[xoa]

>The point of the Librem 5 is not to make the most popular possible phone

That's a strawman of GP's words. "The most popular" is absurd, but "minimally viable" is not particularly since security in a major Librem selling point and security is an active process, not a one-off. In turn sustainability matters, and for a hardware project that requires significantly more capital then a pure software project. It's not at all unreasonable to question that or attacking the company, Librem should have good answers there regardless.

>Markets only matter to capitalists. Real hackers share with each other to make things happen that markets do not comprehend.

What a ridiculous load of bunk. The Librem is not powered by good intentions and hacker ethos it's powered by silicon manufactured in an expensive capitalist fabricator, battery which is the same, etc. Ongoing development will need some capital, as will repairs and replacements and infrastructure. Nothing like a huge company but it's there, and it's rightfully utilizing the wider world.

"Real hackers" are hacking, they're doing cool stuff utilizing things for purposes beyond what was intended, pushing the limits in ways not imagined perhaps even by the original designers. Sometimes this has no wider effect beyond a subsect, sometimes it subverts markets, sometimes it creates entire new markets. It's symbiotic with the wider world not cutoff from it! This can be true of not just tech but even law. When RMS and co worked out copyleft, they didn't just rage against the sheer existence of IP and seek to destroy it all or somehow fruitlessly deny that it existed, they hacked it to their own ends instead.

[AsyncAwait]

> When RMS and co worked out copyleft, they didn't just rage against the sheer existence of IP and seek to destroy it all or somehow fruitlessly deny that it existed, they hacked it to their own ends instead.

You mean like people who per-ordered the Librem5, because it's a practical cause they believe in, instead of just raging in the semi-frequent HN threads how awful Android is?

[xoa]

>You mean like people who per-ordered the Librem5, because it's a practical cause they believe in, instead of just raging in the semi-frequent HN threads how awful Android is?

Can you explain what point you're actually arguing against here, or in sibling posts you've replied to? That's a good example of using the market to achieve a good goal, which is just what should happen. That's not an argument that "markets only matter to capitalists."

[AsyncAwait]

A product like the Librem5 is currently not viable to manufacture by any known OEM in the smartphone market, just as it wasn't viable for a company to develop a free-software UNIX, so RMS had to come in and start it even if it wasn't necessarily "market viable" at the time.

People sometimes do things out of passion, precisely because the markets would not support their ideas, at least initially.

So, it is not known at present whether the Librem5 would prove viable at all, but Purism are doing it despite this and there are people who pre-ordered are trying to make it viable, despite there being no guarantee that they'll get security updates or even a viable product at present.

In essence, this phone is probably non-market viable at present, but there are people who are per-ordering anyways, in order to eventually make it viable for the wider market i.e. taking practical steps for a cause they believe in. Such causes are not a good fit for "markets" in general.

[LMYahooTFY]

I agree with what you say, but

>What a ridiculous load of bunk.

doesn't seem less dismissive than the comment you're replying to. Getting a consumer product that isn't increasingly exploitative does, in fact, require good intentions and hacker ethos.

Blowing it off as if there is some perfectly rational market solution for things like individual security and choice has yet to be demonstrated.