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Comment by ollieparanoid | Hacker News Reader

> There is one small fallacy in the decade old PC versus the decade old smarphone comparison: PCs are not status symbols but smartphones are and fashion is a huge component in why smartphones are replaced.

Think about Apple's Macbooks, I'm pretty sure that they are status symbols as well.

People who buy devices as status symbols, to show off how much money they have, are not the target audience of this project. They usually do not care about the benefits of open source and sustainability anyway. This project is about recycling old phones, which would be insecure/useless without an alternative operating system.

> Another driving force is that a smartphone made a decade ago would simply not be able to use many of todays apps because it is missing certain sensors.

That is right, but it is theoretically possible to get the devices from a few years ago running for five more years, and the devices created today for the next ten years.

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Macbooks will already run Linux, sometimes with some difficulty but usually not much more than a 'how-to' or a readme is required to get most stuff working. Brand new laptops of any brand find themselves stripped of their default install and turned into Linux machines.

> They usually do not care about the benefits of open source and sustainability anyway.

What market does? Do you have any evidence such a market exists?

The most successful business created industries for themselves. In ollieparanoid's case, he's creating a secure and supported OS that runs on any phone, and when you consider that 90% of phones are missing a secure and supported OS, then that market is pretty huge. If this works then his OS dominates any old, unsupported phone.

People don't care about open source and sustainability but they care a lot about not being hacked and having a phone that runs, and runs fast.

>People don't care about open source and sustainability but they care a lot about not being hacked and having a phone that runs, and runs fast.

You overestimate non-technical people. They're not afraid of getting hacked, they don't understand why they should be, and they don't get why unmaintained software is bad.

People don't give a shit to the extent that the device works well. Security is of course a huge part of that but you don't understand people well enough if you think there's a significant group that will sacrifice good UX and reliability for security and rapid updates. That's what nerds like us do.

Then we need a bigger nerd to make a nice UI for it.

Definitely. But you tell this to some Linux nerds and they get worried that people will start using Linux for the "wrong" reasons or whatever.

> Do you have any evidence such a market exists?

Yes. I have evidence there is a market for this, consisting of 1 or more persons, willing to pay at least $0.00.

Not every OS needs a 1-2 billion users install base.

It exists. Desktop Linux exists, works well and maybe has some single digit market share but in a market basically consisting of everybody and their dog this is still an impressive number. It may not be enough for global megacorps but enough to be sustainable.

Of course there's a market for it. Do you not have at least a few friends who are holding out with their candybar dumbphones or antique iPhones to this day, citing reasons that include but are not limited to 1) I'm not wasting money on a new phone that will have to be replaced every year 2) I hate how much trash electronics generate 3) I want to be more engaged with the people around me so I want my phone to be less capable/less distracting 4) I don't like facebook and the NSA spying on me and I won't get a smartphone unless I'm sure they can't.

I have a good handful of such people in my social circle, ranging in age from 23 to 58, usually higher education levels, and usually non-technical. The biggest common factor amongst them is that Android doesn't work for them.

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