Re: Jolla 2 expectations
 

So you are talking about "background services". And how are these unique to Jolla/Sailfish? I had these functionality years ago on non-Sailfish device.

The issue I see for you is that other OSes use an API unfamiliar to you that you would have to learn and adapt to.
I must admit this is the exact thing that drawn me to Maemo - a familiar API. But API and promises and more promises do not make my daily life easier... We had a lot of fun together though and we'll always have Paris...

Already tried Jollagram from openrepos warehouse?

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

There is no such thing than Android OS.

There is AOSP which is nowadays like MER but with an UI and some few outdated core apps. Then there is Google Play Services + Google Apps which is almost like an OS. Whith just AOSP you are doomed. Or why do you think Cyanogen Inc tries to partner with Microsoft?

Re: Jolla 2 expectations
 

Examples from my usage pattern is Chess.com app, RSA SecurID for the company vpn and HERE maps for offline navigation. Do you consider these valid needs for a smartphone user?

PS. Sometimes hanging out in this site makes me feel like using android apps is commiting a crime.. :P

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Exactly, if aosp is like mer but with gui, than jolla is like Google but less(missing gui), so to use 100% Foss part of jolla on your phone you'll need to write huge part of OS (UI), while with AOSP you can use it on phone outdated or not.
Basically Google at first used opensource so others can help them promote and develop mobile OS, but after getting to top, they locked out most important parts, while Jolla mostly did it on start only promising open sourcing parts and making it right what others companies don't, but after all they go same way :)

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

IMHO the Kindle Fires are the best Android tablets around, because they have a better UI (I find Lollipop terrible to use and look at) and come without the Google Play Services spyware, yet there is an app store with many good apps, all without Google Play Services.
And unlike Google Play, apps purchased in the Amazon store will run on any Android or Jolla Alien Dalvik device.

Re: Jolla 2 expectations
 

Social apps like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Skype, whatsapp, linkedin, instagram and so on, depends on people choice.
Other more useful services like local bus schedule, bank app, phone company app, bitcoin wallets, eBay, paypal and so on (some of them may have limited api and apps developed by 3rd party you'll never know if they steal your data)
Music services, meetup app, voip clients, proper tor apps with ui in few clicks, private browsing, smart home applications.
Games, yeah sometimes people play games

And ffs do not tell me YOU don't use any of this, as no one cares about you, phone is made for masses and not dozen who cares about compiling on phone only. As much as I don't like java or android, you can say it "android did it already" almost about any apps, services(like Simpsons and TV shows :)

And last thing, I'll remind you that official Qt app for conference last year(or was it already this one) was written in Qt for android and that's the version you ended up getting in jolla store. Android version of Qt app on phone officially using Qt as main framework. What else can prove that there are almost no devs, apps and even interest in jolla

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Just my two cents:

As much as I like SFOS, I admit that clearly when/if they become as powerful as Google, they may/probably lose what I currently appreciate: transparency, relatively closed relationship with customers, a nice community, agility to adapt and evolve...etc...

BUT, I am living in the current time. What I see and what is really bad is when a company like Google is having close to a monopoly and can dictate whatever they like.
What can prevent a company from acting bad? Some regulation but more importantly, more competition.

I do like SFOS but I also much appreciate others that support other system (apart from the apple) because we need more alternative systems.

I think the current attack from the European Commission against Google is peanuts if there is no viable alternative.

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

As much as I am not fond of Canonical, Ubuntu Touch is closing on getting as usable as Sailfish.

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Can you point out what do you mean by transperency and openness they have now exactly?
I hear this words a lot, from them and now from fans, but mostly always nothing stands behind. Most time they do not provide information or provide half side of it. There is no road map and some questions like when they'll opensource parts they promised to on launch, or where we stay on paid store that was promised. If you pay attention those questions are still unanswered and though they are top voted even on TJC. They do decide what question to answer and how, this is simple PR move. Android devs can be found on reddit, today even windows engages with devs and community, it's popular to promote to few people, who will be making cult for you and fight for you, telling how their platform is awesome and transparent with no actual base for that :)
Jolla is already acting like Google, so if they get big like Google they'll worse (simple logic)

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

@juiceme to be fair I got you list of apps people from here asked for http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...72&postcount=1

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Yeap and they are more opensource, they are really transparent, but there is always trick. I just read about snappy instead of deb, they are going to control their ecosystem :)

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Don't forget about this discussion, folks...

Alternative Sailfish ODM(s), latest news/rumours/speculation

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Excellent list.

On quick browsing through I found out that some of the wishes there already do exist as native apps, and seems the list has not been updated since 12-10-13 at 13:10 which means it indeed is somewhat out-of-date.

It would be very nice indeed if all those were available.

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Once the phone starts to have tablet functionality there is a wild growth of more or less popular programs expectations that divides the software writers' opinions over what they need to program first. (whatsapp, spotify, facebook etc all receiving attention)

As a user I prefer to have the the previously integrated stuff (SIP, Skype, XMPP) close at hand.

It is only the basic communication stuff that works (and worked for ages) without touch screen and for who's absence the presence of a touch screen in the device should not be held as an excuse.
Todays device with plenty of RAM and better processing power could enhance those features with full video and encryption functionality.

Yet the Jolla phone still does not offer what my N900 offers me: navigate to contact, choose any of above communication tools to communicate with my contact.

A major addition in terms of telecommunications functionality is the automatic call recorder that has been brought by community. Call recorder: check!

Also having IRC in your pocket as native is right on spot feature for a communication centred device like the Jolla phone, again thank you community. This is job done right and there is no need for x00 other competing clients in my opinion. IRC: check!

And so I could go on for the other 20 - 30 possibly ver useful extra applications that one needs or wants to install before forgetting about “appshop”.

I can't believe that I still can't pickup my Jolla and call somebody with a native SIP client.

Yes I know there is a proof of concept that SIP works from the command line.

The anno 2015 lacking of this basic functionality that made the spiritual predecessors of the Jolla so great for end users like me makes me conclude that Jolla is setting the foremost example of "lack of intrest in Jolla".

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

@Zogg

Reading you, it sounds like Jolla should just close their business. Do you have any money bet on that :p

Just teasing you but it really seems that you do not have any hope that the current situation is good and that it can even improve, with respect with Jolla business. But at least, you are interested a lot because you participate a lot in the discussion ;-)

When I mention transparency (I did not say openness :p), I mean that I do believe (and hope) that they share what they can. This is not as easy as for a bigger company.
I could write more about my feelings but I am not sure you are interested :)
But what is clear is that they are not the same as Google (and worst in the future). And I hope that when you write something like this, you do exaggerate.

To the contrary, I would ask you : what is not transparent with Jolla and is in other companies? And I am deeply interested to know the answer because it seems that you know quite well the market.
They provide some roadmap, some ideas about what is going on with the tablet (including recognising some delays, and silently admiting that they made a mistake claiming earlier that they were ahead of the schedule).

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

In short version, not only to give PR by sharing info, but also not hiding bad things under the table, we do not need to know all details and infra from inside, but some delays and hickups are important to people who wants to make commitment to OS. There are a lot of things in history of jolla that repeat themselves self, but as it's not brought to attention (or even shadowed by good PR with a lot of big words like "trasparency", "openess" and "unlike") no one pay attention to them. There are few things that were promised and discussed and still have no answers. As starters the code that was promised to be open (for now we only got browser). As well as there are still a lot of restrictions and no paid apps, which were discussed and promised for a while ago too, but no update and if people ask questions after a lot of silence and only with a lot of attention we get general postpone answer. Same with latest update with no HW specification, btw phone's HW were reveled too late too (not all inof was provided before preorder).
You can see how even on their own TJC not all questions with a lot of votes get proper attention, while those a smaller and/or those who can benefit them to look good. I know you can say about half glass good or half bad. And that's why i always try to remind to look at the bad side too, do not forget it and try to change it to make it full glass of water.
Let's be rational and see that there is almost to none 3rd parties applications and few hackers and indie devs around, and platform is here for a while now. And you can always say that they are small company, but my point is that not only made it more difficult for devs, they pushed them away in many senses. They were building on skills and users from TMO, while to make device also to end users and to have sort of control (closed parts, less engagement, no roadmaps, bugtracker (do not call TJC bug tracker, as it's q-a platform, not even forum or wiki). While they talk about openness and transparency, it's more like just PR words.
Though i still do there are a lot of talents there (mostly devs), but gathering talented people together does not make it good company.

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

I don't get the point of the last few pages of this discussion. Is comparing features of Google Android and Google's attitude to features of sailfish and Jolla's doing business really the intention of the original discussion?

I am really interested in good and reasonable arguments why having paid apps is a driver for having good apps, making more features available and making development progress better.
And those questions should be answered by common sense, not by "look at how google and apple does it"

In the past years I have come to learn about linux and open source especially with my N900. All I could see is the benefit of people working on a problem together to get the best results. And to have variety you don't need to start your own from scratch, you can fork most of the times.

And there is another issue of paid apps I don't get. You can only have people pay if you keep the app's source closed. Otherwise anyone with a little knowledge could just make. But if you keep the source closed, who could review it for security issues?

sidenote: This actually is something that bothers me already with sailfish as before I had garage.maemo to look up sources if I needed to. And for putting an app to extra you would need to have someone review what you where doing. Is openrepos offering something alike? /sidenote

Last week I have read an article series about android apps and what they do (has been tracked by network actvity via wireshark) and who is getting my data. It really scared the creeps out of me. This is because most android users don't care and because the platform is designed to hide such data grabbing (well it is initiated by Google, right?)

So my bottomline is: we need open source and the best financing for it is funding/donation. You couldn't make a living from payment anyway. And the thinking a platform can only be successful if there is payment has been introduced by companies who get their share from other people using their platform for selling apps. Who do you think wins most on that? The developer or the platform provider?

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Jolla's involvement in the ecosystem/apps with developers is very important, I am just wondering how much Jolla will be able to make progress on the ecosystem/apps, considering that their main effort until the end of July will be the tablet release and SFOS-2 integration with the Jolla phone, then they should concentrate on a Jolla2 device?

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Perfect description!

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

OpenRepos provides personal respositories. It's a catalogue. With client, and update notifications. In your terms that means 'extra-devel'. No -testing, no -stable.
You can refer to openrepos thread to find(using search) some details.
I have plans for some app verification/testing (i.e. "it does not brick your device on first run"). Check the discussion here.

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Which is exactly where this thread started.

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

They scared away most of community and developers. Why would any company want to step into that?

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Someone's forgotten how far we've come. A couple of days with aegis and a MALF or two should fix that.

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

What kind of MALF are you referring to?
Never ever happened to me. And even if I would have no problem to solve!
Maybe someone forgot about OpenMode / Power kernel, full flasher utility and full provision of firmware blobs.

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

While indeed OpenRepos are the de-facto Extras-Devel of Sailfish OS at the moment (haven't heard much about the Chum project lately) there are a few important differences from how Extras-Devel works on the N900:

• OR has separate repositories (which can hold multiple packages) and N900 Extras Devel is a single repository
  • Different versions of packages can coexist as long as they are in separate repositories and it is possible to provide system package replacements with relative safety.
• OR accepts any binary RPM package while all packages on N900 Extras Devel are built from source on the Autobuilder
  • While nothing really prevents you from just unpacking an archive with random files during the Autobuilder run you can still be quite sure for properly packaged applications that the binary package matches the source.
• OR have information pages, rating and discussion page, which Extras-Devel on the N900 don't have (Extras have in in the "Downloads" section - if it still works).
• OR has per-package download statistics but there are AFAIK no such working download statistics for the N900 Extras-Devel

Maybe there could be something like "Build from source on OBS" badge with link to the SRPM/spec & tarball ? That would provide a possibility of knowing what the app does before installing it & could be an overall nice feature for people wanting to tweak/contribute to open source apps. :) Also developers like me who build their packages on the Mer OBS would not have to download the binary packages just to upload it to OR right away every release. :)

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

I can't believe this attitude exists. Under Nokia, things were locked up and held back because Nokia chose to do that. Jolla have been clear from the outset that they are unable to release a firmware blob because they didn't consider the licensing problems of that when they were deciding how to structure the firmware.

They are a small company. They make mistakes, but have the rare openness to admit them, as in this case and with the FM radio antenna. I really don't know what your complaining is supposed to achieve, except attempt to undermine what little support they have.

If you want to switch over to some doomed fork of android that is utterly at the mercy of Google, then fine. But please leave us in our little dream of a GNU-based mobile OS that might be a little more free than that.

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

*Sigh*

I appreciate trying to get this thread back on track, but we all know they wouldn't and couldn't. No Android support and this OS would be dead.

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Uhm... sadly for most users that would be the case. I don't particularly care too much - happy to carry around my work android phone to summon a cab.

OTOH, and I mentioned this before, I haven't seen a Sailfish implementation that runs _properly_ on other phones just yet. Nexus 4 is the semi official port and it doesn't feel as good as it does on the Jolla. I think that has to be tackled first, and it probably it is work in progress (e.g., icons rework so that they aren't hardcoded to a particular resolution).

Having said all that, I do need Maps. Not sure they'll just give that away for free, or at the very least we need a fully featured maps application that comes from the free world. Modrana is excellent and I use it, but it isn't at the level that the normal user would expect.

I'm just dancing around the subject here, I don't pretend to have a solution. OFC ulitmately the solution is $$$$.

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

I think it's got to the stage now that Jolla are so late with everything, and so many developers have been alienated, that a new focus on the software ecosystem (monetisation, less strictures on Jolla Store apps, dev outreach etc) would actually be counterproductive. The number of people that you'd bring back, or the amount of fresh blood that would appear, would be so miniscule as to make it a complete waste of time.

They'd be better off concentrating on fixing up the OS, adding basic features, making the core apps fit for purpose, removing bugs and making it a hell of a lot faster, given how slow it is relative to the alternatives. Then maybe, just maybe, the "Sailfish Alliance" will actually mean something, with some OEMs considering it a viable alt.OS ... rather than Autumn '12 > MWC '14 > MWC '15 > MWC '16 > MWC '17 > MWC '18 "Jolla would like to announce that Sailfish is ready for licensing."

Without backers it's never going to go anywhere anyway, and the basic state of the OS will influence potential backers much more than the total lack of software ecosystem.

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Today mobile OS mostly is mobile platform(ecosystem). No apps/developers and they'll have no one interested.

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

That's not what OEMs are interested in. That's what users are interested in. There will never be any users if there are never any devices. If OEMs aren't prepared to use it as an altOS there won't be any devices. In 3 years this has singularly failed to happen, save for the Intel slush funds.

"OMG no app ecosystem" isn't what phone companies and mobile networks are thinking when they test it and realise that the core apps are beyond basic, connectivity's pretty bad, basic features are still missing and it's slow as hell. They'd all demand Alien Dalvik, which most prospective users would utilise anyway.

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Companies need to sell => to sell they need customers => to have customers they need to have apps.

Let's say Bob has garden of apples and he profits from it, but Alice gives him seed of peach and asks to grow. It means Bob has to abound half of man power and to start over and loose part of the profit of apples, why would he do that? On other side if Alice would tell she has garden already and all he needs to sell those peaches in his stores, he would not mind :)

P.S. No reason i have chosen apples for analogue btw

Re: Sw ecosystem of Sailfish, its health -or lack thereof
 

Until the OS is in a serviceable state they don't have a product to sell, hence why they haven't had any sales. It's only very recently reached a state where it's probably feasible for licensees / partners, let alone desirable.