Just some further thoughts on how Sailfish can be made a success.

Cyanogen are in a remarkably similar situation to Jolla. They are a tiny company (only 90 employees) with negligible revenue (but financial backing of investors). However, they have their OS running on 50 million devices now. It's because they have this widespread adoption, that they can now start looking at deals to monetize the product (manufacturers are coming to them to use their OS, Microsoft are paying them to put their services on the OS, etc.). Where Jolla differ in all this is that they have an OS (technically better than Cyanogen, also not dependent on Android and Google), however the mass adoption is just not there, hence no one really cares. Whether it's Jolla or someone else, the immediate goal should be to completely open the source of Sailfish. If they open the source like Cyanogen did (90k contributors to the project), developers will come and will contribute. With developer interest, the burden of development can be spread (and for free). With the developer interest, the community will get a product they be more engaged in, that will drive increased adoption. It's only with that increased adoption that further innovation can take place.

The irony in the Cyanogen story is that what initially made them a success (being open to outsiders) is the very model that they are now trying to kill as the company has now gone private.