I was burned pretty hard by Purism and no longer trust the company. Pine64 though I loved. I have an original PinePhone, the postmarketOs community edition unironically. I have been cheering Pine64 for a long time since, from the outside, they have been doing everything right.

This is sobering and saddening. I have a Pinebook Pro too and Manjaro is pushed heavily. Manjaro is just not a very good distribution and their security awareness is wanting, but even if they were the best of the best, the fact that they get special preference flies in the face of a FOSS phone. I don't know why Pine doesn't see this, what they were doing with community editions was golden!

I think Pine has their eyes on market capitalization at this point with Purism floundering, they probably think they can capture the niche. It's sad to see the shift. Hopefully they can course correct.