That's funny because I *am* actually a CEO. Of an SMB, a little smaller than Jolla.

I'm on summer vacation.

Then why you are waisting your time here? Go to a beautiful Greek island, or Spain... or anywhere, drink your mojitos (or whatever you prefer), enjoy the sun, the sea and all the beauties of life. Or just enjoy your family and friends. Just Chill...

I don't understand you...

I worry about Jolla. I want them to succeed. I'm Finnish and I want to see Finnish companies do well. TMO they read but isn't mainstream enough to harm them if we talk it a little. It felt like a place where to address this concern.

Like I said, jalyst's post on page 3 sums it up pretty well - and yes, rest of the thread has been explaining myself to respondents pretty much. I logged in to promote jalyst's great post.

What company? How transparent are you guys in your communication?

My work is not related to phones or FOSS etc. in any way, this is just a personal contribution. I'm not suggesting Jolla guys shouldn't be allowed their anonymity either.

Where transparency certainly becomes a more difficult topic is when the personal and professional meet. To an extent I can sympathize with the difficulty of dealing with something like the fk_lx issue, because I understand the employer side of the equation. It must have been hard. Then again, if that personal dispute spilled onto the professional if e.g. work email became affected and I have a hard time justifying that either.

I believe Jolla responded by formulating a policy where their employees are in public privately unless expressed otherwise. That is fine in itself of course. Where all this becomes murky is when there clearly is a professional link between private people. That is when it is harder to claim justifiably they are just private interactions, no matter if such statements are made.

All this said, my life experience tells me Jolla would be smart to notch up the company transparency. I think Fairphone was a good example of the direction I was thinking. It could be done through a company blog so the private online interactions could remain private. I think the early adopters would appreciate and reciprocate. Now, later on if and hopefully when Jolla grows big, this of course doesn't matter as much. And I do hope they grow big.

Obviously they are free to ignore the opinion and thusfar have done so. As has most of the thread. Maybe that beautiful Greek island wasn't such a bad idea after all?

The reason I ask, it wasn't because of any vindictive endeavors; I'm genuinely curious and haven't only contributed to FOSS and largely my work has been either private sector or US Gov't work. Only lately in the last 7 years have I ventured into agency work and that's public domain.

Jolla needs to find that "perfect" (I doubt it exists, but they can experiment) mix that shows their endeavors, that connects them to their engineers within reason (they have work to do) and whatnot.

Oh wait, some of that already exists: https://together.jolla.com

But in that vessel for communication, therein lies one flaw. They can still inexplicably close, delete or promote/unpromote a comment or question. Such is the case as the SIM.

Nokia used to set things, for no reason, to WONTFIX and it ticked off this forum. Sadly, with Fremantle into Harmattan, a lot of those WONTFIX situations still existed and since a lot of Harmattan was not open, it'll never get fixed. I've shelved my N9 and rarely use it when I travel overseas.

Agree 100%. Towing the company line can make any group look impersonal and cold. That's where community steps in and hopefully condemns and/or shows the error of that one person ways.

In many cases, some showcased in this thread, those certain individuals absolutely refuse to listen to conventional wisdom. That... is a situation upon itself. It's what creates the Mark David Chapman's and John Hinckley, Jr's. In those cases, those people refuse to live out a normal view of the world; only subscribe to their version of reality.

Transparency can't help those types of individuals.

Between you and I, my personal opinion is that Jolla has a very Nokia-like response in all of their communications. Announce, engage, answer a few questions, then hide the inner-workings behind a curtain - think Wizard of Oz reference. And honestly, folks here were already fed up of that type of control over information. Maemo threatened to bring a new form of communication, but it never happened.

In fact, look at our council situation; the communication from developers and fans up the chain has been horrible at best.

My business experiences differ. I'm not a CEO, but I've been a freelance contractor/proprietor since 1999. My endeavors (listed above) are largely based on contract work. My communication with any company - Fortune 400 or US Gov't and likewise - has always been short, concise and accurate. Each and every question answered within 3 sentences if I can help it. Jolla needs to employ better PR, create a buffer between fan/developer. Expand Together.Jolla (link above) and have personal inquiries culled and set aside and categorized as such.

Encourage participation, reach out via "street teams" to people, employ very clear communication that separates marketing verbiage and stay the course in regards to how they're trying to push out their message. It's on Nexus 4/5 now (Sailfish), it's in beta now for Android devices, and they're now in China/HK.

Launching a cellphone in this day and age is hard. I was originally pissed off with them when their stuff wouldn't work in the US. But after living in Germany and Japan; trust me. The US cellphone market is impossibly hard to launch anything in it without having to deal with each carrier (who have WAY TOO MUCH power) and try to get your stuff seen on a shelf. It's real damn hard.

So I had to push aside my anger and look logically into: 1) how I could help and 2) what they're doing and how it affected me. Unfortunately, the answer to either is a resounding negative, if at all. But I had to learn how to keep an open mind, reach out to their visible endeavors and remain hopeful.

Will they get it wrong? Yes. Will any company ever get it 100% right? No. And unlike you, I am a FOSS fan, even contributor, but I can see how it's a new, weird mix of how to be visible, contributing, open, transparent, make money from open sources and keep the fans/developers happy. I've yet to find a company besides Tesla that does that well.

Perhaps Unity would be the other example. But they have a massive effort to reach out to communities, indies and individuals.

The companies are all free to ignore us as consumers. Most oft do. Some do it with success - Samsung, Nokia - and some do with failure.

Greek island? I'm game. I'm usually between the US and Jamaica as of late.

Thanks for the discussion.

That is such a fair message gerbick that I feel very good about respecting it as is, no need to dissect an answer. We have some differences of opinion of course, but probably not nearly as much as the Internet sometimes makes it seem. I wouldn't feel too bad about agreeing with your latest message either.

While it is just my word, let me assure you I have no work or business interest in the field Jolla is. I am merely a user and a fellow Finn (of course Jolla is more than just Finns). While I do think this is a medium where Jolla hears us, I appreciate the fact that this is a niche forum, so there is some relative privacy discussing here. My intent was not publicizing my opinion and hence TMO seemed like a place to take part.

I hope it gave Jolla some new ideas, be it from any of us. I certainly got my ideas "tested" and food for thought too, that's for sure. Thank you, too.

Speaking about Jolla Oy strategy. In July they were announcing with a lot of buzz that next month they are entering India. Now it's September and it's completely quiet... no communication... What happened with August launch in India? Canceled or delayed?

Another thing I've noticed in this thread - some people mentioned that if there will be a lot of threads containing Jolla criticsm, then it's employees will leave TMO and won't post here. That is really servant/slave-like approach "if TMO will be good and nice for Jolla then Jolla will change its attitude to TMO", right? Nope, It should be important for Jolla to be here if they don't want to close themselves in a bubble of only their devoted fans/believers. Good companies are open for feedback and don't put their head in the sand

I was also criticicing jolla before for the marketing and Communication. But after bitching about it for a while here and there i came to the conclusion that i dont really care what jolla do or have the opportunity to change or affect It. So Now-days im hiding...watching, waiting for the countdown thread for events, announcements, jPhone ll's or any sign. of movments fr.o.m. Jolla.

(At the same time a did give jolla LOTs of cred too and really hope they will succeed so Im not all bad )

BTW I follow dirks progress more than jolla actually. He(the mini team) is outperforming jolla right now he even have this video blog I suggest for jolla back then. He is a Solid rock!

Of course somebody is free to believe that we sailors would do so and leave TMO, but that is simply not true.

Criticism is important to read and take into account, although not always nice to read. Constructive criticism is however always a lot more useful and easier to deal with than some rant. But then again it is impossible to take everything into account and we cannot make everybody happy. Opinions can differ too. It is not because person X thinks that Jolla sucks because it cannot work well with his remote operated *** vibrator that we need to take that seriously or think it is a priority. And it is not because I (and/or other sailors) don't care if that thing works and are not answering that we are ignoring it. We are just choosing to spend time on something more useful, or it happens to slip under the radar as we just cannot monitor answer/everything. Of course some people will just rip that out of context and yell we ignore them or do not answer on difficult questions.