I also admire Light and them remaining strong with their philosophy, but I wouldn’t say that fact alone should be contrasted with Mudita. I believe the Kompakt does align with their philosophy, just in a different way. I also think their decision in letting users sideload personal apps maybe comes from wanting to appeal to a larger audience.
Light has gotten a lot of “heat”, for a lack of a better word, because people are wanting to customize their Light phones with certain, specific apps that they need to use on the daily, but wouldn’t obviously benefit the majority of users. Specific apps such as certain banking apps, or ones they use for work, or other applications that exist that they feel they need…these sort of apps have no place on the Light phone and those frustrated with not being able to “hack” the phone (meaning, not having open-source readily available so that they can customize it further) constantly are trying to slowly convince the Light community & founders why they should change their minds to fit their own preferences. However, Light has not budged in their vision, their ethos and their intentionality behind their devices. This is a good thing.
However, bad news for those wanting to do more with a Light Phone. On the other hand, Mudita is deciding to allow people to do this, even saying they might allow certain parts of the phone to have open-source available, so that users can customize it to their liking. The downside? Yes, those who are easily addicted can easily side load and therefore, maybe this phone isn’t for them. The upside? All those people complaining now have a phone that is a step down from a smartphone (even though, I’d argue that dumbing down your smartphone is the cheapest and a very effective way, especially when downloading apps that have such high security, they don’t allow you to uninstall the app when it’s working) and are able to configure it to their necessities.
For that reason, I don’t think it’s necessarily against Mudita’s philosophy, I think they have clearly made a phone that goes with what they had in mind, in terms of less distractions. Whatever the user does though, that’s up to them and if they ruin the phone too much by downloading more than is necessary, I don’t think that says anything bad about Mudita’s ability to stick with their vision and their ethos.
To me, it just seems like they want to cater towards a bigger crowd. Considering the fact they needed to use a Kickstarter as well, I’m just saying the benefit of catering to a bigger population means more funds for the phone. So now, maybe Kompakt looks a bit nicer to those who want to have something “like the Light” but with their added banking app and so forth (Even though Light to me is different than the Kompakt, but this is what they are looking for- a step down from a smartphone).