What exactly is this? We would already be able to use PIA with a Librem 5 anyway, as it uses standard VPN protocols... Is this free access to a PIA VPN for Librem 5 owners, or is it just a UI to funnel us into PIAs commercial offering?

I'm betting it'll be x months free with the device along with a mostly-pre-configured profile.

It's more marketing BS to push the idea that somehow purisms products are Freedom and Privacy respecting.

They're not?

Private Internet Access is a decent partner since they announced that they would gradually open source their software in March 2018.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16595975

While PIA did open source their iOS app and browser extensions, I'm a bit disappointed to see that their Android and desktop apps are still proprietary.

https://pia-foss.github.io/

I don't necessarily distrust Private Internet Access, but offering a few different vetted options would be better IMO.

Seems like great news! I'm really excited to read reviews of the Librem 5 when it's released in the third quarter.

Perfect match. They both offer a heavily marketed appearance of being Freedom and Privacy respecting, but actually just relying on the ignorance of customers.

I'm not sure what other companies are trying the same thing. Staying with companies that definitely peddle your data and privacy versus investing in a company who hopefully promotes a better way seems pretty straightforward to me. What hardware and software vendors should the 'smart' customers be buying from?

A US-based VPN (or really any VPN) is only going to help someone so much, but what's wrong with Purism?

They have a distro that doesn't spy on you and hardware switches, and their upcoming phone seperates the modem as a USB peripheral to mitigate the modem's firmware.

I don't know much about Purism. What do you have against them?