Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Maybe, maybe not. Currently reflecting on the past.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Yeah, maybe I should try one of those at some point.


I guess I should admit that at some point between the N9 and the early Jolla days I gave up on the "phone as mobile computer" thing and eventually bought a MS Surface (the x86 unlocked one) which runs Gentoo quite well.

Half of the reason is that I was completely tired of having to rebuild everything on the phone. Not only different architecture, but different distro, different packaging system, different API versions, ...

With an x86 laptop, I just run the same kernel and user space I run on the rest of my computers. The amount of time saved is a godsend. You still cannot do this on ARM because, I guess, everyone is an idiot and they are very happy with the status quo.

In addition, physical pooooooooooooorts.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Sadly this would work with jolla tablet too in worst case scenario (assuming with store down enabling developer mode still works, on phone it needs to call home to some repos to download fingerterm etc, one should still be able to install fingerterm rpm manually and modify access rights I hope)

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Still has a different distro, packaging system, etc. and most probably I wouldn't be able to use the same kernel and user space I use on my other computers (binary blobs, gfx, etc.).

It's one of the reasons I still prefer if ... Sailfish Tablet was something I could install on top of Gentoo or any other normal Linux distribution.

I'm aware of the many reasons this is not feasible. It's just a wish.

I still remember the GPE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPE days and how I basically used the "in-device" GPE calendar itself on my desktop after being annoyed by non-existent sync support...

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

You can always install win10 on it, don't fret ;) SailSurface 2.0 (or not? it's x86 so should be possible, right? then VM into gentoo image and voila)

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

I think disruption could only occur through a revolutionary form factor or revolutionary functionality. The most likely avenue to chase in this area is the Internet Of Things; controlling and talking to things around you. But even that is getting fairly saturated.

In my fictional world, people didn't try to rewrite X Server with Wayland and Mir and SurfaceFlinger, they optimised X and compiz and made it modular, so it maintained all of it's cross-platform, cross-network robustness, but also became incredibly fast and beautiful, able to scale from smartwatch displays to vast walls of connected display grids.

And nobody made a Linux kernel fork (Android, grrrr) that fragmented the hardware market for 8 years (so far).

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

No sense in commenting above.

What you are writing is not true - you can buy Tizen smartwatches in USA and Europe. Regarding the smartphones (probably that's what you had on mind) - Samsung Z3 will be launched in 11 European countries (btw. Russia is also in Europe if you haven't noticed yet).

Ubuntu Touch is not a failure, it steadily develops, step by step and devices in 2016 will have the long awaited convergence. They don't have financial troubles or employeers leaving en masse.

When it comes to smartphones, first Tizen product - Samsung Z1 was targeted at low-end, it was not meant to compete with top Galaxy models.

I'll give you an example of a much smaller team, consisting of 39 people that weren't the "best & brightest former Nokia/Meego employees" and achieved a lot.

Meet Fairphone:
https://www.fairphone.com/about/

Clear goal, good communications with community, real transparency, humble approach and not having so much funding as Jolla had (read the figures in the Fairphone factsheet PDF).

Result:
60,000 phones sold

How many phones Jolla sold? 25,000-30,000? We don't know because of the so called Jolla "transparency" and "openness".

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Optimising the mess that is X is just as viable option to me as 'providing OS for all the abandoned HW', if this was a one weekend excercise, sure. Whole Jolla team worked for over a year to stabilise their own Jolla phone. Libhybris as revolutionary as it is, is brought down by the fact chinese manufacturers develop drivers only until it miraculously works for this specific configuration. With open drivers the latter at least would be a possibility (which could happen with tablet?)

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Fairphone is a piece of hardware. Jolla is hardware AND software. Nobody from Fairphone team did following:

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Well I know there are people who do not like libhybris as the manufactures then feel they have no reason to write drivers for glibc and they are closed and we cannot modify or update them. people like this:
""Things took a wrong turn a while back though. In an effort to create a
stopgap solution, Jolla developer Munk created libhybris, a wrapper
library which allows the usage of android drivers on top of glibc, and
thus on a normal linux installation. I find this hack pretty dangerous,
as it makes all vendors complacent, and it cements the android way of
working and the it makes binary drivers the default. Our biggest open
source hopes for mobile; Sailfish, Firefox-OS and Ubuntu-Phone Mir
readily embraced this way of working." http://www.osnews.com/thread?595445

However what could we realistically do without it? Can the community reverse engineer drivers and write them? Maybe but I haven't seen that completed on my N900 yet so I find it unlikely before the hardware becomes very outdated and people lose interest. Manufacturers won't do it unless there is marketshare and $$ IMHO.
I want open drivers but I am very thankful for Stskeep's work that allows us to have a chance at alternative systems on more hardware, I don't see another way.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Just look at n900 wlan drivers that have injection, that actually was reverse engineered, but yeah, expecting same effort for all devices is a bit crazy

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

I'd start by choosing a unique name for the company. Let's call it: "The platform". This is already unique enough as well as being a good Google keyword.

That company would have to listen to the community, take their contributions, deliver what they promise, be good and honest wrt communication.

The only problem of such company would be getting business people who would understand such culture and actually practice it.

Since it is extremely difficult to find such talented management and business people, unfortunately the company might die. Not necessarily related to the management and business behavior :(

I am afraid the poor engineers would end up in misery yet taking all the heat. One of them might think of asking the community to help with a fiction that involves a world without platforms.

:)

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

I hope you guys are not taking all the heat, seriously. Lots of angry guys (though mostly same trolls as ever, tomi ahonens who predicted a year ago that a company who had slight chance to succeed in the first place will not win, few full-time CEO daltonist duck trolls (I'm a CEO, but will remain anonymous duck quack quack), few haters and crazy guys) around, hope the people who actually contributed to the whole ordeal still have the will to progress the whole ship/barge/dinghy forwards

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Come on, this is all fiction!

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Phew! For a moment you got me there, but only in fiction land, right? Right?

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

In MY fictional world, Android didn't fork the kernel, and they used a standard C library, forcing all the binary hardware driver creators to write drivers for the standard kernel. They also used a stripped-down, open-source, GLES compositing, X server.

Even with all these differences in my fictional world, however, by 2015 all of the Android vendors are on different, ancient versions of the kernel, held back because the binary drivers would need to be updated to work with the new kernel, and the HW vendors can't be bothered.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Lol, so in the end, we'd be still in the same mess more or less, we need bigger dreamers to make it work (even in the lala land)

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Then refrain from saying such things in the near future.

Semantics. I was talking about handsets only. And "will be" is not the same as "has already happened". Go back, read what I said... where it's been released has been limited thus far. Present tense was used and should continue to be used.

Losses in 2013 of $21 Million USD
Cashflow negative
Canonical IPO... still delayed.
Ubuntu Touch sales... 25k (unofficially)

There's other pointers that the demand for Ubuntu Touch is rather low compared to even the Tizen phones.

If you said RedHat, I'd agree. Canonical is still losing more money than gaining. Who knows about their engineers, but they do use libhybris on Ubuntu Touch. And that came from the engineer(s) at Jolla. Imagine that...

And the Tizen phones have sold less than the more expensive Galaxy phones. You have no point whatsoever. It sold less, and is not a full-blown success yet.

And Nokia got sold to Microsoft, MeeGo is now dormant - all but community - and the folks that worked on Harmattan are part of the rockstar engineers at Jolla.

And it runs Android or (now) Jolla. Not "FairphoneOS" or anything they've built from the ground up like Sailfish. You've yet to deliver one example of a company that has, and I repeat: 1) launched a phone, 2) created a SDK, 3) produced an OS, 4) updated their OS, 5) produced libhybris (used by: Ubuntu Touch, WebOS and others) and 6) got tablets out in the hands of core developers.

Thanks for trying though.

Now, can we allow this thread on an open discussion about things that are interesting occur instead? Disruption doesn't mean rehashing the past ad nauseum. This is about what can be done presently and looking forward.

You really have no bit in this conversation worth noting.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

This... all day everyday. The fact that people are looking where the target is now should be avoided at all times when talking about progress.

I'd say that a lot of folks in this thread are doing just that. I love javispedro's statement "Imagine the smartphone dead"... if only it were to be treated as such, some progress in a more usable format could eventually happen.

Sorry, I find these kind of "what if" discussions absolutely necessary and exciting. Carry on...

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

I found your Ubuntu stats fascinating, 25k with Canonical backing, Dave will have another hate target I guess:
Which is already 2 weeks late by their stated 6 weeks update release schedule. Wonder how much MS invested in WP by now for 1.5% of market, pretty sure more than 50mil and pretty sure Canonical is also an order of magnitude higher than that. Crazy world is crazy

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Wow! Whole 2 weeks! Unbelievable! That makes Jolla with their copy&paste still missing after 2 years look like real heros ;)

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

For a big company like Canonical? Seems like just the beginning. If we were on Ubuntu forums pretty sure the whiners like you about browser/dave about copy-paste would be already into their 3rd month of claiming Ubuntu is a failure because of no copy/paste, and this is what community wants/demands!1!

edit: Oh and release ota9 means the copy/paste has not been there since (assuming they did release ota1-2-3 every 6 weeks, unlike the 8 weeks for 9, 48 weeks? year for a company the size of canonical? year? Jolla with patches got copy/paste from browser in a couple of months lol, canonical get your **** together, sure, not so easy to patch canonical, they are more open source, yet for 8 updates noone came up with a way to copy from browser, damn, jolla did something right it seems, big brother canonical still needs 8 weeks)

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Actually I think no N9/950 and no Jolla would make the Maemo community stronger as there would be nowhere to go. :)

And by not loosing many talented people to the "green pastures" of the N9/Jolla many of the Maemo related project that have been talked about but never materialized due to insufficient manpower (updated autobuilder, rewriting more closed stuff, rebasing Maemo, running the PowerVR blog on new kernel, SHR on the N900, newer Python/Qt/Glibc, porting to other platforms, etc.) might have materialised and moved Maemo forward. Many of these projects are still moving forward, but slowly - but they could have been already finished long ago in this alternative past and a lot of miracles could be built on top of them.

Haha - WRONG! Mer has already happened by then - and you should be the one to know it. :D

I still remember hanging out on the Mer IRC channel back in 2009, testing Mer on my SmartQ 7 chinese tablet (and possibly writing a part of this page), just as some rumors about a mysterious "Fremantle" device started floating around - and you were there too on that channel. :) And then the N900 came, sucked out all Nokia employed developers working on the Mer project, killed it for all purposes. :)

So no change there ? :P

So what would I have done if there was no N9 & Jolla ?

Probably concentrated more on the N900 versions of my apps & on desktop versions. Ports to other platforms that didn't get much of my attention might get more of it (BB10) and I might concentrate more on the Android ports.

I might also have got more involved in some of the mobile open OS projects, such as open-Maemo or SHR.

Oh I think that's quite simple in principle - study the current market leaders & find what people hate about them and what are their major shortcomings. then do the thing properly so that people don't hate it any buy from you instead of them. And that's all. :) No idea about trivial stuff like how to fund it, how much work would it take, etc. though. ;)

I'm actually only half joking BTW - I think there are some pretty glaring flaws in how Android and iOS do things and exploiting them could be a nice attack vector (its actually interesting in itself that you can "attack" someone by doing things properly :) ) for an entity wanting to change the current status quo.

Also many of these flaws/behvaior patterns are so ingrained that they can't be ever changed, so the "incumbent" just wont be able to react once you do the thing correctly and you can then forever point out how your solution is better and how theirs is flawed.

tl;dr;doing stuff properly in the mobile market
List of random stuff you can do better to kill Android and or/iOS (including some pretty non-realistic items):

• quick/immediate security updates - more important than ever these days
• long term support for your devices - possibly with paid extended very long term support
• everything open source and auditable - also more important than ever due to security concerns + open source becoming the norm at least in some segments
• hard push on open drivers and up to date kernels - even Android vendors are starting to wake up as they are basically drowning in out of tree patches by this point
• no adds whatsoever anywhere in the OS and apps
• no leaking of personal information in default setup, possible opt it "I really want to do that"
• strong policy on handling of user data by apps
• incentives to make as many apps open source as possible for security and auditing reasons
• hardware that's actually durable and not only cheap at all costs
• hardware that can be actually repaired, not thrown away
• possibly extensible & modular hardware & actually selling extensions and modules for the hardware !
• strong aim to make the hardware and/or an abstraction generic enough to make desktop/server style generic distros a possibility on mobile devices

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Anybody still remembers the AlwaysInnovating TouchBook ? :)

I think it has to with the way Eclipse looks on any screen. ;)

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Get all developers, put them in prison: you have nowhere to go, you have to support the only real platform now <- that is a weird way to push for linux, I'd say might be non-linux way, lets ask Stallman
Yeah, with that approach to members, after all commit suicide, it would've finished right away
After Mary mother of Jesus showed up on the horizon every developer turned to Visual Basic

Going to stop here... we don't need more extremisms. We should not jail programmers with only single compiler, that's wrong on so many levels, srsly

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

It's not even about the looks

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

After Endless Demonization Of Encryption, Police Find Paris Attackers Coordinated Via Unencrypted SMS
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...pted-sms.shtml

Plain text is the best in that regards, yet still seems problematic when terrorists use it, ban plain text now!

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Heya Folks,

The OP made very clear what the parameters of this thread are, please stick to them, this thread's not an excuse to get on your soapbox & push one agenda or another.
If the big derailments continue, & they continue to be reported, I'll have to start removing posts.

Not subscribed to this thread, far too busy in recent months...
If you feel someone's consistently veering too far from the thread's agenda then continue use the report function or PM, but please make sure you have a solid rationale.

Have a nice day.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

That device was awesome; then everybody copied it in one way or the other.., leaving them into almost bankruptcy..

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Since this went a bit above people's heads.

Look around. Who's locked out of, or at risk of Google or Apple locking them out of mobile devices effectively by providing their(Google/Apple) own services?

Local providers of content as an example, local search engines, etc. Mobile network providers. Spotify. That's a lot of cash in the bank there and a burning need to keep sustainable.

How could you leverage this?

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Great thing happening once again and im glad it still alive...

Today's mobile industry is just a repetition with a few tweaks + trowing ton of $$$ on marketing = profit
So bunch a dump-a.s.s just following it keep buying same thing over and over again.

My approach will be "simple" - by reinventing mobile device - next big thing - built your own device :

https://s15-us2.ixquick.com/cgi-bin/...f2b8944d5aca12

https://s17-us2.ixquick.com/cgi-bin/...d5839e8a4630ab


And dont forget about QWERY keyboard please :D

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Mark Shuttleworth has said Canonical could be a much more profitable company by just focussing on their servers (as used by Amazon, Netflix and Uber) and dropping desktop/mobile/IoT but he has a vision he wants to pursue. I think he's got balls, I hope it pays off for him.

This is what Mark Shuttleworth said earlier this month:

"I think that it's important we carefully shape the emergence of Ubuntu so that it goes to people who are going to love it and contribute to it and be part of the ecosystem. I think it would be a mistake for us to try to go too fast because if we put it in the hands of people who don't care about Ubuntu and don't want to be part of it, right now they would be disappointed, we would be disappointed and the whole thing would be a mess."

I think once Ubuntu Touch is ready for the mainstream Canonical's success in servers will give them a credibility with manufacturers that maybe Jolla didn't enjoy.

As for Tizen, hasn't it done better than expected in the few markets it's been released? I've heard it performs considerably better than Android on equivalent hardware. I also like the fact Tizen's native API is plain C and I believe they're working on an automated bindings generator too.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Local search engines? Is that an actual thing (or is this only in the fantasy future)? Do people go to say, (how local should we go?) poloogle/warsawduck to search for things in this specific area? Never had problems with DDG(or bing or google) to find local businesses, phones, addresses, it's all there. Apple worked the network providers (tomi ahonen is quite correct on this one), no idea how spotify is affected. Content providers will go to the user-providers, and with the duopoly (yes, there is a duopoly both in the imagined future and in reality, 5% that spends 20x more than the 95% is the reality, just like 1% owning more than 90%, capitalism) that is hard to break into. Not much of offering if you can give them <0.1% of possible business (maybe if on much better terms than goog/aapl, but margins get even thinner then)

edit: And just a check on reality: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-90/?tid=sm_fb
The fact apple tapped into the haves while google into have-nots is just that, a fact, one group can spend on applications, the other relies on ads and pirating. Would this be different in our imagined future? Maybe with Sanders as president, red-scare seems finally over in the US when reality hits (or just hang it like in south park)

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Wasn't this Mozilla's pitch for FxOS?

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

How do we measure the success of the mobile system (whatever that is) this talented bunch of people would release?

• a worldwide commercial success, which means a device that pleases the masses (might not be that different from what's on the market, but it would build reputation as mobile maker and give a financial foundation to the company to build something really disrupting sometime later)
• a technical jewel, perhaps interesting only to geeks, high performances and unseen-before functionalities but at a high price, i.e. low volume
• a best-in-class for customer satisfaction, i.e. a device that might not stand out in a spec sheet comparison or get praises for its innovativeness, but its OS is solid and kept up-to-date and its maker has a highly praised h/w support policy
• a device+OS that has a high rate of adoption among a specific niche of users because it fits their particular needs, which also implies that if its maker would like to extend its market and cover more niches it would need to come up with a strategy of modular h/w and s/w in order to tailor more variants
• an innovating device+OS that opens an entire new market, e.g. some new interesting form factor for a wearable device capable of replacing a pocket smartphone

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Something that displaces the current state of the mobile market over a few years; ie, makes the current state/duopoly/solutions almost obsolete.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Glad to have you back, can you look at http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...4&postcount=73 ? What exactly economies did you have in mind? Replacing yelp? Really not sure what local businesses can save a global corp

edit: ok, going to assume it's all 'nice PR talk to sell a company/idea to VC' with no actual base in reality, shame

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

It'll have to be something that answers a different question than the current mobile market does. So far as I can tell, no matter what you think about them personally, Apple and Google are serving their respective markets very, very well. Apple gives their customers that Rolls-Royce feel with everything they sell; and Google provides power and flexibility for a very low cost.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

If you want to disrupt the market you don't do it with OS you do it via service/services. It not easier but that is how the next gen of rules will be after symbian, android and iOS. Symbian-->now android, iOS --> future Netflix, facebook, spotify and different new groups formed by services.

Re: Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed?
 

Yeah, that's all these consultant companies for BYOD repeat again and again: applications, applications... leave OS to us(US), looks like only disruption would be on OS and HW level in security (edit: +network layer, but you maybe can do that in Russia, EU and further west, forget it, even russia will have problems with that having hw from western or south korean companies)