Price of Pinephone is going to increase by $100?

[displacefish]

In my opinion, volunteer software projects are the biggest strength of pinephone development -
without voluntary development, there would be nothing.

I'm not suggesting replacing volunteer development, only supporting and enhancing it. Nor am I suggesting "hiring" full-time developers or anything, only providing extra support to give them the freedom to e.g. work on the pinephone part-time, if they choose, because now it would make financial sense to do so.

You can directly donate $100 to the developers of your choice, or buy Librem 5, which includes software development in its price.

While I surely can, and I probably wouldn't be the only one to do so, the vast majority of people might not even consider this. While if this was an option in the official store - even just an option; have the current $150 price point be still available - a lot more people might stop to think, "good point, do I want to support the development more?" (after all, supporting linux-on-phone is the primary reason to get a pinephone in the first place).
The Librem is significantly more expensive than even $250, and additionally they are doing their software completely in-house (as far as I'm aware), without any meaningful community participation. Like @Juergen said above, the voluntary community involvement is irreplaceable.


Overall, I'm of course not sure if it would be feasible logistically. But I wonder if Pine ever considered something like this.