Librem One – A growing bundle of ethical services

Lots of great criticism on this thread. Lots of great reasons to maybe stay away from Purism.<p>However...<p>What I personally think is really interesting here is the bundle. I don&#x27;t want to pay $10&#x2F;month for a Twitter clone. I don&#x27;t want to pay it for VPN. I don&#x27;t want to pay it for email, or file storage, or contact manager, or payment system.<p>But as a bundle?<p>$10&#x2F;month to actually solve all of my digital privacy concerns?<p>That&#x27;s a rather appealing proposition. I&#x27;m not sold Librem One truly solves this, for all the reasons in this HN thread. But I think the idea that I could make a single Netflix-sized monthly payment to simply solve privacy across-the-board is something I could get behind. And I&#x27;m cheap AF.<p>They&#x27;re onto something.

This is quite dishonest, they make it seem like they develop the apps themselves. But they don&#x27;t and they give no credit to the actual original apps.<p>Librem Chat = Riot.im<p>Librem Social = Mastodon (specifically the Tusky app)<p>Librem Mail = K9 Mail<p>Librem Tunnel = OpenVPN

It&#x27;s a bit of a shame that Librem Tunnel doesn&#x27;t use WireGuard, though I imagine they&#x27;ll switch once it&#x27;s in mainline.<p>Otherwise, seems like a pretty neat idea -- it could open the door to more lay-people using open protocols like Matrix without everyone jumping on Matrix.org for free or having to self-host. I am interested to see how the Librem Files&#x2F;Backup system will work if it comes about (I would guess NextCloud but if they have a better solution I&#x27;d like to see it since I&#x27;ve had my fair share of pain with self-hosting NextCloud). It looks like there would be some kind of cohesive management of all these services, which I think is a great example of the usefulness (for users) that open standards can have.<p>It does bother me a bit that the apps are clearly mild reskins and there is no mention of the original app creators -- obviously this helps with brand recognition but seems a little bit dishonest. Really, you&#x27;re paying for hosting (which is totally fine), and it should be clearer that they&#x27;re just giving you mostly-consistent apps that work with their service out-of-the-box.<p>I also am doubtful the Librem Pay idea will pan out though. The number of real businesses which accept $x-coin is effectively zero for most people.

Awesome. Props to the Purism Librem team for excellent ongoing progress on the superb laptop, new phone, and this new Librem One software offering.<p>The offering is a bundle of services that respect you and your privacy. $7.99&#x2F;mo for a software suite: Librem Chat (Riot), Librem Social (Mastodon), Librem Mail (K9), Librem Tunnel (OpenVPN), and more services coming soon e.g. Librem Files, Librem Backup, Librem Contacts, Librem Pay, Librem Dial.<p>The key value for me is all of these are curated, updated, available&#x2F;accountable via one vendor, etc. Other people who prefer free-as-in-beer versions can still get Riot, Mastodo, K9, OpenVPN, etc. as is.<p>And if any of you are product managers or technical marketers, have a look at the Librem products matrix and explanations area-- in my opinion it&#x27;s the among the best in the industry: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;librem.one&#x2F;#mce_1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;librem.one&#x2F;#mce_1</a>

This is really frustrating, and basically the exact same thread as happened a while back with another list of &quot;ethical alternatives&quot;.<p>You can&#x27;t call something ethical without going into detail about what you mean. and:<p>Policy No Ads No Tracking We respect you<p>is not useful.<p>The value in ethics is in the conversation around what is ethical, not in a big, friendly &quot;this is ethical&quot; sticker.<p>This is as useful as &quot;do no evil&quot;, and from the vague wording on the landing page, I&#x27;d imagine the people behind librem don&#x27;t think google is very ethical right now.

I like Librem, though I am a little concerned here. I prefer if hardware and services comes from different companies. Even well intentioned, it can be easy for a company to fall into vertical integration... Imagine a Librem 5 working best with their own service, and support for alternatives being a little weaker or less prioritized.

First sentence is &quot;Purism is a Social Purpose Corporation (SPC), which means we put social good above exploiting people&quot;. I&#x27;ve never heard of a SPC before (probably because I&#x27;m not from the US) so had to look it up. It seems it&#x27;s still a for-profit corporation, just that it &quot;enables, but does not require, considering social or environmental issues in decision making&quot;.<p>Which means that &quot;which means we put social good above exploiting people&quot; should really be &quot;which means we can put social good above exploiting people&quot; as it&#x27;s not a requirement.<p>So, what&#x27;s the purpose of a SPC instead of just a for-profit company? A for-profit can also consider social and environmental issues, AFAIK.

&gt; Librem Mail. Main Features: Safe (We delete unencrypted emails after 30 days)<p>I don&#x27;t understand encrypted email very much at all. Is encryption on emails that I have received controlled by the sender? Almost all of the transactional emails I have received (receipts, confirmation numbers, etc) are probably unencrypted, right? This doesn&#x27;t sound desirable.

I support their effort of making free software more accessible. But saying &quot;no ads&quot; and then lists PIA as the only other vpn when they have partnered up with them dishonest [ <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;puri.sm&#x2F;posts&#x2F;purism-becomes-pia-first-oem-partner&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;puri.sm&#x2F;posts&#x2F;purism-becomes-pia-first-oem-partner&#x2F;</a> ]

They are really shaping up to become a proper major hardware and service provider. If what they are saying about their values actually promises permanence, I&#x27;ll seriously consider switching to their hardware soon.

It looks as though the mail service won&#x27;t support custom domains.

Something&#x27;s a bit odd - is the client software they&#x27;ve developed not FLOSS?

I signed up for the free version to reserve my name.<p>However, I&#x27;m going to hold off on paying for the service until I see how it evolves over the next year or two.

I think what we really need, the enabler of migration is, and always was, decent collaborative office suite. Acceptable collaboration level evolves over time, that&#x27;s true, but otherwise requirements are the same.<p>There is no point is free&#x2F;ethical&#x2F;etc file storage if I still have to use Microsoft Office to edit files, which is neither free nor very collaborative. Text editors are relatively easy to replace. Google Sheets are really really hard to replace. Even Microsoft Excel seems somewhat inferior to Google Sheets to me now.

No calendar syncing&#x2F;sharing&#x2F;inviting&#x2F;joining?<p>Not even as a planned app?

Nice idea but a bit too utopian to work IMO.<p>First, most users will never want to pay for a service, especially things like chat, email, social. What I mean by that is, the market is already there for social apps that allow completely free usage by using user data, think Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.<p>Second, asking users to pay for a service at about $8&#x2F;mo is pretty steep. Purism&#x2F;librem aren&#x27;t building all the apps themselves.

What about mass surveillance and gag orders, are they gonna be handled in an ethical way?

&gt; Purism will generally not contact you for any reason except in the following situations:<p>&gt; &quot;A lawful request for account information was received&quot;<p>Maybe sometimes, but the US government has an unconstitutional tool up its belt it has been using freely since 2001:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;uscode&#x2F;text&#x2F;18&#x2F;2709" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;uscode&#x2F;text&#x2F;18&#x2F;2709</a><p>&gt; 18 U.S. Code § 2709. Counterintelligence access to telephone toll and transactional records<p>&gt; (c) Prohibition of Certain Disclosure.—<p>&gt; If a certification is issued under subparagraph (B) and notice of the right to judicial review under subsection (d) is provided, <i></i>no wire or electronic communication service provider that receives a request under subsection (b), or officer, employee, or agent thereof, shall disclose to any person that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained access to information or records under this section.<i></i><p>TLDR: If the FBI tells them not to, they can&#x27;t tell you they&#x27;ve given your information away.<p>In the interest of full disclosure, I believe they should warn people about this.<p>(Yall probably have heard about this in the form of Warrant Canaries: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Warrant_canary" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Warrant_canary</a>)<p>I like the message, I like the intent, I like what Librem does. I like that they&#x27;re going to have data after this seeing just how many people are willing to pay money for privacy. I am. I&#x27;ll probably pay for this software regardless. It&#x27;s just a shame our own governments are standing between us and actual privacy - I&#x27;m starting to wonder who is serving who these days.

No mention of Chatty, the SMS and XMPP client?

I find the “ethical” framing around this to be rather problematic.<p>I hate ads and care about my privacy as much as anyone else here. However, the argument that a free ad-supported product X available to anyone in the world with an internet connection is <i>less</i> ethical than product Y which requires a monthly payment for access seems tenuous at best. Especially when you consider that the price is out of the question for those in developing countries.<p>This is a luxury purchase, not an ethical one.

I&#x27;m too much disappointed with this bullshit, because it&#x27;s coming from a company which I really appreciated &#x27;n respected. AFAIK, Purism hasn&#x27;t yet delivered the Librem 5 phone. If that&#x27;s case, then it&#x27;s a priority violation. Now, the best Purism can do is abort this bullshit and pay all the backers their money back before it&#x27;s too late.

Privacy isn&#x27;t fixed by technical products, it needs to be fixed at a legal level.<p>The existence of crypto near any product makes me immediately do a double take anymore, because there are tax implications there that you&#x27;re kinda forcing on people.<p>The design of these apps needs to be much more refined if you want to charge money for them. I&#x27;m usually willing to give a bit on it when it&#x27;s for the right cause, but... this stuff feels so off that it&#x27;s tough to look at. If you&#x27;re gonna play in the iOS app store, you need to be willing to invest in this.<p>End hot takes, I guess. I want Purism to succeed but I feel like they&#x27;re just making the same mistakes every &quot;year of the Linux desktop&quot; scenario made, wherein they&#x27;re not competing on the features that draw eyeballs. It doesn&#x27;t need to be the focus, but you can&#x27;t neglect it either.