Purism’s Librem 5 crowdfunding campaign is clocking up pledge after pledge right now — and endorsement after endorsement.
The GNOME Foundation has today given its backing to the Purism project, which has the ambition of building a free, open-source smartphone with user privacy and encryption as a central feature.
GNOME say they will ‘enhance GNOME shell and general performance of the system’ on the Librem 5′
Last week the Linux laptop vendor announced a similar partnership with KDE that will see both projects collaborate to bring Plasma Mobile to the Librem 5 device.
But while Plasma is going to be great fit for a mobile device Purism its the GNOME UI that will ship on the handset by default.
And on this the GNOME Foundation is suitably engaged.
“The Librem 5 is a hardware platform [we are] interested in advancing as a GNOME/GTK phone device. The GNOME Foundation is committed to partnering with Purism to create hackfests, tools, emulators, and build awareness that surround moving GNOME/GTK onto the Librem 5 phone,” the GNOME Foundation says.
Should the Purism Librem 5 crowdfunding campaign reach its $1.5 million goal by mid October — it’s now just under $1 million away — GNOME is says it will “…enhance GNOME shell and general performance of the system with Purism to enable features on the Librem 5.”
Neil McGovern, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, adds that the effort, if realised, of truly free, open-source software stack on a device like the Librem 5 would be a “a dream-come-true for so many people”.
“We are very pleased to see Purism and the Librem 5 hardware be built to support GNOME,” he adds.