Communication and customer relations issues. My experience, and that of many others online, was that Purism was not transparent or apparently honest about things like timelines and delays. People also had problems with getting Purism to honor refunds, warranties (I had this issue), and similar, exacerbated by communication. This continued to happen over a period of years.
I'm not here to relitigate the whole Purism saga. I bought 4 Purism products, was one of the first people in the world to own a Librem 5, I invested (donated?). I love the company mission, I think it's fantastic that you're daily driving a Librem 5. But I'm not ready to engage again myself, and that's too bad, but I think a lot of people ended up feeling the same way.
> Purism was not transparent or apparently honest about things like timelines and delays
Yes, they did have huge refund and shipping time issues and I don't trust their time estimations anymore. They almost went bankrupt and couldn't issue refunds for a long time. However this is irrelevant today, as their devices are finally available to order and AFAIK the refunds were issued. There were never issues with security, backdoors (unlike Lenovo, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish#Lenovo_security_inci...), nonfree software or the like.
The issue is pretty obvious to most normal people. My ex bought a Purism phone and laptop, said he would switch to Linux the moment they arrived at his doorstep. He ended up buying a new Macbook and iPhone before any of his Purism hardware started shipping. He might still be using the Apple hardware too.
I love FOSS as much as the next guy but you're being outright facetious if you can't see Purism's problem.
Which issues? The phones were shipped, albeit with a long delay. Now, you can buy and get them quickly.
Sent from my Librem 5 daily driver.