It's a nice romantic tune, but we live in a smartphone world that's utterly dominated by that platform...
If Sailfish is to become truly competitive/viable, it needs to draw interest from that crowd, a GNU/Linux phone only won't cut it any more unfortunately.
Comparing HTML5-centric platforms that aren't relying on Android is different....
Ubuntu's not HTML5-centric & isn't relying on a ACL, but it has other tricks up it's sleeve, some which Jolla can't replicate.
Actually I may be mistaken, but IIRC Tizen's using OpenACL for Android compatibility, either that or there's a BIG porting effort.