The issue is they're heavily implying it's something specific to PinePhone. I just scrolled through the legal notices on an iPhone, and they all have the exact same wording. Small components, such as the graphics libraries, the kernel, health data, the web browser, etc...

(not to mention they're just plain wrong about the battery/thermal not having hardware-level limits)

It doesn't read to me that the author is stating it's specific to pinephone, I read it as them just saying "hey guys, look out for this."

If they use the license wording to help get it across, well, I don't necessarily agree but as they state in the article:

> I'm trying to be a bit inflamatory here, to start the conversation.

If the conversation is

> Software engineering does not put safety first

I'm 100% agreed.

If the conversation is

> The PinePhone has less quality control than Android/iOS

It's patently false

I would parse the article as the second, as it's referring to a specific phone throughout

I read it as the first, with a side of "We need to do this or FL/OSS hardware is going to look bad".

And I concur about the second being patently false. I would guess that it has more overall tbh.

>> The PinePhone has less quality control than Android/iOS

> It's patently false

PinePhone is just HW. Android/iOS is SW. Comparison doesn't make sense. Maybe compare PinePhone to Huawei Honor, or Xiaomi and their HW testing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvRTY6sBPeE

> It's patently false

That's a strawman: author never compared to Android/iOS. What they did spell out,is that some of the code they found is unsafe (e.g. commented-out code to prevent false alerts, that was never being reimplemented in a safer way).

But the article does not mention that other phones might have similar challenges. If the article is about the whole industry then say that, if it is specific to the pinephone say that. Currently it's in that weird middle zone where it sounds like it is specific but all the facts would probably be applicable to many phones.

The actual end product is provided by Apple with no warranties? I find that hard to believe. It makes sense that the OSS libraries they use wouldn't have warranties provided by their developers, but an issue in any of those becomes an Apple issue when it's shipped in their product as long as the issue has an impact on iOS.

I believe so, at least on the software side. For example, the macOS EULA states:

> C. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE APPLE SOFTWARE AND SERVICES ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, WITH ALL FAULTS AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND

https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOSCatalina.pdf

Sorry, but you're just plain wrong. So please don't spread false sense of security if you don't understand the issues, or the HW. You can read my other comments in this HN comment section for why.

In particular the author maintains a kernel branch that is very advanced. Only a few projects use it though, and I once asked for why that was and was told that many patches in that authors kernel branch were unlikely to ever be mainlined and thus would not fit the approach of the distribution.

That's not very precise. :) Many of my patches from my kernel get pulled to "pine64" kernel, including those that are not mainlinable. Distros that care about mainline just use Linus's tree already.

There are not many reasons not to use my kernel tree for Pinephone. I actually had reports from users that my multi-distro image that uses my kernel for 13 different pinephone distributions makes some distros run better.

I suspect that distro maintainers just think that pine64 community gitlab is somehow more official than any other pinephone kernel developer's tree on the internet, just from the name.

Sorry if I misrepresented things.

After giving Purism some money for their "Fund Your App"-thingy today I decided to hit your donation button with a small, but recurring donation, because you deserve it for all your work – even if, sadly, my favourite distribution (DanctNIX Mobile) does not use your kernel and I am too lazy to change that on my end.

Not a single software ever written comes with guarantees. And the way he was phrasing sounded like PinePhone is a hot potato while everybody else is chill, while in reality everybody's the same in that regard.

It doesn't read to me that the author is stating it's a hot potato, I read it as them just saying "hey guys, look out for this."

Consumer protection laws nevertheless hold manufacturers liable. Small part of why doing hardware is hard.

Would that be the manufacturer of the software or of the hardware? I don't think any court would blame manufacturers for incidents caused by user-modifications (installing 3rd-party firmware)