Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

To answer that question, I want to contribute to Sailfish, but since I am not a developer and Jolla doesn't let me support them apart from purchasing a tablet which I did not desire let alone need, and which in retrospect puts Sailfish on a side track with cool features like peek, cover gestures, pulley favorites menu, favorites application menu, OOM ,affected for the worse I would love to financially support freelance people willing to put effort in Sailfish OS to make it their gem.

I have stated many times also on other websites that I would pay 100 Euro for a Sailfish License fully supported on a few solid hardware (Fairphone, Yotaphone, Samsung if it must, or better Nokia ex-Windows Phone).

Would it not be nice and sufficient if Jolla would open up everything pre-Sailfish 2.0 for the community (and let Sailfish 2.0 become the bloatware Android clone alternative for big telecom giant's budget phone)? I suppose Jolla 1.x mid 2015 would be a nice enough base?

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

I think your post is quite insightful, but I don't think this point applies to Jolla based on what I've read about how they work. Don't they have those regular meetings/group discussions where everyone talks about what they're working on and how it fits into the big picture?

The second point fits Jolla very well though!

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

It seems to me there's an abundance of complaining about Sailfish 2.0, so I just want to say that I love the changes to the UI. Not every one of the changes, but on the whole I feel it's a good move forward. The main OS feels more fluid and it feels more exciting to use - which might seem as totally superfluous, but I'm all for being excited while fiddling my gadgets :-D.

Of course I have some annoyances with the changes... but many of them are fixable with community's fixes, and some of those I feel Jolla would well heed to take a close look to at least implement them as optional setting.

My biggest worry is the OOM, but that has nothing really to do with Sailfish 2.0. My uneducated gut-feeling is that it's mainly because QML is a memory hog, and that could be improved - but it's probably outside of Jolla's scope and requires improvements from upstream.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Why would I want it ? Well, that's simple - I'm working full time on the Fedora and RHEL installer.

Both Fedora and RHEL all completely open source, so Sailfish OS being half-proprietary feels awfully backwards. Especially if you can compare it with fully open distros on a daily basis and see all the problems the half open/half nature of Sailfish OS is causing.

Also so far I don't think anybody has been able to present any benefit the proprietary bits are providing to Sailfish OS - after more than 2 years after launch the only two devices officially running Sailfish OS are both made by Jolla. Even though there are some unclear shreds of information about the Intex device, I'm not sure a single obscure OEM from India after two years of trying is worth all the problems the closed bits are causing.

Not to mention that there are more ways to go about it than just close source stuff left and right, such as:

• licensing your brand
• licensing your artwork/themes
• providing support, (security)fixes and feature development to your licensees

That way you will still get money without pissing of all your contributors who are already used to contributing to much more open projects.

And as for general reasons why you would want a fully open Sailfish OS:

• security - unless everything possible is open the OS can't be really trusted due to missing peer review
• community QA - community can help test stuff continually, rather than when it is actually too late to fix the the bugs as release is almost ready (you paid testers will never find all the bugs)
• open development - you can watch, contribute and influence the development as it happens rather than once it is actually done and hard to change
• actually being able to fix and improve stuff - without needing a change in a closed component that Jolla will never do due to being overworked as hell
• much less pressure on Jolla developers from the community as people can do many things themselves and "patches or GTFO!" is now a valid response to many demands
• makes a community distro (without your licensed artwork and trademarks) much more viable - you don't need to rewrite the whole UI and Sailfish OS can actually make use of the stuff you do
• future proofing - if a meteorite obliterated Finland tomorrow we will be in similar situation we have been at least twice before (N900 & N9) - a half/open half closed system that is hard for the community to maintain no to say extend and develop further

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Check if you are not another victim of [bug][1.1.9.28] tracker-miner-fs stuck in a loop , this alone can result in tracker alone eating 20-50% of memory and 100% of CPU for long periods.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

I never understood it either but some people do quite well selling free software ;)

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

That's pretty much nails it - even if Nemo Mobile might want to eventually go a different way (Glacier components instead of silica, etc.) forcing them to wasting time on reimplementing half the OS as the first step has resulted in the unfortunate lack of progress we are seeing...

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

I think you may be confusing things a bit here. The above is not about persuading anyone about the benefits of closed components. It is about persuading anyone about the benefits of Sailfish.

As an OEM, you would not give a flying duck whether it is open or closed. All that would matter to you is, "how many units does it help me to sell?" And please, put your hand on your heart and tell me, why would you as an OEM take the risk with an obscure OS, with a very limited user base, backed by a small company with a proven track record of not delivering or delivering hopelessly late, in preference to a mature and popular OS backed by a multi-billion dollar company?

I know that if I were such an OEM, I would expect Jolla to pay me for taking the risk. I would definitely not pay a dime. Esoteric concepts like open or closed would play no role in my decision.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

There could be also network effect at play - even though the apps themselves might be open source, that does not mean you won't get blocked by issues in closed components you can't fix.

Take multi user chat (MUC) as an example - the backend (Telepathy) is open as is (IIRC) the accounts framework - it might both actually already support multi user chat or could be added by the community due to the respective components being open. But the chat application UI is closed source, so even if the backend supports it or community adds it to the UI the only one who can change the UI is Jolla...

This is probably why the Cyanide Tox client and the various whatswhatever cleints are standalone apps rather than nicely integrated parts of the built-in chat system.

And the situation around Sip support - community has done it's part and has been waiting for Jolla to make the necessary changes in the closed parts for months, citing:

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Ok, ok, stop right there. If you really want to contribute to Sailfish, you can (a) become a developer, or (b) go ahead and invest some money in Jolla. (I don't believe they've gone public yet, but they are running almost entirely on investment capital right now; I suspect they wouldn't turn you away if you've got enough money to make a difference.)

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Very true! So, let me ask again -- why Sailfish? Why not Nemo? (I'm pretty sure Nemo hits all the items on your checklist that Sailfish misses...)

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Except one: there is no device available running it ;)

(Aren't we a bit OT, BTW? ;))

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Ah, by "reimplementing half the OS", would you mean "having to do the same amount of work on a GUI that Jolla has invested millions of dollars of seed capital and several years of dozens of programmer's lives to implement"? ;)

It just seems a little off, I think, to demand that Jolla just give away all that work. Especially as their GUI is more or less what they are hanging their entire business model on...

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

After FOSDEM I've tried to get Nemo running in a VM to check how modRana and Universal Components look running on it. I've been able to get some sort or GUI running in the VM but even the help of the main Nemo developers via IRC we have not been able to make it register mouse input...

I haven tried since and the situation might have improved since then, but lets imagine that Nemo had all the closed source Sailfish OS (minus the theme and without the Sailfish/Silica/Jolla branding) and could actually use their limited resources to improve it and fix existing issues, thus improving both.

Not having to fight such basic issues such as registering mouse/touch input while having to develop sour own widget set, email application, messaging UI, homescreen, PIM, etc...

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Yeah, this is pretty much my biggest sticking point with Nemo right now. :) Of course, I think the way that Jolla solved that problem was to avoid going totally open-source. :( Examples of Red Hat and Ubuntu are great, but I'm just not seeing them break into the mobile device world. (And I'm kinda worried that Microsoft and Apple are slowly eating their closed-source way back into the desktop realm...) But now I'm even more:

Sorry! :) Yeah, I think I've gone entirely off the rails here. I'm just kinda irritated at all the complaints about Jolla's lack of open source, when nobody seems to give the time of day to the existing open source options. :(

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Yes, exactly. If the Nemo folks had purchased the closed-source licenses to the various hardware devices they are targeting, they wouldn't need to muck around trying to reverse-engineer everything. And that _would_ have allowed them to get up and running a lot more quickly.

And this is basically the route Jolla took.

I'm just saying, it feels really wrong to dump Nemo under the bus and demand Sailfish go fully open, when the one of the reasons Sailfish seems to be so far ahead of Nemo today is because Jolla chose not to go fully open...

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

The GUI is probably worthless for all intents and purposes. It's extremely limited and halfbaked, and its supposed USP (gestures) is done far better, more comprehensively and with vastly more configurability by numerous FREE Android launchers and ROMs. Android's basic UX is that of the entirely open source AOSP. All the primary Linux GUIs are open source and free. What on earth makes you think Jolla can mimic MS or Apple? Expecting people to pay for the GUI is hubris of the worst kind.

GUI is what they're hanging their business model on? Really? Given the above, not much of a business ... and they've had no business so far. Their biggest issue is that they've been trying to sell a product from day one, but they still barely have a product after all this time. Management seem to have been in a state of total denial.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Ok, fine. Sounds like Jolla is doomed. So... if I may ask, why are you here? There are plenty of alternatives to Sailfish out there. What makes you interested enough in this doomed, worthless, crappy product to waste your time talking about it on this forum board? ;)

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

i agree with Copernicus. rememeber however that redhat is the exception that confirms rule,not the rule...how many oss companies failed with that aim? lets be honest,we cant blame someone if he decide not to risk betting on a way wich is difficult and so much rarely viable. ( applause to red hat however).its matter of choice..and maybe i would have made similar..but now i am wondering if its so difficult to set a ui for nemo,or supporting that project instead/both with sailfish os. everyone have to choose...

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

I know this was not really center on all of us but still...

Because we have been there since at least the N900 times (since 2010 for me at) and we do think this (an almost full powered classical Linux distro running on a mobile device) is the way to go ?

Not the various more or less embedded hacked together toy operating systems...

That's why we are there, pointing to various issues, problems and bugs - so that things can be fixed and improved! Because we do care and want Sailfish OS/Nemo/Mer to be successful!

So is sometimes hard to see the same mistakes that Nokia did to be redone by Jolla and most importantly not willing to let people help them - it's because we care...

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

= i have absolutely zero counter argument (or even point to elucidate in the first place) so I'm just going to cry and troll.

but to answer your question, most people with any interest came from the N900 era, and a few were 'newbies' who only boarded after the N9. people have been continually willing to let Jolla and Sailfish get away with murder because of rose tinted spectacles, myself included. were it not for the glory days (well - halcyon days), very few would have even given jolla the time of day, let alone stuck around until now. the reason there was such a huge exodus of developers and community members in the weeks and months after the jolla phone's launch was because a lot of people realised just how bad the situation was and how unlikely jolla were to improve things remotely soon. to some extent i realised that too, but I honestly thought it could be made serviceable, or that the remaining community members could help fix it. the latter's been impossible for the reasons discussed this evening, and the former seems as far off now as it did ~22 months ago in terms of having a competitive or commercially viable product.

unless there's immediate and significant improvement it's just barmy to stick around. if you can't find something that suits you somewhere within the now vast and varied Android ecosystem, you probably aren't looking very hard. UP is developing very quickly and seems like they'll be the only ones to challenge MS on the desktop integration front for the forseeable future. things don't have to be as much of a struggle as they are with Sailfish for users or developers in alternate ecosystems.

rationally, like many here, i should have left long ago ... but there's the self defeating time invested / inertia and the naive hope for a better tomorrow. I've been hoping that Sailfish would improve to a point where I could make a choice to stay or go, but unless something fundamental has changed since 1.1.9 and tablet have been signed off, it won't be a choice, it'll be a forced exit.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Mer is just a core. It's like you would say any device using *nix or linux as kernel are enough opensourced (iOS and PS3/4 are based on opensource freebsd and a lot of opensource tools, but it doesn't help you, does it?)
There is a huge difference between functional OS that you can set on your phone and use (btw do you have and hw that is 100% supported by mer/nemo except jolla as they do not provide the way to flash) and set of tools to build your own (see it as LFS).

In addition they actually said they would open source before phone launch and few times later, they said it again before tablet campaign and their PR uses "opensource" word too much and not it a proper way. Marc in his video told that Sailfish 2.0 is open on campaign(and where Marc now :P)

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Actually you are right on your point of view, but you are wrong in general.
As you see there is even decrease of devs interested and contributing to Nemo as Jolla not only failed to make it easier, they made it even harder with "in-door" development (last time i checked).
AFAIK even @w00t (ex sailor) posted about lack of organization and documentation and co-operation on that matter somewhere on forum (@w00t correct me if I'm wrong).
And you can say that jolla (that actually controlling Nemo and Mer) do not have to do anything for me or you on that matter, you should understand that developers don't own anything to Jolla as well and if there is choice between A project and B, where A is hard to jump in and B has proper bugzilla(from start) and proper documentation and community friendly, why would he bother to work on A, if there a lot of B-like projects.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

You see it as black and white mate. And that's the problem.
Btw it is not Jolla forum, they refused to cooperate with TMO and thus why are you spending time wasting on arguments on this forum instead of productive use of your time on TJC, oh wait... because TJC is FAQ engine and now is a mess as they used wrong platform for communication/bug report/everything else that is not suitable to use on FAQ engine ;P

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

As a consumer with limited funds rather than investor I have very few options to Support Jolla with Sailfish.

2 stickers with Jolla logo: deployed
All hardware (tablet / phone) purchased: done
Providing feedback on TJC: ongoing
Try to hype friends into Sailfish: done and failed
Donate to developers of native applications: done.

Become developer: no time and interest and I am of the same opinion as sensible people stated above, what's the use if Saiflish keeps the interface part for telepathy or how is it called closed source? Can't implement SIP in a worthy way, something I would start with on a phone.

Again, I would like to purchase the software Sailfish in a form originally intended by the Jolla crew in their idealistic free from Nokia Elop days.
Here I have purchased an alternative ROM for my Kindle Fire. Purchase, install , play. Tired of new OS? Run uninstaller to invert operation and get back to original OS.
http://www.perfectlyandroid.com/

An "old" phone loaded with an officially supported 100 Euro Sailfish license would make very original Xmas presents compared to latest Galaxy S.


Another way I would support Jolla is through their indiegogo campaigns. If they would search for support to implement the top 10 jolla together most voted or requested items.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

To add some words to this Open Source discussion. I'm contributing to Sailfish-office and more recently to Nemomobile for the simple reason, that they are components that I use every day. The Jolla phone is my only phone. I cannot contribute to something that would stay as a toy on a board, I don't have enough time for that, so everything that is fully Open Source but lacks the capability of being my main phone in mundane life is a no go for me, sadly :(

About the direction chosen by Jolla, I don't simply understand why they are not releasing as Open Source all the small applications of SFOS (calculator, calendar, mail…). That they keep Silica closed source, I can understand because they don't want to see a fork being done by a bigger player and being pushed out later. But for the small apps, they are linked (because of Silica) hard to SFOS and cannot be forked easily to work somewhere else. So they don't risk anything at all ! The argument of displaying bad code seems unvalid to me since the office application code is pretty well written IMHO. The argument of not being on control anymore is neither valid, since they can accept or reject any pull request they would receive. The only reasonable explanation that I imagine is a lack of Open Source advantages understanding from the management…

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Stay tuned.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

It seems that quite many here take it all black and white from their own perspective. For some

I remember that discussion and reasons why TJC was formed in the first place. They did it because for some community minded people they simply were not welcome here. If my memory doesn't betray me, you were one of the most vocal opponents. However, they didn't want to just create another TMC to cannibalize the communities here. Somehow even that has been turned into negative thing here....

Being like that, I don't find it that surprising if not many developers are willing to spend much time here. After all, it requires certain twist in character to wish being ripped apart publicly with no intention for anyone to actually see anything but heir own agenda.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Please note that IMHO, in the absence of valid reasons for going closed source, the default should be free software. In this day and age, I'm just no longer entertaining the opposite point of view.

I could see valid reasons to close down say the Twitter client, or maybe Chinese handwriting recognition which seems to be a humongous effort without workable free software alternatives.

But the n^th iteration of the mail client being closed source? It has reached the point where I think they're shooting themselves on the foot.

There's this dooming sensation that Ubuntu will manage to ship a way more free software phone sooner than Jolla, if they haven't already; and the ironic part of it is that it will probably ship more components made directly or indirectly by Jolla employees than Canonical employees.

My message just points out that after that point it will be harder for me to justify Sailfish. But that is an opinion and I'm sure that others find e.g. cover actions more important :)

Mer, Replicant, etc. do not currently ship devices with support and that's something I'm willing to pay for. Note this would be closer to the role I wish Jolla had: selling working Mer devices and supporting them.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

What did you expect? They came from Nokia, at least for the most part. That is where they learned how to do things.

You said it, bro :(

A fellow TMO member once asked me about my Jolla experience to help him decide whether to buy one. Like me, he had an N900 and an N9 before. I just looked up my response, it was sent on 2014-12-17. It is quite long and I am not going to copy it here but I have to say, having re-read it again, it saddens me to see that none of the points I mentioned there have been addressed. For example, the lack of a global copy and paste.

Nevertheless, the gist of that write-up was, "it has some potential but it is not quite there yet", with an implied belief that it would get there eventually. Now, nearly a year on, I would have written a different summary: "The potential was there but has been completely wasted."

Yet I think there is still a chance. But that would require a complete U-turn on Jolla's side. Stop fidgeting with the UI. It is not perfect but it will do as it is. Focus on things people are actually asking for. Fix or implement basic functionality. Fix the truly terrible memory consumption and management. A bare OS, with no Android installed and no apps running, using 69% of the available RAM (gone up to 83% in 1.1.9) is a scandal. Fixing it may take a few months if you put your mind to it but it would be time well spent. That is exactly what Apple (Leopard->Snow Leopard) and Microsoft (Vista->7) did and it worked for them.

Otherwise the future is bleak. More and more peole will move on, leaving behind only those still refusing to accept the reality. As their concentration increases, so will their cognitive dissonance which they will vent by an increasing aggresivity towards the few remaining people with some common sense. Eventually, the only Jolla's users left would be the 1000 or so die-hard yes-men, Jolla will stop receiving any useful feedabck and the system will collapse. A business cannot exist with such a small user base for very long.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Well, I would like to add some words about Nemo and Open Source OS :
Nemo with Glacier is not fully unusable, and working on it is not building an UI from scratch. But yes, because of the lack of developers, it is not ready for an everyday use. however, I used it few days on my N900 (my main phone at this time) for testing purpose and it worked more or less. IMO, there is not so much work required for having an usable OS with the basics functions working well (if I remeber well, SMS were fully working and calls half working).

About the devices : there were working phones with Nemo when nobody talked about Sailfish : the N900 (which is now not maintained because of Wayland) and the N9. So if you have a N9, you have some hardware where you can test Nemo.

And finally, why someone could would like work on Nemo. In first, it's open-source. And there is one think especially great with the open source : diversity. Working on Nemo could provide an other choice of GNU/Linux phone distribution, and will add diversification.

But if you tell me that working on a abandonned OS with (as it seems) nobody working on it is less interresting than a one maintained by a compagny with many users using it, I can only agree but if you want a fully open-source OS, someone have to do the first step. And here, the first step is not to do everything from scratch but to work on existing code.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

We are tunned few years already. If there is some information - just give it to us. Because this "soon" thing is not funny anymore.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Right... wish me luck, I'm going to try and pull ths in a slightly more constructive direction and talk about something Jolla could change without turning their business model upside-down:

I read somewhere before that a big chunk of Red Hat support contracts are with the US military. If Jolla wants to capture part of the government/military market, they desperately need to improve the security model on Sailfish. There has been some talk of "Sailfish Secure" but as far as I can tell nothing has materialised so far.

Sailfish' security model sucks because it doesn't follow the principle of least privilege:

• Nemo can install packages without authentication (via pkcon)
• Installed apps run as nemo...
• ...installed apps could therefore install other things (that run as root) without authentication! I'm not really worried about malicious apps since most Sailfish apps are Free/Open Source, but if you subscribe to the Ubuntu security announcement list you'll see lots of bugs like "potentially allows remote command execution as the user firefox is running as"... I am worried about the fact that exploiting a security flaw in a single app could give you easy root via nemo.
• all kinds of other important stuff also runs as nemo (like systemd)

I think this is something Jolla could improve quite easily, without affecting their business model. Pretty sure the reason people don't bitch about this more is because they're used to it - n900's security model was pretty awful too, and really shocked me when I picked it up for the first time last year.

I forgave the n900 because it's an old design, but Sailfish is a modern OS and is way behind Android/iOS in this regard!

Why not:

• Create groups with permissions to read contact data, change network connections etc
• Require nemo to authenticate when installing applications (otherwise you might as well just run everything as root)
• Each app runs as its own user
• Only grant harbour-foo permissions for the groups required to do what it needs

Doesn't seem like a lot of work, we have the tools to do a lot of this already. The difficult bit would be the next step: showing a list of required permissions (groups) before installation, and allowing the user to grant/revoke them.

Does anyone know why this wouldn't work/hasn't been implemented already? Or can you think of any improvements?

Also related, the roadmap says Jolla researched SELinux some time ago, so maybe there's a more elegant way of achieving this using SELinux?

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Agree completely.

Either sort the memory issue out, or else give us a new phone with more memory. It drives me crazy that we have these much vaunted multi-tasking capabilities that we simply can't use because apps have to be continuous recycled like in Android.

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

I sense a contradiction here:

and

Ok, here's the problem I see: as you say, the fully open mobile devices are still "toys on a board". Only the organizations that have adopted closed-source practices have devices viable for every-day work. So, just what are the advantages of Open Source, then? If, for example, Nemo can never become a viable product, why should anybody at Jolla want to adopt the same strategy as Nemo?

I guess I'm saying, can you really convince Jolla that full open-source is going to help their business? Cause right now, I'm just not seeing it...

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Absolutely. I'd been through a few Android phones before getting devices with 2GB and 3GB of RAM and on Android it's night and day compared to phones with 1GB or less. On Symbian it was always 'never buy a phone with less than 128MB' of course so it is kind of bonkers we're talking about multi-GB now but chips are a cheap fix.

Jolla expect to run Sailfish AND Android in less than 1GB so they either need to optimise the fudge out of Sailfish or port it to devices with more RAM.

...and fix CalDAV

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

I'd love to share your point of view, but in the absence of viable fully open mobile operating systems, I'm not finding a lot of valid reasons to go open-source either. :(

Just where is the community support for community-based software? Why is there so much interest in trying to make commercial software open, when open-source alternatives already exist? And, if Jolla did fully open-source Sailfish, would anybody actually work on it, or would they just go to the next piece of commercially-built software and demand that it become open as well?

Cool! So, I've gotta ask, just where are the fully open Mer-based devices? Jolla doesn't have a patent on Mer or anything; just what is stopping another company from building one?

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Good luck. :)

This is important notice. Years ago Red Hat effectively ditched consumer market and concentrated on enterprise only. It was sensible and successful choice for them. However, Sailfish doesn't compare to that as it's completely different kind of beast - it cannot succeed without being somewhat successful in the consumer market whereas Red Hat didn't have to give a flying duck about consumer space when working with enterprise/data center related stuff. So, Sailfish secure is definitely needed, but it cannot replace the consumer point of view. And it will take some time to implement, test, certificate etc...

I'd also like to point out that there are numerous endeavors that have ended up in bankruptcy or just ceased operations on FOSS consumer market. Even Canonical is funding their consumer desktop operations using revenue generated from enterprise as the consumer operations income don't really cover the costs. It may be different though within mobile space as it's more difficult to implement those sources into working device.

AFAIK this is not possible, as nemo doesn't have root-privileges and it cannot use those privileges without authentication. It does have more privileges than regular user in regular Linux server or desktop, this is one of those parts that are so because of usability - no regular user is willing to enter password every single time they want to install or update apps.

Another thing is that (if I understand it correctly, please correct me if I'm wrong) root privileges are by default beyond the reach of regular user in Sailfish. You need to enable developer mode and set the password to be able to get root privileges. This IMO is safer than having users with either default passwords or those 123456-style passwords for root in their devices. This doesn't mean that user or malicious software is not able to do harm, as the important stuff (like contacts, other personal data) needs to be accessed by nemo.

I don't think there is any elegant way of doing things with SELinux.... it's very effective way though, when done correctly. :)

Re: First thoughts about the (pre) Sailfish OS 2.0
 

Check the xdg-app project, it aims to pretty much that - fully sandboxed GUI/desktop applications. Citing:

The xdg-app project might not be that easy to run on Sailfish OS as it might need some pretty cutting edge stuff to work (such as kdbus) but is still by far the best and most robust solution I have seen for running graphical apps in a sandbox (if we discount all the horrible platform specific hacks Android uses for this).