Plasma Mobile - Purism meeting notes

[Sebastian Kügler]

Hi,

Some people involved in Plasma Mobile and KDE's promo efforts had a
meeting with Purism, a company who is running a crowdfunding campaign
to create a privacy-focused "free software" phone yesterday.

I've taken some notes as to keep the community in the loop. These notes
may not be complete, but they give a decent picture of what was talked
about during the meeting. Here goes:

Meeting Purism & KDE

Thursday, 7 September 2017, via Jitsi video conferencing

Present:
Zlatan: CTO Purism
Jeff: promotion / communication at purism
Matthias: Purism
Paul: Marketing Coordination
Sebastian: Plasma Mobile coordination / communication
Marco: Plasma Mobile UI maintainer
Aleix: KDE e.V. board, works on Flatpak
Bhushan: Plasma Mobile stack maintainer
Nicole: Purism lead for phone
Todd: CEO Purism


Todd: introducing purism
- builds laptop, goal to reduce screen size to get to the point of
mobile
- be able to deliver on the phone
- believe digital rights is a concern, take FSF policy as base, build
this into the hardware story, create devices users can control
- convenient alternative to android
- evaluating best path forward from the software standpoint, esp
middleware stack
- long term goal: identify pain points for average users to allow wide 
adoption of a pre-installed linux -> build a product line

- KDE wants to make Plasma Mobile readying for end-user needs a goal:
  https:// phabricator.kde.org/T6878
- draft for a communication strategy for a joint campaign with purism
  as base: https://phabricator.kde.org/T6919
- Technology Roadmap for Plasma Mobile:
  https://community.kde.org/Plasma/ Mobile/Roadmap

Results of discussion:
- plan: figure out a way to tap into KDE's promotion engine, and this
reach this audience, drive to consodilate on a given platform
rally the audience behind one platform, rather than different islands
- question for purism: what are we trying to do with the middleware
(KDE Plasma vs. GNOME / GTK)
- unified software stack between laptop and phone formfactors is
desirable
- if the crowdfunding is successful (let's assume yes), deliver the
phone within 12 months
- once we start investing in developers, we need to pick a platform
("pick a horse to bet on")
- next 49 days plus one month, this decision for a platform needs to be
taken
- what hardware are people interested in
- end goal aligns very well: KDE wants a privacy phone, controlled by
the users
- an estimate is needed about text / matrix client
- We need to rally KDE peeps to help developing
- to follow up with email of understanding about possible collaboration



Cheers,
-- 
sebas

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