> IMHO, before spending Replicsnt funds on buying this device, someone should first ask the vendor if they are willing to sponsor a phone to a Replicant dev willing to take this task.
Not if pine64's financial records show that pine64 has little to give. Then we should not strong arm them. If you are knowledgeable about free software compatible hardware, you are well advised to be skeptical if a company says it will manufacture a phone emphasizing on privacy. Maybe that is the reason why replicant people seems to be reticent about the pinephone. Pine64 say they are about free software. Likely not like replicant who says free software or nothing. Unlike purism I am not aware pine64 is deceptive when they say they want to forward a free software agenda. Apart from selecting hardware which can boot on free software and supports modem isolation pine64 wants to build a phone which can be disassembled with a screwdriver. And has modem, wifi, microphone switches. These features probably does not make designing the phone easier and I see no other reason to make them other than have people getting control over their phone. Replicant is a languishing piece of software. If a person agrees, that android and iphones in principle are unacceptable due to non free software, the moment you suggest to them, they should get a used phone, being a replicant phone, they are gone. To me the pinephone is replicant's option to become relevant for more people. I do not understand why replicant is not communicating with pine64? Why hasn't replicant declared the pinephone a top priority? Which phone would be better? Why is replicant not preparing a crowd funding such that both phone and programmers can get paid? If it is because of lack of resources then do a high value crowd funding. If the goal is not reached, then we have proven to ourselves that a new replicant phone is not important. _______________________________________________ Replicant mailing list Replicant@osuosl.org https://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/replicant