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Comment by gue5t | Hacker News Reader

Companies providing operating systems is a clear conflict of interest. Evidence: the tragic state of the entire mobile ecosystem, where no hardware can be fully utilized by (or even make calls with) an open-source OS.

This article also fails to mention Tizen. Has it been abandoned? It was absolutely terrible (millions upon millions of lines of the worst C code I've ever perused) but I thought it still existed, making vaguely similar claims to open-sourcehood as SailfishOS.

The real mobile OS to watch and advocate for is postmarketOS, which attempts to get mainline Linux kernels working on phones.

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Oh, Tizen, I guess you are not up to date with it.

After throwing away the C++ libraries and going to that C code you mention, they have decided to offer .NET Core + Xamarin as alternative to those C++ libraries.

Which I agree is much better than Bada C++ style libraries, but reveals they aren't sure where to go next.

Then at FOSDEM they introduced an IoT OS based on NuttX + JerryScript, and called it Tizen RT, even though it isn't anything Tizen related.

https://wiki.tizen.org/Tizen_RT

Missed opportunity to call it TizenScript.

> Companies providing operating systems is a clear conflict of interest.

I think based on your argument that Redhat and Ubuntu are reasonable reasonable counterexamples.

Purism is making a phone on top of usual Linux distros (i.e. they are tinkering with Debian Buster on dev boards) with only open source drivers.

Unfortunately, they've been underdelivering their products so far.

The reason for that is a rapid increase of orders as shown in their last report [0], as well as only 15" laptops are not shipped in full.

[0] https://puri.sm/posts/librem-laptop-orders-now-shipping-with...

"where no hardware can be fully utilized by (or even make calls with) an open-source OS."

Blame hardware manufacturers for this. If they released open specs (not even the drivers sources, just the specs would suffice) of their devices we could have full alternative OS installations in months after each device release, giving new life to old devices and much higher security to newer ones.

I fail to see how this is much of a problem.

In case you were asking how it might be a problem, look at some of its effects on the status quo:

Forced obsolescence, pervasive spyware/security problems, being locked into an "app" ecosystem, user-hostile antifeatures, lack of modifiability to deal with hardware degradation over time, etc.

All those are things a person can live with if all they want is a communication device that runs apps and browses the web.

Pervasive spyware is not a problem?

Those used to tell online everything about their life down to the details could even consider it a service.

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