The Journey to Shipping the Librem 5

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Todd Weaver

Founder and CEO
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Latest posts by Todd Weaver (see all)

• Hardware Encrypted COMSEC Bundle by Purism - April 29, 2024
• Purism Differentiator Series, Part 14: Surveillance Capitalism - April 23, 2024
• Purism Differentiator Series, Part 13: Modularity & Right to Repair - April 23, 2024

I was a pretty avid mountaineer when I lived in the pacific northwest, as a child I set a goal to summit every mountain in the Olympic National Forest. There are a lot of them, and I reached that goal over the course of many many years. I summited with my father one weekend, then my brother the next, and my friend the third, and a hiking group the fourth. Sometimes two in a day, sometimes taking a break due to weather, sometimes failing to summit and retrying again the next month. Mountaineers have perseverance.

With Purism, and specifically the Librem 5, I set a lofty goal of delivering a mobile phone that does not spy on you, avoids Big Tech entirely, ensures that all the software is freedom respecting with the source code released, that is the most secure phone available on the market, while also making it convenient to use. I knew back in 2014 when I formed Purism that this was going to be a multi-year very challenging journey, and I also knew that there would be many summits toward this much larger goal.

Our team of experts got us to the most meaningful summit today. This is the Mt. Olympus of the Olympics, it is the day we have all been waiting to celebrate for many years, the day we ship to customers the first mass-produced Librem 5 phones off the production line.

The journey to get to this summit has been long, challenging, and remarkably fun. We, as a team, set off from the trailhead years ago and met every challenge with an understanding that perseverance will get us one step closer to our first summit, second summit, and continue to celebrate each accomplishment along the way. Our team is the most talented group of people I have ever met, each one individually exceptional, and together the most remarkable team ever assembled in technology. I know we can continue to deliver on the near-impossible due to the aligned belief that people should be respected by their technology.

On our journey, we marched past selecting hardware that has never been put in a mobile phone—knowing we could do it—and did it. We banded together when the storm of kernel development was told to be impassable; and we passed it. We roped up when the crevasse of power optimization was deep and wide, and we crossed it. We plodded upward and wrote a convergent operating system for laptop and mobile when the largest companies in technology failed year-after-year to do so. We continued to answer every challenge with “Yes we can” as we all worked together knowing there are many summits in our future, and that larger goal is what we are all here for.

I am proud of our team beyond what any length of compliments can show, the best, brightest, and most talented people work at Purism and it is entirely due to their perseverance that we are celebrating this summit today. Congratulations to all our supporters, our team, and our customers who over the course of many years and many months to come, will be enjoying this summit view.

We have a lot more trailheads to start and mountains to summit, and each day, week, month, and year, we will continue to go step-by-step toward our very lofty goal of delivering convenient technology that fully respects you and your digital life.

Thank you,

Todd.