Jolla Still Working On Open-Sourcing More Of Sailfish OS, Including UI/Apps

Many Phoronix readers and open-source enthusiasts have complained when hearing of Jolla's Sailfish OS that this Linux-based smartphone OS isn't fully-open and the company hadn't delivered on its promises to open-source more of it, including its user-interface and apps. According to their CEO, that's still looking to happen.

Jolla CEO Sami Pienimäki wrote a blog post celebrating five years of Jolla and looking ahead to 2017. Jolla is happy for the community ports of Sailfish OS that have happened to new devices, Sailfish OS 64-bit is progressing, and there is lots of work going on with translations. The Sailfish OS community has also done work on getting the Android 6 BSP and newer working too, as another celebrated milestone.

For keeping the company going, Jolla is still pursuing licensing deals as their area of commercial focus. Jolla already has licensing work going in Russia and next they will be focusing on China, Latin America, and Africa.

Jolla is still working to refund their customers who pre-ordered the botched Jolla Tablet, but haven't yet been able to go through yet with the second round of refunds due to their financial situation.

In regards to the open-sourcing more of Sailfish OS, Jolla's CEO wrote, "Previously we’ve also mentioned that we’re working on the further open sourcing of Sailfish OS. We have now taken the necessary steps and preparations to enable us to further open source Sailfish code, in particular in the areas of apps and UI. We have a decision process ongoing but you should expect exciting news on this during upcoming months."

Read more via this blog post.