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Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

Copperhead is dead. See recent drama.

For reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/copperheados

Purism is next in line.

I really hope they succeed but the track record for these things is amazingly bad, the forces they are up against are not small.

> I really hope they succeed but the track record for these things is amazingly bad, the forces they are up against are not small.

- Linux Fan, 1993

Quite a distinction between hardware and software development.

Apart from commercial competitors, I'd imagine a few natsec types would probably try to rustle feathers, they certainly have past form in this field.

We need an open, PC-like phone standard? So far we have closed SoCs everywhere that end up as landfill every 1-2 years without any other possible use. With <5nm chips it should be trivial to have open SoCs in phone factors.

The good thing is that Purism has a track record. They have been designing, manufacturing & shipping privacy focused, FOSS laptops for years now.

A full FOSS/FOSH phone is new territory. They're still allowing pre-orders on their website if interested.

I'm hopeful that it will be a good Linux phone when production is done in January.

It's far from dead. The main developer is going to continue as open-source donation based. Which is great news, because Copperhead was only source-available:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8u8co8/the_pr...

While for the most part I agreed with strncat, the way he handled things was extremely poor. Especially the part where he deleted the signing keys. This isn't the first time he's done a "drama flameout" from a project, either. Most importantly, he has made public complaints about people using his work for free.

Frankly, he won't ever be in my web of trust. I'm not going to trust my critical infrastructure to him.

Rest of the drama aside, I feel that deleting the signing keys was perhaps the only viable choice. He was the one making the builds. What's the point in leaving the keys in the hands of the company ? It only leaves the door open for the company publishing questionable builds with the same signing key.

Agreed on the keys. His interpretation of open source licenses is weird, he feels cheated when people use his stuff in accordance to the license. He wants to stop people from accepting donations for example claiming it's "commercial use". In that regard he's out of touch with reality.

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