decades already without slowing down at any single point."

And yet, for end user, consumer software, they really haven't delivered. I feel you're overestimating that group's capabilities here.

> It's not so much that people only use a handful of apps, but they want to know that they'll be able to use the next big apps that come out. They want to know that, when the next big social app or game comes out, they'll be able to use it.

This is not the market that Purism is after, which makes this slightly bothersome to read, since Purism will likely focus on that and not see that their plan is still catastrophically flawed.

We can just rely on the community to do the rest is nuts. It's the kind of naive optimism that 10 years ago maybe would have seemed like it could and should work, but not today. It's like the "???" step that comes just before "Profit!"

We are not the same ecosystem as Windows Phone and we will use different tech than they did - and even if we fail (which I don't think at all), it is part of life, work.

And for the end user - I don't think community failed, it just didn't have the multibillion dollar marketing machine behind it and also GNU/Linux commercial activities went into server and rarely into end user app, we plan to change this.

"We are not the same ecosystem as Windows Phone and we will use different tech than they did"

I never said you did. You still face the same issues. It's not like an ecosystem succeeds or fails because it chooses a certain language.

"and even if we fail (which I don't think at all), it is part of life, work."

That really does not inspire confidence in the project.

"And for the end user - I don't think community failed, it just didn't have the multibillion dollar marketing machine behind it and also GNU/Linux commercial activities went into server and rarely into end user app, we plan to change this."

I wasn't talking about marketing. I was talking about user-centric design, and usability of the software. And GNU/Linux stuff has largely lagged behind other, product based offerings in these regards.

Sorry, but obviously not even Microsoft with its stash of money can't guarantee something will be success story, so we can't either.

We are perfectly capable to make this device, we can't guarantee it will be something millions will end up buying.

And the ecosystem is important for easy of creation or porting stuff (not just code-wise, but how you approach to such things) and also as I mentioned here - we also plan to work on utilizing Android support via anbox or shashlik which could potentially remove that gap (also people need to realize that Google is developing only handful of apps, those millions come from third-party devs).

>And yet, Windows Phone took that same philosophy, and failed miserably. It's not so much that people only use a handful of apps, but they want to know that they'll be able to use the next big apps that come out. They want to know that, when the next big social app or game comes out, they'll be able to use it. That wasn't the case with Windows Phone, which had huge struggles just getting the main apps that people wanted then on their system.

I remember this when Pokemon GO came out - the client was written in C# on Unity and they STILL didn't see the value in releasing a Windows Phone version.

Well, by then, WP was already being abandoned. I can see not being willing to put the resources into supporting (stuff like testing and system integration) that.

The community will not give you the top 10 apps in many cases, because they are not open - this is especially true with messaging platforms. Again, it's fine to not want to support these, but don't pretend that OSS hackers will fill the gaps. I would love interoperable solutions to be the norm, but reality disagrees with me...

Previously, Purism announced they'd be working with Matrix.org to provide the telephony/messaging infrastructure, with focus on building out bridges to other messaging solutions. Especially if they spend some time making a decent libpurple bridge, you'll find OOTB support for a lot of different chat platforms under a single UI. I'm pretty excited about having a mobile messaging UI similar to webOS's unified messaging app.

The issue is that the 20 apps people use are different. People want to have a banking app on their phone that they can use to deposit their checks. Basically, a bank of any size will have an iPhone and and Android version of their app. They don't have the resources to do a third platform.

There are various toys that use an app on the phone for control. They are also iPhone and Android.

I tried Windows Phone. I really liked the platform. But the lack of apps for such things like my bank, etc made me leave the platform. If Microsoft with all its resources and developer outreach was unable to get a critical number of apps for its platform, I don't see much hope in another mobile platform succeeding.

We plan to utilize things like anbox and/or shashlik so you would end up having Android apps if needed, but we will also focus on having great experience out of the box, with preset default apps.

"I for one dislike that every website out there has created their own iOS/Android app when I can simply use one app for all them - browser."

So why not do a fully web based OS instead of promoting another niche of native apps? :P

if only Google would release Chrome OS for phones, we'd have the best of both worlds.

I think good PWA support and Android minus Play Services support could actually cover a lot of the bases. Both of those technology stacks are FOSS; PWA's already cover services like Twitter and Airbnb, and are likely to become commonplace now that Safari intends to implement Service Workers; F-Droid has a huge back-catalogue for open source Android Apps, and a lot of important closed source Android apps don't rely on Google's proprietary API's, for instance Whatsapp, or Moovit, or indeed the random parking app used by my local town.

But it seems to me the various open smartphone projects are not keen to support apps beyond the native Linux toolkits. I really think that attempting to replicate the basic functionality of the Android or iOS ecosystems entirely in Qt or GTK is forlorn. The platform will start with very few users (the Purism smartphone would have 2500 users if it meets its funding target), so companies are not going to build to it. It would rely on community efforts, but that's a huge amount of effort, and even then assumes that the API's are available.

Having said that, I'm thinking of backing LibreM, as you say the hardware is very important, and to be applauded. I mostly just want good smartphone hardware which runs on the mainline kernel. Software support (for vanilla Android, Lineage OS, Sailfish or Plasma Mobile) should then follow from that by default.

Well, KDE uses QT, which has a good bit of support, and is developed by a paid team. Plasma Mobile's original goal was to support GTK/Sailfish/Android apps[0], so I have a little bit of hope. After being let down by so many privacy-oriented phones, I'm still doubtful but will back up this project.

[0] https://www.pcworld.com/article/2953812/operating-systems/kd... under "An inclusive platform that supports many apps" section.

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