Coming from a family of farmers and growing up in the country side, I have always been close to nature and have a lot of respect for it. Even if I also have a great interest in technology, I believe that done the right way it is not incompatible with respect for the environment. Unfortunately this is currently not often the case and “Big Tech” companies tend to ignore the ecological impact of their business models. Limiting obsolescence, and favoring a supply chain that respects the environment can easily be in conflict with the wish to favor financial profits.
Purism is a company that puts social purpose values on top of its reasons to exist, and it is why it has been funded by the people and is a Social Purpose Corporation; so it is driven by the people’s interest. Therefore, Purism is free to focus on making respectful software, respectful hardware design and respectful hardware manufacturing. To my knowledge, Purism is a pioneer in doing all that.
While the Librem 5 is already a device driven by software that respects the people, the Librem 5 USA is a big step toward a device that also respects the environment. Of course it is not perfect yet in that regard but it sets the first stone for a respectful hardware supply chain.
Having the control of its hardware supply chain lets Purism source each individual hardware components in a quest for the best “ingredients” for the best “recipe” as Kyle Rankin explains in his “Fab to Table” blog post. The “food production” metaphor is excellent because it is a sector that is already seeing so many great initiatives toward favoring people’s health and environmental care through small producers all around the world, who favor local productions and toxin-free agriculture. In reality, they are defining what food production’s best practices should be, and here, at Purism, we believe that the Tech Industry should get inspired and follow that same direction.
This is one of the aspects that the Librem 5 USA is about and when you invest in it, you support these important additional values.
Even though the Librem 5 USA doesn’t follow the same production rules as the Librem 5, it remains a Librem 5 with the same ethical design, the same specifications and the same security and privacy features.
To illustrate that, I have “updated” some of my previous Librem 5 commercials that show the great features of the Librem 5 and underline the additional values that the Librem 5 USA is adding to the Librem family with a few words at the end of the videos.
Model | Status | Lead Time | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Librem Key (Made in USA) | In Stock ($59+) | 10 business days | ||
Librem 5 | In Stock ($699+) 3GB/32GB | 10 business days | ||
Librem 5 COMSEC Bundle | In Stock ($1299+) Qty 2; 3GB/32GB | 10 business days | ||
Liberty Phone (Made in USA Electronics) | Backorder ($1,999+) 4GB/128GB | Estimated fulfillment early November | ||
Librem 5 + SIMple (3 GB Data) | In Stock ($99/mo) | 10 business days | ||
Librem 5 + SIMple Plus (5 GB Data) | In Stock ($129/mo) | 10 business days | ||
Librem 5 + AweSIM (Unlimited Data) | In Stock ($169/mo) | 10 business days | ||
Librem 11 | In Stock ($999+) 8GB/1TB | 10 business days | ||
Librem 14 | Backorder ($1,370+) | Estimated fulfillment date pending | ||
Librem Mini | Backorder ($799+) | Estimated fulfillment November | ||
Librem Server | In Stock ($2,999+) | 45 business days |