Try to be as open as possible to the community, making it possible to enroll in beta testing early, enable people to contribute even before a device is released to the masses.
One possibility would be to enable people in the community to buy pre-series devices for a significant discount (don't have to be completely free for all of them, maybe on a price that is those community beta testers/developers just replacing production costs and not actually "buying" them). Could also involve people singing some NDA and/or agreement to help market the device in forms of blogs/forums/social media to get access to more pre-releases info etc.

Also, include the existing Maemo/MeeGo/Mer/... community, don't try to cook your completely separate thing in terms of community, but build bridges to existing communities.

If you want community involvement, you can even get community helping to make the product you ship better, but you need to actively engage them and make them feel as a part of the movement, being treated in a fair and open way.
Even Nokia didn't fully manage to get that done - Jolla might have a chance to do that.

Yeah, I forgot to add that I tried to calculate very conservative way. For example those employer costs per person used to be double the salary, but I don't know what it is today.

FWIW, it's Technopolis office hotel. Despite what some may find by googling, it is not within the Aalto startup center, Aalto startup center just happens to be using Technopolis'es service too.

But indeed, it does have quite short distance to the now, defunct, NRC.

And McDonalds. And metro.

Are you saying McDonalds is behind this? Surely, their sales will go down when nokia leaving. But start up a undercover company like this. I doubt it.

To come on here and read such a positive thread is actually refreshing! This is such a great outcome from a crappy situation at Nokia, and I, like most here, am all behind it.

Let's keep it smiley in this thread and not go down the "but I wanted a keyboard/big screen/swipe/boohoo hiss it'll be rubbish then" road. Surely we've ALL had enough of that ridiculous whining to see us through the rest of 2012?

Happy days

I think this has serious potential for good commercial and critical success.

I'm sure with the people that are working on it, the OS itself and the UI will almost certainly be good, though what exact form they will take, only Jolla knows for now.

However, I think success or lack of it really lies in the hardware. Whilst I don't think anyone expects a small start-up to provide the best AMOLED screen on the market or a Pureview rivalling camera, I think the general build quality and look of the device will be very important, as will the choice of CPU. The latter is particularly crucial, given the spec-race that has developed. I'd love to see a dual-core A15 ... Maemo / Meego / Mer is such a powerful OS, and it'd be great to see it with some more horsepower than the - by market standards - extremely underpowered and behind-the-times 1Ghz A8 single core.

By the time whatever they're working on hits the market, quite a few such SoCs will be available -- both T.I. & STEricsson dual-core A15s will be in devices in Q4 of this year, other OEMs to follow.

P.S. Would also love to see an E7 like piece of hardware

I'm sure this is intentional. Easier to collar their ex co-workers as they pack up their desks, and try to convince them to join the good guys

Interesting. The Mer project was also relaunched in October 2011. I don't like to speculate but I'm not so sure that it's a coincidence.

It's just a coincidence. We had been talking about going back to Mer since way earlier that year, after MeeGo had let us down. If I could find them, I'd show you notes on Mer design from the summer that year, written at a music festival in the sun, beer in hand.

It was just time that things should be done right, since it didn't seem like big companies could do it right. Perhaps a network of small enterpreneurs could.

Agreed.

While I secretly wish for N9 with Pureview I fear it will look something like openmoko.