The Kompakt is really a good product, and fits perfectly the needs of a lor of people. Just a little, simple, epaper screen smartphone AOSP based.
What blocks me and a lot of hackers from buying it is the closed software.
A lot of people, including me, would happily buy the device and hack with it, customize the software, solve bugs and literally work for free to enanche the product.
Going FOSS means:
verify the claim you make as company are respected. You are dealing with a niche, your buyers are not stupid. Big tech make the exact claims as Mudita: “I’m good boy, I don’t spy on user, I take security seriously”. Without opening your code to scrutiny, these remain just void claims. The discovery that the offline+ mode doesn’t disconnect physically wifi and bluetooth, and that analytics are collected in every moment trought sentry, are the kind of incidents that kills your community.
be sure the device will remain reliable and up to date. What will happen after the 5 years support? Open the code will permit community to keep it up to date, rebase on new AOSP versions and patch security vulnerabilities, and in general, be sure it works and dont become a useless brick.
power users will fork your software and create new ways to use the device. An gigantic amount of possibilities, that you can eventually include in the main software as enanchements, or just let power users decide how to use their own device.
be sure security is ok. Muditaos K is aosp based, we dont even know if the security patches are correctly merged regularly or not. Is firmware promptly updated when vulnerabilities are discovered?
You really have all the incentives to go FOSS on a device like that, a lot of hackers and coscient users are interested. Dont miss the opportunity to make the right choice or some other company will make it. Don’t be a “little big-tech wannabe”, the market is ready to reward who will take the drastic approach of being open and FOSS.
We’ve already released the Mudita Mindful Design Framework, and we’re seeing people build their own apps and tools on top of it. Some of those projects are genuinely impressive and show just how much you can do within the current setup.
So, if your goal is to tinker, customize, or explore new ways of using the device, that space already exists.
At the same time, we understand that for some people, full FOSS is a key requirement, especially when it comes to deeper system-level control and verification. That’s a broader discussion, and I’ve pass this on to the team.
However, when it comes to actually building, experimenting, and shaping your own experience with Mudita Kompakt, you can already do that.
We’re already seeing it happen.
As I read in the “security updates” thread, security is something really critical here. The choice to fork aosp 12 could be very unsecure, and the solution proposed by mudita is reasonable, but only if all the process is transaparent. The only way for users to verify that there are no current known critical vulnerabilities in the software is open it.
Open the code also permit to power users to submit patches, and simplify the work to mudita devs. This device needs commuty to really work, and sharing the code is the only way to enable community work (see what happened with the pinephone as example).
It’s true that some work is already happening, with apps and launchers made by community, but without true openness there’s no synergy.
