= i have absolutely zero counter argument (or even point to elucidate in the first place) so I'm just going to cry and troll.

but to answer your question, most people with any interest came from the N900 era, and a few were 'newbies' who only boarded after the N9. people have been continually willing to let Jolla and Sailfish get away with murder because of rose tinted spectacles, myself included. were it not for the glory days (well - halcyon days), very few would have even given jolla the time of day, let alone stuck around until now. the reason there was such a huge exodus of developers and community members in the weeks and months after the jolla phone's launch was because a lot of people realised just how bad the situation was and how unlikely jolla were to improve things remotely soon. to some extent i realised that too, but I honestly thought it could be made serviceable, or that the remaining community members could help fix it. the latter's been impossible for the reasons discussed this evening, and the former seems as far off now as it did ~22 months ago in terms of having a competitive or commercially viable product.

unless there's immediate and significant improvement it's just barmy to stick around. if you can't find something that suits you somewhere within the now vast and varied Android ecosystem, you probably aren't looking very hard. UP is developing very quickly and seems like they'll be the only ones to challenge MS on the desktop integration front for the forseeable future. things don't have to be as much of a struggle as they are with Sailfish for users or developers in alternate ecosystems.

rationally, like many here, i should have left long ago ... but there's the self defeating time invested / inertia and the naive hope for a better tomorrow. I've been hoping that Sailfish would improve to a point where I could make a choice to stay or go, but unless something fundamental has changed since 1.1.9 and tablet have been signed off, it won't be a choice, it'll be a forced exit.