The truth about Purism

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jxself
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Joined: 09/13/2010
JadedCtrl
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Joined: 08/11/2014

Nice article! Really outlines one of the problems with Purism!

No developments in the freedom department + Them being full with themselves (See: Blog that proclaims a Trisquel-based OS with BROWSER EXTENSIONS!) + Casey = Stay with ThinkPenguin.

Jabjabs
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Joined: 07/05/2014

That's exactly it, I had always compared this project to that of what Think Penguin already offers.

__martin__
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ssdclickofdeath
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Joined: 05/19/2013

What are you talking about? Your post didn't get downvoted.

Christianity
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Joined: 10/09/2012

Every time I hear about this it makes me angry. So many people donated to Purism's fundraiser, and they're getting jack shit in return. This will undoubtedly give those people much more hesitation about donating to libre projects that can actually deliver their promises.

danieru
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Joined: 01/06/2013

It had to happen, people need to study more until they actually understand what's going on and not just "I will give you freedom. Just look this cool website! How could I lie at you? I mean... Just donate"

> So many people donated to Purism's fundraiser
It's not that bad, this shows that there are people interested in a completely libre computer, this is important to get manufacturers make computers that comply our free software ideals.

> and they're getting jack shit in return.

At least is free software friendly, not libre, but friendly at least. Nothing that we haven't saw before but hey, it has a nice design and decent specs.

pogiako12345
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Joined: 07/11/2014

What if Purism is a set up by people like Microsoft or those anti-free people? In effect, it pisses people of and in time reduces free software supporters. Hmmmm.......

J.B. Nicholson-Owens
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Joined: 06/09/2014

name at domain wrote:
> What if Purism is a set up by people like Microsoft or those anti-free
> people? In effect, it pisses people of and in time reduces free software
> supporters. Hmmmm.......

Claims like this require evidence. I don't see the evidence that "Purism
is a set up by people like Microsoft or those anti-free people". If you
know of some, I'd like to see that evidence. I also don't see the
evidence that people in the market for an FSF Respects Your
Freedom-qualifying laptop are fairly characterized as "pissed off" or
that support for free software is reduced by Purism, regardless of what
comes of the effort.

I see the work those against software freedom do. But that work is
typically clumsy and usually involves the greenwashing "open source"
movement (see Brad Kuhn's recent talk[1] for more on this). I don't
think any serious anti-freedom zealot like software proprietors would
frame their work around software freedom when the open source movement
has had some popularity; that movement has convinced some developers to
relinquish not only their software freedom but the software freedom of
their users and those of users of derivative works.

Finally, it appears to me to be easier to assemble and sell laptops that
don't even try to address a user's freedoms to control their computer.
Companies make a great deal of money doing exactly this every day.

[1]
http://mirror.slingshot.co.nz/pub/linux.conf.au/2015/Case_Room_2/Thursday and
/Considering_the_Future_of_Copyleft_How_Will_The_Next_Generation_Perceive_GPL.webm
http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2015/Case_Room_2/Thursday/Considering_the_Future_of_Copyleft_How_Will_The_Next_Generation_Perceive_GPL.webm
are a couple of mirrors of this talk.

davidnotcoulthard (not verified)
davidnotcoulthard
SuperTramp83

I am a translator!

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Joined: 10/31/2014

As I said - not librem!

muhammed
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Joined: 04/13/2013

I remember that the Trisquel community was mostly cautious about this.

https://trisquel.info/en/forum/librem-15-freelibre-and-open-source-laptop-respects-your-essential-freedoms

Todd-at-purism said:

"Well, it's smart to be cautious, since building trust is usually a game of time. But to answer your concern, I, Todd Weaver, am behind it, you can see from my past I enjoy fighting the status quo, and am excited to put that effort into freeing hardware. We may get some FSF support prior to endorsement, so that should help with the trust game. I've been working with RMS and FSF for quite awhile."

Chris critiqued Purism's claims. It's worth reading his post, #24, at 11/25/2014 - 02:29

Todd replied to Chris: "ThinkPenguin post, take with a grain of salt, since they'd see anybody selling hardware as competition, not as furthering a movement. Time will tell..."

That's not a response to anything that Chris raised.

Jabjabs
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Joined: 07/05/2014

I remember it well, that ad hominem attack was just one of many warning bells about the character of the project.