Next question becomes sustainability in such effort without mass market though. Or to build something that is minimal but effective, with huge abilities on top?

It's good that the made a statement and offered explanation as to the issue with the tablet.

What worries me is the lack of direction around where they want Sailfish to actually go. It's not enough to say we simply need an alternative. An alternative OS is not an alternative unless it offers a compelling reason to exist.

Jolla already was the attempt at alternative history.

I found that it looked as if Jolla was being backed by investors that were going to turn back time, well aware of the fact that the burning platform was liquid BS spewed by a Nokia PR machine hijacked by MS.

And they knew very well that the N9 had in fact raised the interest of more than a few international press reviewers.
At the time press reviewers were already getting tired of the duopoly and lack of creativity and innovation in the mobile market.

To pretend Like N9 never even left the prototype factory and that Jolla never existed is like saying that those very mobile industry people that were fired, disgusted or resigned from previous high profile mobile industry jobs, did not already come together to ultimately fail in realizing a successful product and answer to the slacking mobile industry ...after having having held this a very similar brainstorming session in 200x - 2012.

The alternative history should not ignore Jolla's existence but depart some time before Jolla' tablet's announcement and decision to adapt the interface to tablets and call it 2.0.

Jolla has a basic but cheap Chinese demo phone running Sailfish to sell to interested partners and demonstrate the OS' development to the crowd of enthusiast backers-users that agree to serve as live beta testers.

The early product had been severely hyped by Marc and his crew but it is also clear that gradually and steadily missing features are being added to the Sailfis OS and that compatibility with Android applications is improving.

The world has also massively changed since 2011 in many regards; which is why I'm trying to see things from today's perspective.

This is obviously delicate, but it seems like you are planning for life after Jolla (the company) Is this a likely scenario, or would you be more confident than not of a backer rescuing the situation?

I would pay for that, as long as the code was also open. You are paying for someone to continue to work on the code, not for what has already been written.

Give people a subscriber ID and only take feature requests from people who are paying. That way you bypass the whole "fix it yourself" debate. Pay and get things fixed for you, or don't pay and make a code contribution, either is fine... just don't choose not to pay and still complain!

Jolla could target the Nexus line and let Google worry about hardware etc. The kind of people who buy Nexus devices are going to be the kind of people willing to try something different, too.

I don't know why, but once companies start down the road of listening to ad agencies, they seem to end up with loads of "features" that harm users but benefit the agencies. The whole idea of targeted ads is the opposite of the privacy respecting OS we all bought into. Hardly surprising therr's some "hostility" here!

Would one of the major Linux companies not want to take on development of Mer/Nemo as a future proofing bet on a mobile future? Redhat, Suse etc?

I presume Jolla would have had talks along those lines rather than taking it all on themselves already but it's not happened.

I'd love to see a number of smaller UI / product focussed companies providing experiences on top of the core. Is the lack of those currently because it's too difficult or is there some block preventing others?

There's 70+ positions available for Tizen work at Samsung here in Warsaw.

It seems more useful to try something big and different, instead.

Agree but still there is the need to learn from past mistakes.

Attack where?

-biggest issue is to get rid of the eco-system doctrine finally and make sure that he product is a few steps ahead of the competition in another field.

-make the product something that people will (however ugly or stylish) like to grab from the table and investigate (last time somebody made a remark about any of my mobile phones was when they noticed HDMI written on it)

-when software is your biggest weapon, make sure the OS user interface intuitively understood , not to be learned or forwarding a feeling like maze lock is still enabled. First impression is key.

-users have limited imagination as to what can be done with a mini computer and how to combine applications actions - "scan and email / upload / BT paper document should be one action" , "telephone contact or create and call new contact and record or not record", another. Those sequences should be configurable scenario's.

-design a product that can stand on its own without internet and cloud connection or even telephone connection. Those hardware extra's beyond a touch screen really do help.

-photography is here to stay. People still remember that I beat them two - three years ago with my Nokia 808 and are now showing their same performance large display picture machines with great smiles of satisfaction.

Thinking about mesh networking, local chat and local file / media sharing to enable hings to do off the net with people immediately around you who you don't know but cross on daily basis.

The chance and convenience of 2 smart-phoning people in the same public area to open conversations with each other for the first time needs to increase.

-versatile and modular products - battery but also power supply fed and supporting alternative power modes (solar, movement, friction,etc) with different levels of operations. New battery power methods are key to success or raising intrest.

-support a few well integrate P2P protocols that make people with the same device experience convenient communication and sharing without need for installing extra software.

-Security. It can run Android apps used to be fine.. but it should run Android apps better and more secure so people still downloading from Google Services are making the less sensible choice.

will you continue work on mer and nemo?