@fp1_wo_sw_updates I had to think for a while, but with your most recent post adjustment you clearified it yourself and made me have to explain a bit in the following lines. So I tried to put it as short as possbile to not annoy any potential readers.
TL;DR:
I truely appreciate that you make up your mind, are critical but fair, and you question things and don’t simply take them as they are said. I admit that I am not as critical and questioning as you are. But I am patient and forgiving. And I sometimes understand why somebody uses “white lies” or omits information which would make things only worse.
Telling by the ticket numbers, which were massively increasing since the first FP2 devices were shipped, I’m guessing (for lack of knowing) that the modularity is a key aspect when talking FP2 problems. Nobody has ever done a modular smartphone before, so we can’t expect a startup company to do it right from the start.
Let me start by mentioning something, we as a community must never forget:
Fairphone is a private company, which - however revolutionary their goals are - at the end of the day MUST earn more money than they spend to sustain. What we will probably never be able to answer is, are they gonna stay true to their values or give in to the capitalistic reality, when it comes to such a crossroad.
I chose my nick name “Trust” for a reason. Trust is different from belief. If you don’t know whether a statement is true and you have nothing to indicate to yourself that the source of this statement is legit or trustworthy, you either believe in it or you don’t. If the source however has proven in the past, by making statements which became true or keeping promises which he/she/it made, then that’s building up trust (or mistrust, depending on the outcome).
So for me, trust is a very important thing, because it’s THE only thing I have, to make a judgement if I can’t tell the truth right away.
The “problem” we have as a community is that there is - to some extent - only one source for the actions and internal doings of Fairphone, namely Fairphone themselves. So if they tell something which is not verified by some other independent source, we can only go by what we know so far from and about Fairphone and ask ourselves whether we trust in it, believe in it, or neither.
In the past years, I have become very careful with questions like “Have you seen it?” or “Where is the proof?”, because such “KO questions” very quickly put your mind in a state in which you doubt the validity of everything you haven’t seen with your own eyes. It’s sort of the ultimate mistrust and you cannot live in a society with that mindset, because a society is based on trust. We trust in the value of money though on plain aspects it’s worthless. We trust in judges taking the law seriously, though some don’t. We trust in doctors not trying to kill us for some reason, though some do. (Side note: Mistrusting a whole group of people because of some very few bad examples is a “phobia”).
Of course you need proof to build up trust. But you shouldn’t need it everytime and everywhere, because that’s not trust, but rather control - the exact opposite. I don’t trust Fairphone for everything they say. You mentioned good examples why. I support the values though and thus the project.
Back to the topic:
You’re absolutely right with that. So think through how things would develop if Fairphone publicly states something, knowing it would make things worse? We as a community would then know what the exact problem is. Various media might report “Fairphone - a dying project” and suddenly, noone is interested in Fairphone’s products anymore, because who will maintain their product?
Now, who would benefit from that? Certainly not Fairphone. And we as a community can’t do much with that information about “why things are bad” except for communicating it. So from that perspective, I could understand that whatever company (not only Fariphone) would not publicate problems which they don’t have a solution for yet, because all that does is create uncertenty among everyone involved. That’s very counter productive.
“Hey guys, sorry, we have a major problem with […] and because of […] we are very sorry that we can’t fix this for device generation X.”
A statement like this woud be an absolutely stunning act of honesty. Unfortunately, statements on such a honesty level have alway been very rare. And that has a reason, namely honesty - as good it is - is not always the right way. Sometimes, honesty can do more harm than a lie.
Just think about the last time somebody asked you for a favor and you made up something just because you didn’t like to do it. You could have told the truth, that you simply don’t want to. But instead, you made something up to avoid being labeled “not caring” or “lazy” or even looked upon as an “ass”.
Such “white lies” are also reasonable in larger scales, e.g. if politicians, companies, countries etc. try to prevent harm which they would encounter if they told the truth. And even though I don’t appreciate this - as the one being lied to - I can understand it sometimes.
I assume they don’t do such differentiation, because it would barely make any difference. Only few people in our community would really understand the impact of certain changes if explained in computer scientific detail. That’s why in my opinion it’s most reasonable to explain it in a way that most people actually understand what’s going on.
They could of course publish the changelog in two ways: “simple” and “detailed”, but again I’m questioning the resonability of this effort, especially when we are complaining about the support being overworked.
To close the circle:
I truely appreciate that you make up your mind, are critical but fair, and you question things and don’t simply take them as they are said. I admit that I am not as critical and questioning as you are. But I am also someone who doesn’t give up one someone or something on the first bad news.
I have given second and third chances, not because I have much experiences with doing so, but because it’s my conviction that somebody has to give chances in order to spread trust in the society.
It may of course be dangerous at some point and I might get disappointed at some point. But no risk, no reward - that’s life.