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Comment by jvanveen | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe people still buy the Purism scam after all these years...I ordered a Librem 5 and a Pinephone back in the days of the other supply chain story(Covid). The Pinephone flew in from China in less than 2 months; the Librem 5 took more than 4 years to arrive. All Purism offered during that time were "opportunities" to invest and exhausting delay stories about failing supply chains, while keeping their customers completely in the dark about their order state. Instead of preying on the goodwill of FOSS enthousiasts, they now try to tap into a new market (nationalism) to sell the same useless overpriced brick to.

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Purism laptops were great when I was a customer. Very sad they couldn't fix the issues you're talking about. I wanted to support the company further, and I think they are doing sincere, good, important work, especially on the software side. But these communication and customer relationship issues didn't get better and I switched away.

> Very sad they couldn't fix the issues you're talking about.

Which issues? The phones were shipped, albeit with a long delay. Now, you can buy and get them quickly.

Sent from my Librem 5 daily driver.

The issue is pretty obvious to most normal people. My ex bought a Purism phone and laptop, said he would switch to Linux the moment they arrived at his doorstep. He ended up buying a new Macbook and iPhone before any of his Purism hardware started shipping. He might still be using the Apple hardware too.

I love FOSS as much as the next guy but you're being outright facetious if you can't see Purism's problem.

Purism did have a lot of problems with delayed shipping. Today it's just not true though.

Communication and customer relations issues. My experience, and that of many others online, was that Purism was not transparent or apparently honest about things like timelines and delays. People also had problems with getting Purism to honor refunds, warranties (I had this issue), and similar, exacerbated by communication. This continued to happen over a period of years.

I'm not here to relitigate the whole Purism saga. I bought 4 Purism products, was one of the first people in the world to own a Librem 5, I invested (donated?). I love the company mission, I think it's fantastic that you're daily driving a Librem 5. But I'm not ready to engage again myself, and that's too bad, but I think a lot of people ended up feeling the same way.

> Purism was not transparent or apparently honest about things like timelines and delays

Yes, they did have huge refund and shipping time issues and I don't trust their time estimations anymore. They almost went bankrupt and couldn't issue refunds for a long time. However this is irrelevant today, as their devices are finally available to order and AFAIK the refunds were issued. There were never issues with security, backdoors (unlike Lenovo, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish#Lenovo_security_inci...), nonfree software or the like.

While I'm not going to defend Purism the company, I just wanted to note I listen to MP3s on a daily basis using that useless overpriced brick I acquired used from ebay.

There was an option to pay like $20 for literally nothing just to support the idea of an open source phone. I did so many years ago.

Worst $20 I ever spent. The amount of spam I've gotten as an "investor" is fucking ridiculous. The amount of times I've opened my email to see an "investment opportunity" from Todd Weaver (originating from multiple email addresses, no functional way to unsubscribe) is downright insulting.

From the bottom of my heart: fuck Todd Weaver, whose name is at the bottom of hundreds of spam emails I've received going back years.

Did you try to unsubscribe? They mention such possibility in their every email.

I'd be happy to provide dozens of examples in my inbox that prove otherwise, and that's just the ones that have escaped my spam folder over the years.

I can also provide you with examples of other people's less than flattering replies about the exact same issue that have somehow reached my inbox (I'm assuming due to a brief misconfiguration).

> Instead of preying on the goodwill of FOSS enthousiasts, they now try to tap into a new market (nationalism)

Designing and selling the only existing phone made in USA, when everything is produced in China and has a risk of containing backdoors, is as far from nationalism as it gets. (And I'm not an American.) It's true innovation and an offer of a peace of mind for activists and journalists. Even though the USA turns into something bad, the phone runs an FSF-endorsed distro and provides schematics, so you can verify everything yourself (or rely on the community). You comment looks disingenuous to me.

In the USA, 'Liberty' is now a strong nationalist dog whistle.

> and an offer of a peace of mind for activists and journalists

Sounds like a trap.

They invented name "Liberty Phone" before Trump made this a thing. Perhaps they should rename it, I don't know. What I know is that this modern device is as free (as in freedom) as it gets today for modern devices.

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