Pine retail stores vs. community stores

That link was 404 for me. Maybe this will work better?

https://www.pine64.org/2020/12/02/pine-store-community-prici...

From early in the article:

"Let me start by making one thing clear – the current Pine Store isn’t going away and the pricing in the Pine Store will remain unchanged."

Then near the end:

"The Pine Store, in its current form, isn’t going anytime soon and the current community-oriented price point will not change."

I don't want to nitpick, but I believe some further clarification would be needed; those "in its current form" and "anytime soon" can make a world of difference.

Don't get me wrong, I totally support the move, although I'm not sure bumping the price to $299 for a device that isn't 100% ready yet would be a good move, especially considering that most customers in retail shops wouldn't be so sensitive about privacy, openness, etc. compared to online purchasers.

If I may offer an idea to recover some costs, why not making a backplane board for the PinePhone mainboard, with screws, flat cables to the mainboard and connectors to the external world? It could become both a development platform for the phone, and be used as a SBC for tinkering. Also all people who upgraded their phone to the 3GB/32GB version could make some use of their old mainboard. It could become a normal procedure: phone is upgraded, old mainboard becomes useable again, everything is reused and nothing is thrown away. The message sent would be so different from other phone manufacturers and their planned obsolescence.

OT - due to a desktop failure I recently handed my MacBook over to my wife and took my PBP off the shelf. The default OS is now Manjaro. And it’s great! The original default (Debian) was pretty janky. If you’re like me and relegated yours to occasional toy duties, spend an hour and get it upgraded. It’s a whole new experience.

Edit: on topic - the community support is generally quite good. I got great forum and Twitter response. I do think that the retail option will provide some incentive to polish up the product a bit. Can’t imagine giving one of these to my mom yet.

I appreciate the challenge they face, and this attempt at a solution. If their retail arm does succeed better than anticipated, that would be a welcome bonus and richly deserved success that could augment the FOSS investment.

In a sense this is a messaging problem leading to mismatched expectations, even when they have clear disclaimers on their product page. I wonder what alternative solutions might look like. Maybe advertise “community discount codes” prominently among Linux community forums and websites, so that only those who’re familiar with the online support community and asking for help will be likely to use those codes (rather than some naive consumer seeking to score a bargain). They could even mention on the product page that prominent Linux community forums should be a source for the relevant discount code (which might help introduce and “on board” newbies to Linux/FOSS communities).

It's funny, there was a goofy toy computer called the "DevTerm" that popped up on the top of HN a couple times recently. It was more expensive than this, had a terrible non-hinged design, and was about $50 more than this, likely with comparable or worse performance.

IMO for $199 with a full clamshell and ARM Linux... this is the real deal if you want to learn to code on the cheap or just have an inexpensive laptop for dev tasks.

I think this is probably a mistake, as I doubt people who don't know they're purchasing a hobbyist/selfsupported device will know or care about the difference between "community pricing" and "retail pricing".

Hopefully it works out for them.

Probably they should sell the community edition version disassembled.

BTW I have Mobian on mine. Wonder why they never mention it.

This I think is an excellent model and has worked for FOSS communities in the past. One example of a similar strategy is RHEL, where you pay for support rather than software. Of course with hardware it is different, you will pay for the hardware, but the price increase for consumer purchased hardware reflects additional cost of customer support. I think this is a viable and ethical business model.

On another note, I hope to one day see projects like pine64 specifically using RISC V architecture.

"PINE 64 is not a business" is a bit of a red flag for me... it has a store, takes money and ships product, it's a business. It's on the hook for various things including 1yr mandatory warranty in the EU.

This two price idea is a mess... just price the things how they have to be priced to be sustainable and allowing for some reseller percentage if that's the plan.

The support thing can eventually be eased by picking the most evolved distro, supporting that and shipping the phones with it, and making it clear the others are unsupported.

Pine model is certainly effective, but it's not the same results ecosystem-wise as Librem 5 premium cost paying for long term contribution to upstream projects and development (which Pine inherit). There should be room for both hopefully.

I noticed that the retail stores are supposed to ship within a few days of an order being placed.

Despite the fact that I would prefer the community priced edition in every other way, the rapid shipping might actually make the consumer oriented store the way to go.

Has anyone been able to get Arch to work on a PB? I know they have a version of Manjaro, so I'm curious about what the install/life is like for a typical Arch setup.

does anyone know if pine stuff is being sold in india by any local retailer? does the pine team has some third party seller or do i have to order from US and pay for shipping and exorbitant import fees?