Experiments with Matrix for the Purism Librem5, Starring Ubports and Nheko
matrix.org
matrix.org
I've already backed Purism's Librem 5 campaign, and I think everyone else should too, if they care about a fully free handset. It can be found at https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ if you were looking for it.
So: in an practice a native Librem client would use libqmatrixclient or something similar, with the application layer E2E functionality handled by that library - but in future that could be factored out to simplify life for everyone.
Another approach could be to use a sidecar process to proxy the traffic and offload all the E2E stuff (which we need for a shim for simple clients anyway - even curl etc). But nobody has yet stepped up to build this, plus integrating with UI is a bit of a pain (local popup notifs + local web interfade for key management?). It would be a superfun project for someone wanting to play with E2E though!
As for that last remark, perhaps it's a good GSoC proposal?
This project certainly seems to try to do their very best, and what they have achieved might be all that’s possible to achieve at the present time. I just wanted to, as politely as I might, note that there are those of us for this is a dealbreaker, and that we will rather go without than get the current good-enough product. (If there were none of us, there would be no commercial incentive for any company to keep improving in the right direction.)
I really don’t mean to dismiss anyone’s effort; honestly.
That they took the time to add a note about RYF certification and that they will continue to keep the FSF up to date on this shows that they do care about this. I honestly don't think there's any more you could ask of them.
I don’t dispute that. I have no ill will towards them. I just, you know, won’t actually be buying the phone until one exists which is RYF-certified. I just felt it important that someone pointed this out – while surely their effort towards RYF compliance counts for much, it won’t get me all the way towards actually buying it. I’ll wish them all the luck in actually achieving it, but I (at least) won’t be buying anything until they actually get there.
Even if a sausage maker came along and tried to attract the vegetarian buyers with a new kind of sausage which had no meat in it, just a little bit of gelatin in it. They say they can’t currently make vegetarian sausage without any gelatin in it, but they’re working on it. Should I “support” them and buy the sausage with gelatin in it anyway? Of course not; I’m a vegetarian; gelatin means it’s off the table.
(I’m not necessarily really a vegetarian, of course; it’s just an analogy.)
So to make this comparison more apt, it's more like a sausage maker who is focused on making vegetarian sausage. Now, it just so happens that they'd also love to make these sausages vegan sausages, but the suppliers of the contents of the sausage just don't make a "meat" which is vegan because literally no one with any power has asked for it before. If no one buys their sausages there is literally no chance of a vegan sausage being produced because there is just no reason for it.
Even that isn't really an apt comparison because it doesn't correctly portray the ubiquity of cell phones. I guess instead of a sausage maker it would be something more like "a producer of food", where there is literally no vegan food anywhere. So what I don't understand in all this is why someone who wants an RYF certified cell phone would choose not to support the one group even attempting such a thing. You don't even need to eat the sausage or use the phone in this case either, they just need the support.
Besides this weakness, the analogy relies on fanatism. One can easily become nearly vegan and have virtually all of the benefits while not needing to be totalitarian nor fanatic.
Many companies don't consider libre and open components economically relevant. If that changed, they would cater to that segment.
If a company that offers more open devices than others is economically successful, then that is proof that there is economic relevance to this aspect.
Now, is the Librem5 a step into the right direction? If it is, I think it should be supported by all those that want a RYF-certified device.
Anyway I do hope Librem 5 succeeds (meeting threshold, shipping...going mass market...) and will probably back it.
What are you using now?
> If there were none of us, there would be no commercial incentive for any company to keep improving in the right direction
Well, no, the current Librem5 campaign shows there are folks who are willing to shell out money for something drastically better than any other solutions out there today. It's not perfect, but I would rather encourage companies who are striving towards perfection even if they are not perfect today.
I think Purism understands that there are still gaps in coverage, they even admit it on the campaign page. If they no longer make progress towards closing those gaps in future products, then I'm right there with you.. they should be dropped.
My philosophy aligns more with the FSFE than the FSF.
$23,476 * 25 days = $586,900
$821,660 + $586,900 = $1,408,560
Fundraising campaigns are rarely linear and often see an upsurge at the end, but it's still clear that the fundraising trajectory is slightly behind the $1,500,000 target at the moment.
Something about this header rubs me the wrong way. This is not "hey, throw us 10 bucks because $reason" (The Librem 5 seems to be 599$ and it's not from a company I moderately trust to ship a good product, on time)
Call me cheap, but I've never bought a smart phone for more than 300 EUR, and they've all worked fine at the time (HTC Click, HTC Vision, (ok, the Kingzone wasn't great) and Nexus 5X (still 100% fine with it, right now).