[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.