Jolla's First Smartphone Powered By Wayland

[shmerl]

Mer is a core metadistro for Sailfish. It uses systemd, so it's natural to see Jolla contributing to it. GNU/Linux means glibc based Linux. Android Linux means bionic based. That's the key difference. Mer is glibc based. The rest are just details.

[Jedibeeftrix]

If I was one of the big players and a competitor to sailfish and wanted to block it I could/would buy out the stock for whatever components they announce leaving them liars and/or unable to launch or deliver since there is plenty of time to arrange that.
Like I did with the N9 I'll buy it to give the middle finger to that scumbag Elop. Plus um way..land

i always wondered if nokia has a golden share in Jolla resulting from the investment package they provided to ex-meego employee's...

[jalyst]

IIRC Jolla clearly discounted that at one point, because it was flying around constantly like some bad rumour that never dies.

[erendorn]

I have more questions than thoughts on this:

2. the specs we have are not that good, I can get for the exact same price a Oppo finder 5 30 euro more with 32gb. with a good camera, this phone seems to have no good one, I know mpixels are not all but it is one hint on the quality. with a solid case with 1080p display. yes you can say quadcore is not needed because of not using java but 1080p cant be made up with software.

No mobile CPU can drive 1080p decoding (and most codec cannot be multithreaded). It's done by specific chips on all phones.

3. I read anywhere opensource opensource... thats not different on androids side... so the question is will there be free 3d drivers for that phone at release and all other free drivers?

No free drivers (probably userspace blob for easier kernel maintenance).
Android is a mostly open source OS with a Linux Kernel.
Sailfish is a mostly open source OS based on Gnu/Linux with a Linux Kernel.
The difference is that all the middleware above the kernel is standard gnu/Linux stack (systemd, pulse, wayland, ofono, gstreamer, etc..) so that developments benefit to and from the "desktop linux".
Some core apps (mail, maps, calendar) + part of the interface are expected to be closed source.

4. if not, whats so important about that phone, what prevents me from installing this os to any smartphone at least the ones that are supported officialy by cyanogenmod?

Lack of vendor support.
But feel free to do it, if you have the will and the free time.

[shmerl]

Some core apps (mail, maps, calendar) + part of the interface are expected to be closed source.

Everything is expected to be open source (except stuff like Android emulator), but Jolla didn't publish any details, so we'll have to wait until the release.

[jalyst]

They've said quite a few times now that some core components/apps* will be closed.
It's still not clear exactly what will remain closed, but it's likely to be only core/stock apps & AlienDalvik, possibly some other elements of the OS/UX, but that's not certain yet.
There will be Jolla's flavour of Sailfish, and the Sailfish Alliance's flavour of Sailfish...**
The latter will be completely open (barring obvious stuff like dvrs etc), the former will allow them to [potentially] license their flavour of Sailfish to others.
If their position in the market starts to look much more secure in say 2yr, then personally I think they should forget about licensing sw & focus solely on being a Sailfish hw ODM.
But I guess that depends on how lucrative both approaches end-up being for them...

*but not necessarily interfaces to most of those apps/components
**although personally I do have some creeping doubts we'll end-up seeing this more open flavour

[shmerl]

@jalyst: Where did you see their comments about closed core applications?

[jalyst]

I'll try to dig-it-up if it doesn't take too long, but it has been mentioned quite a few times in discussions @TMO (usually properly sourced), hence why it's seared into my memory.

[erendorn]

I remember the same thing, and to be honest, I would understand if they did it.
I wouldn't expect them to write from scratch and then open source a good a fully featured email client (just an example, they didn't mention anything specifically).
Contribute to an existing project or start one where it makes sense, yes, but work for free for your competitor, I wouldn't do it.

Open core, investment in upstream project and closed source special sauce is a decent business model.

[elain1]

New SDK released.
Updated Silica with Qt5, QtQuick2 & Wayland

https://sailfishos.org//