[SailfishDevel] How do you evaluate the recent events of jolla

Ville Määttä mailing-lists at asatiifm.net
Thu Jul 16 18:13:19 UTC 2015


I don't see recent news as anything particularly positive. It could be
the turning point of the company and with it, Sailfish OS.

Splitting a company is rarely done for any other reason than to get rid
of something you do not want. And Jolla is splitting off devices.

On 11.07.15 14:03, Bob Summerwill wrote:
> My hope would be that Jolla announce a new Chinese partner who have
> licensed Sailfish 2.0 to bring it to the Mainland market.  If that has
> happened then we have something of a breakthrough.

On 15.07.15 15:15, Bob Summerwill wrote:
> It's an Indian partner!  Brilliant news.

Meh.

On a serious note, this really is quite a serious point of thinking for
Jolla. For a while now Jolla has seemingly been focused on the BRICS
countries and ignored Europe / North America other than the Tablet campaign.

Jolla has also been trying to prop up a reputation of Sailfish OS as a
secure OS option.

Reading at today's PR about the partnership it contains business BS that
I can't really stomach. One acronym, ARPU. And it doesn't have the word
"security" or "secure" even once. Not once. So I guess in India
modifying the OS for revenue per user through discriminating service
partnerships is more important for Jolla. Fuck net neutrality.

Security is not only about the software. Hardware is very important and
the only way to have a really secure phone or any other device is to
have a verifiable open stack, both hardware and software. A device
actually fitting that description doesn't exist in the market place.

Jolla can target the BRICS countries with outsourced Chinese and Indian
manufacturers but for a secure device those are just DOA. Making the OS
is just not enough. In the press release there is this comment from Jolla:

"We have now decided to continue the Jolla devices business under a new
company, focusing on security enhanced devices."

I see essentially two options here.

1. That company is a serious attempt to control the hardware and
manufacturing process of those devices. That includes for example
original open hardware designs and firmware.

2. The company bundles some of those outsourced Chinese / Indian phones
with some extra or modified software or makes a similarly half hearted
attempt at essentially pre-installing Sailfish OS on some other
company's phone.

In option #2, Jolla might survive with it's BRICS business but in the
secure phone business, it's dead. Option #1, we'll have to see the
details. If Jolla wants to keep posturing about a secure phone, it needs
to live up to the harsh reality of what that actually means.

-- 
Ville

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