monopoliessuck

Ah okay, gotcha. Sorry for the rant then :+1:

This is not the reality on the ground here, though I agree with you with FOSS whining in general.

Purism marketed their phone as the eventual iPhone/Android killer. "Get the hardware, and the software will ripen with every update in your hand", was their claim. Purism created the hardware very slowly and worked on the software in-house themselves in a very "cathedral-esque" paradigm. Without hardware, you don't have passionate *unpaid volunteers* so stuff was slow and incomplete. Developers were also just pleading for something to hack on. Yes, they did some good things that are upstreamed in the kernel and elsewhere, credit where it's due, but it's beyond merciful to call this anything but a botched product.

Pine64 put their phone out relatively quickly for the devs. A weak, early and raw device with big warnings letting people know that this was a DEV DEVICE and it was not for general consumption. Pine created the hardware themselves, but not the software and just cultivated an ecosystem where they'd support and work with third-party software distributions. They even did cycle runs where they'd ship different logos and operating system on the device to support the community. This is the way.

I think people have good reason to call Purism out for their $1200-2000 Librem phones that have overheating issues and alpha-grade software, if they get delivered at all. There's no free pony here sure, but my $600 vapor pony wasn't free either.

The US model didn't exist even as a concept at the time I pre-ordered. I ordered before the first lot, but picked Evergreen because I wanted it to work and I didn't mind funding and waiting, but this is crazy.

I realize there's a valid difference between place of origin, but for me sitting here empty handed, the US model just seemed like a way to upcharge for a product that hardly existed in any form.

Chinese? American? Whatever, for me vapor is vapor no matter where it's supposed to be coming from "eventually".

I was a super early pre-order and then waited years for SOMETHING. I eventually asked for a refund which they said they'd honor. I've now been in the refund "queue" for over a year or two. I've lost count of the exact number of years, promises and emails at this point.

I understand growing pains, but purism is neither a transparent nor a trustworthy company. Buy a PinePhone Pro and call it a day. It's still not ready for prime time as a daily driver, IMO, but the company is a breath of fresh air in comparison.

Many consumers are aware their information is being scooped up and sold to the highest bidder on Facebook and Google. If they are not, I support more thorough and approachable information disclosure mandates. Most consumers don't care or at least the benefits of Facebook outweigh the cost as far as they see it. That's a calculated market decision.

I, myself do not have a Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, WhateverZuckBuysNext account because Facebook is a bad company and I don't wish to give it a dollar. When WhatsApp decided to merge Facebook and WhatsApp user data, consumers reacted by switching to Signal, a more equitable competitor. Facebook then had to placate them, at least temporarily. This is how conscious consumption works and in a capitalist economy transactions and boycotts are one of the purist ways to show your approval or disapproval of a company's products, services and behavior. It punishes bad actors in their wallets and rewards good ones in theirs instead.

I am 100% in favor of mandated information disclosure laws. I think consumers cannot make a voluntary and informed market decision if they don't have adequate information. Things like nutritional values, ingredients lists, explicitly enumerated contracts, hazards, precautions, demarcated place of product origin, assembly and material origin etc. etc. These are the tools with which consumers can make market decisions.

We live in a society where this information disclosure is obviously inadequate but consumers are also part of the equation and should be more vigilant and aware of their part in this dance.

I don't think the only two options are between a heavily regulated corporate hegemony (with consumer safeguards) and pro-corporate monopolist authoritarianism. We can do better but people need to do better too.

I think you're moving goal posts. Not all problems with our market are the result of simple consolidation of market leaders.

Put simply, don't buy products that lock you in if you don't want products to lock you in. It seems like consumers are capable of making decisions based on price, durability, features, color etc. why is any other variable sacred?

The answer is consumers don't care about these issues enough to pay for them. Would we have this right-to-repair argument if consumers went out of their way to buy repairable devices? Lenovo, Apple, Google, et. al. have been moving to solder more and more components to the board and glue everything together and consumers haven't punished these producers with their wallets yet. If you want a repairable device, buy one -- this isn't a consolidation problem. If you want a phone that you can run a different OS on, buy one. If you want a red toothbrush, don't buy a blue one and complain (or make a law) that it should be red.

Pine64 is a for-profit entity. If you want a repairable phone that you can side-load anything on, maybe give your money to them instead of Google-Apple. Likewise, if you want a repairable laptop maybe buy a Librem 14 instead of an MacBook. Maybe if you want an open hardware ePub reader buy an InkPlate instead of a Kindle. These things exist and more would exist -- with more polish -- if people voted with their wallets. These are real companies trying to make real money with real products for real people.

The smart phone operating systems you listed would have flourished if more people purchased their respective devices. You can't install Sony's OS on an XBOX and while I don't purchase consoles and think buying a single-purpose gimped device is almost always a bad idea, if people want to buy what XBOX is selling, so be it. Apple consumers are not left in the dark about their ability to use an alternative app store and while I think it's a horribly limiting experience, Apple consumers keep throwing money at the company.

I'm not just blaming the consumer. I'm also stating that the consumer is a vital part of the market and their action or inaction results in a market more aligned with those decisions.

I never said people have a right to make a living off of their passions. People don't. Passionate people are not divorced from the market but active participants in it.

I, however, would like to pay people to make this thing that may just happen to have a passionate origin. I also think many people want some polished version of this thing to exist, despite not wanting to fund its manufacture and maintenance. I think the inconvenience to the user in the interim is worth it, but many/most don't agree with me and that is one reason it doesn't exist.

Making legislation to force third-party marketplaces to exist on a "platform" is more in line with your concern, to be honest. It's forcing an entity to do something it doesn't want to do. If consumers cared about this, they would move to a different platform or gasp create a competitor that does what they want. I already know of some people that have moved from Apple to Android simply because side-loading is possible.

Also, I take issue with the notion that in order for something to exist today, it has to have "broad mainstream appeal". A marketplace by its very nature benefits from diversity of marketed goods, but just like any other product, it shouldn't need to completely displace market leaders to exist. The rise of megalythic companies, VC being promised eventual Google-scale growth of their bets and people's general squeamishness at using anything at all unpolished or inconvenient has created this world where everything needs to be huge in order to be considered successful in any meaningful way.

F-droid is a thing and I don't think anyone would argue it

A. Doesn't exist.

B. Is a real competitor to the Google Play Store.

C. Doesn't invovle people in the market, both developers and users, who are happy that it exists and wish to further it's growth.

I can say, I think a lot of the problems we currently have and ones we are trying to spotfix with legislation could be better solved via a more conscious consumption. "Should" is a subjective term based on a cost/benefit analysis and while I think people should act differently, I don't think they should be barred from acting as they have today nor are they morally corrupt for doing so.

Everyone buckets and weights the pros and cons of everything differently.

I blame consumers for the duopoly we have. I get that practically, it's a farce to call this choice we have real and significant but these marketplaces exist because of the demand. Making this duopoly more convenient for app-makers only kicks the can and further re-enforces the duopoly. In an ideal world, people would fund projects like the PinePhone or PostMarketOS, but our "solution" to the walled-garden is apparently to make it less painful but just as preeminent. Consumers should be smarter.

There are a lot of passionate people trying to make these alternative hardware and software marketplaces work, but passion is no replacement for genuine demand so supply is scant. Given the unfortunate historical trajectory, quality will always be wanting. So, I guess I'm against a practical solution that entrenches the status quo when there's an ideological solution that would make these poor options obsolete. I'm probably just holding my breath though.