I don't think anyone denies that they are moving forward in some areas, but instead of closing the feature and functionality gap with other OSes, it gets wider by the day. There seems to still be some kind of major flaw with the development process, or direction of it and motivation of staff. Small changes are still taking an age to implement, and major issues go either totally ignored or Jolla are incapable of fixing them. The farcical memory footprint of Sailfish and native apps, management of it and leaks have actually been worsened in the 10 months since it became chronic. To my knowledge, no other OS has ever had these kind of issues. Even Android in its earliest days on the HTC Dream wasn't such a battle (it had memory management issues and leaks).

Without going on too long, I think we'll know whether they've actually finally got a handle on the OS and development process by how many or how few improvements are shipped in 1.2 (which should be due about a week from now), and how quickly 1.2.1 ships after that and whether it quickly refines the new UI and adds features. If both sustain the previous glacial pace, then I don't see how the OS or Jolla have a future. I hope they give us some hope, but I'm really not expecting it.