alt Hacker News> A GrapheneOS phone is just as open as the Librem 5.
No, it's not. Try to run a completely free OS on you hardware (like Replicant) and watch the lack of camera, GPS and more.
Related discussion for other: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47942070
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Quite frankly, the whole Librem ecosystem is significantly less "open" than GrapheneOS or any desktop Linux variant to anyone who look at things objectively instead of using weird FSF semantics.
Instead of loading firmware in sensible manner like GrapheneOS or desktop Linux distros with the linux-firmware package, they keep PureOS "free of blobs" by having the bootloader inject all of the blobs into memory in an extremely shady manner. Since when was having the bootloader tamper with system memory about freedom and openness?
Oh, and they even have the audacity to market this as the "firmware jail" as if it is any more contained than the linux-firmware package too. Truly impressive stuff.
The Librem 5 uses a bottom of the barrel, standard industrial CPU from 2017 with no updates. It is no more open than a Google Pixel or any other mobile device. it lacks proper updates, isolated radios, and any form of hardening. The kill switches are also useless if your device is fully compromised and turned into a spying device, all of your data is already gone. The only thing the switches do as a last resort is block voice recording, which is an improper way of doing it since speakers are essentially just microphones in reverse.