Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Given that a lot more info's starting to be revealed publicly...
Is it now possible for Jolla to answer all/most of the questions raised here?
Perhaps after next week's extra public engagements (assuming all of the Qns aren't answered then).

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

How far of is Jolla's Mer from latest Mer?

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

A more interesting question would be - what kernel do they plan to use? So far they didn't publicize any details.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

That is what I mean. When did they grabbed it for customer release.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

If Jolla was a car:

http://www.productioncars.com/send_f...ue_2d_1958.jpg

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Mer doesn't mandate the kernel itself (except may be the range of supported versions). Kernel is provided as part of the hardware adaptation, so the question is not really correct.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Wait. What? Mer is kernel and must have version. And jolla must select one of version at some point. What do you mean?

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

The UI launchday yes, AFAIK I have not seen launchday of a phone...

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

That gets s me thinking that mer is not really needed by Jolla. In the real world they are running everything behind closed doors in their own development track. This is fishy.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

I think you don't get the approach of Mer project and its derivatives. Do your homework first:

http://lists.meego.com/pipermail/mee...er/484215.html
https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Main_Page

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

So please explain what I don't understand. I'm looking at all the latest changes of mer from the 3 of Oct. How does them fit into Jolla's model. At some point they have to ignore and prepare for release in their own bransh. that's the version I'm looking for.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Most probably they have cloned git months ago and are working somewhere else with thr source, they'll release it after sales are up ;)

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Yep, I guess they took some Mer release as a base, and use it for starters to build first complete product (you'll have to wait to see what release it was). In the future they'll update it with newer core (i.e. newer Mer releases). Commercial product can hardly use a rolling release model, so they'll probably establish some update cycle (hopefully not very long one).

They contribute back to the core repo, so it's not like they branched it and left off.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

That is what I mean. And that is the version I'm looking for. And in the end. They might not use the open mer branch any more but running their own branch all the time. And if that's the case, they don't really need mer anymore.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

No, they said they are committed to openness and community nature of Mer, so I'm sure they won't stop using it.

See Jussi Hurmola's talk, where he explains that if they drop their ties with the community, it'll make things much worse for them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7vozx-pqN8

Luckily Jolla is run by people who understand and value open source, unlike Oracle and others who only exploit it for their advantage but don't understand its value and principles.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

That would be a maintenance nightmare. Nokia did just this with Maemo 5 - they took Clutter 0.8 & some old GTK version and slapped a boatload of patches to it. It took the Cordia dev quite a while to rebase it all back to upstream GTK & Clutter.

They definitely want to keep up with Mer and upstream as much as possible - its in their interest - otherwise they would have to maintain their own fork themselves and do complicated merge/rebase every time Mer introduces some new feature they want/need.

BTW, this is the main Mer Gerit patch review - basically the gateway for what gets inside Mer.

Notice: The above post might contain misunderstandings & technical errors. :)

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

"@SfietKonstantin: #Jolla fans, install the jolla countdown on your harmattan device (from apps.formeego testing, or apt-get install jollacountdown)"

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Oh my god, I can't stop counting down in Milliseconds now

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

I wonder if this (=all the fans rushing to apps.formeego) is why apps.formeego is so horribly slow on my N9 :confused:

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

use apt-get on terminal, it's much faster

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Does not find packet jollacountdown.

I do have apps.formeego -client installed and testing repository activated.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

You must do apt-get update first

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

apps.formeego is down !
And those using early version of jollacountdown, you might need to perform update (apt-get update && apt-get upgrade).

Those who did not installed apps.formeego client and testing enabler can download it here

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Found on twitter.


http://sfietkonstantin.files.wordpre...jollameme1.jpg



https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A4cDVaHCIAAJC_W.jpg

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Can someone verify something for me, every single site said this differently.

Sailfish is the codename for Jolla's OS that it's going to allow other manufactures to use in their devices.

The OS that Jolla's mobile phone will run is going to have a different name?

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

What I understood (written here http://sfietkonstantin.wordpress.com...lla-summary-2/)

Mer core and the Mer project

Mer (or the mer project) was created after MeeGo was abandonned, first by Nokia, and then by Intel, that “continued” MeeGo with Samsung, by creating Tizen. The creators of Mer wanted to have a meritocratic approach, that is both transparent, and fair, and didn’t wanted to reproduce the errors in the MeeGo project (one of these points was the lack of transparency). Mer means MeeGo reconstructed, and is a complete rebuild of the old project into some core components (“software packages”).

Mer did not provide any user interface. Instead, it tries to be an universal base for those (companies or hackers) that wanted to build, or hack on mobile Linux devices. In order to build an OS from Mer, only two more components are needed, that are the user interface, and the adaptation layers (kernel, hardware drivers etc.) All other components, that are the package manager, basic libraries, kernel etc. are already provided.

Although Mer do not provide user interface, it provides toolkits for building them. For instance the X display manager, that is helped by Qt, is provided to help developing quickly UIs.

Mer is opensource and everybody can contribute to it. Both KDE and Jolla are contributing back to the project.

The Sailfish platform

Yesterday, Jolla announced the creation of the Sailfish platform. Although no much informations were given on this platform, I can guess that it is a more complete platform.

The Sailfish platform seems to be made for OEM that wants a fully complete solution for their device. Since that inside the alliance there are chip makers, the harware adaptation layer should be present. Some helpers about UI, and additional components, for example those used to build app-stores might also be present.

UI do not seems to be shipped, since UI is a great factor of differenciation between manufacturers. While UI is not shipped, both Mer, and maybe also Sailfish will ship helpers, that make the developement of a complete user experience even easier.

Sailfish might or might not be opensourced, but is mostly made of opensource components, like Mer and Qt.

Jolla OS

Jolla Os will be the first incarnation of an OS based on the Sailfish platform. It will integrate Jolla user experience and Jolla services. The system seems to be closed-source, but Jolla said that they might open as much as possible the device.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Jolla's sailfish is excused for not being out already.
but wtf is happening with Tizen?

where is it?

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Excellent summary, I can't wait till all of this if 100% clarified (at least the MeR/Sailfish platforms, maybe not everything about Jolla OS) on Nov. 21st.
I hope that they can finally start answering some of our questions then (maybe even some before), & the remainder or new ones after the 21st.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

You sound like my elementary teacher

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Mer does not provide a kernel:
Other than that OK. :)

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Tizen 1.0 has been out for a long time, and Tizen 2.0 will be released by the end of the year. You just don't read much about it because people don't get very excited about Tizen and there are no (non-developer) devices yet...

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

What worries me, that Mer is already set up as a base for OEMs and vendors. If Sailfish will take that role - won't it cause a confusion and more fragmented situation? I.e. if Mer is a common platform for Mer deriatives, it's easier to target all of them. If Sailfish will become its own "common ground", won't it obscure Mer role for vendors? It really requires a clear explanation.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

If Sailfish and/or Mer are set up as "walled gardens" just like iOS / Android / WP, then yes, that will be a problem. But if they follow the same pattern that normal Linux distributions do, then no, it shouldn't be. I have one of my Linux boxes running Fedora, and another running Arch (and I've had a Ubuntu box up from time to time). Each distribution has its own quirks, but I can run the same copy of, say, Firefox on each one without any trouble.

Fragmentation occurs because vendors try to create fragmentation; they feel it improves their bottom line. We'll have to see just how open the licensees of Sailfish feel they can be...

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Here Sailfish will be using Mer, but will pose as a metadistro. Since Mer is already a metadistro for vendors - that's confusing. Unless Sailfish is intended as a higher level metadistro, with additional components which Mer lacks, which it intends to standardize (not sure what those are). If those will be open - it'll be OK I guess. If they'll be closed but still posed as meta components - that's very much not OK.

Anyway, it's hard to understand anything until there will be more details. I just expressed obvious concerns which come to mind.

Mer is not set up as a "walled garden". Any vendor can use it (like PlasmaActive already does). My concerns are not about Mer, but about Sailfish.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Think:

* If you need to improve something on core level in Sailfish, you contribute to Mer and follow their processes
* If you need to improve something on handset middleware and toolkits layer in Sailfish, you contribute to Nemo and follow their processes, or if you want to work on one or more community UIs based on those.
* If you need to improve something on productized layer (codecs, translations, productized UI, as examples), you go into Sailfish specific stuff - that part is more hazy but intent is on community participation and you follow their processes there.

Does that make more sense?

The hope, at least from my side is that by keeping things separate like this, we achieve the most openness and innovation ability.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

This sounds OK. So does it mean that Sailfish intendeds to standardize some "product style" UI guidelines / templates etc. which Jolla intends for others to use? Or standardize some proprietary stack (like codecs)? I.e. what is the point in that layer if vendors prefer to create their own UIs, and Jolla's UI will be specific to Jolla.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Big vendors may prefer to create their own UIs, but what about small fish? I think in one of the interviews it was said we're not jealous of our UI.

There's still effort in what it takes to really productize something that can't easily happen in pure open source projects (IPR, codec licensing, added value, etc) and I think that's where Sailfish comes in.

The good news is that all the work that happens also goes to improve Mer Core and Nemo middleware.

From my own, personal, perspective, I believe that a community can create quite interesting UI and devices if they have the tools available to do so. Going from idea, to software, to actually shipping it on devices. Enabling the community to innovate is for sure key.

Re: JollaMobile : Jolla continues Nokia's excellent work on #MeeGo based smartphones
 

Distros of distros are the name of the game in the Linux world; just check out the Big List. :) I see nothing wrong with having lots of choices.

But yeah, we'll have to see how Sailfish turns out. If it ends up being just another (walled garden) Android, that'll be kinda disheartening. If it ends up being just another Android and becomes far more popular than Mer, that'll be even more disheartening...