Thats not strictly true. I've met with a few of the Fairphone guys and generally they like and want to support Sailfish.

However, they are also only a small team and the extra burden of having to support multiple operating systems is likely too large to bare at this point in time. Licencing fees can be put into the purchase price of the device, but other lifecycle related things are a bit harder to fully absorb up front.

Would people pay extra for a Sailfish Fairphone? given the transparency of showing where the extra money goes (alien-dalvik, exchange, xt9 .etc) I think its reasonable, and we may see it at some point.

EDIT: Also, Jollas hardware adaptation team has been a bit gutted by the recent troubles, so getting the community to do the initial work (mainly enabled by Fairphone) considerably reduces what Jolla needs to do internally.