Can't help a company that doesn't seem to want the help.

So what can the community do? Simple. Support them, hope that they grow to support us. Less antagonism, less reactionary commentary; more constructive criticism and more access to start our own hack-a-thons that might benefit a monthly (or so) idea incubator that might be seen or publicized by Jolla.

None of this stuff is new. But let's see if those things can help.

Oh, we should convince Tox.im, Bit Torrent Sync/Bleep, and a few others to target Jolla too.

Not entirely true. Writing a lot of useful apps is an obvious example.

For anything else, I am afraid the first step has to be asking them, "Dear Jolla, do you want help? If so, in what areas?"

The problem with "constructive" criticism is that if one does not want help, he/she/it can easily miss the "constructive" bit and can get easily antagonized.

The problem is some amount of people in this community have a very specific idea(s) of an "ideal company", an ideal model which a company should be in their mind. They wouldn't help if the company doesn't fulfill that ideal. Jolla doesn't fulfill that ideal for them.

I'm not saying lots of people go by this description, but you know, the most negative voices are always the most visible in any media. I'm not even saying my description is true, that's just the impression I've got from many threads here.

Before asking Jolla "do you want help?" I feel it is important to ask yourself "do I want to help Jolla?" first and foremost.

From there, by answering "yes" to that question, we actually have established a mentality in which to go by. From there we can think of the ways to help, it would be in the center of it all. And that center wouldn't even rule out the criticism, it would just limit it to critisism to that which is relevant to being able to help, and it would limit critisism from being the center of discussion. Critisism shouldn't be the main talking point of this thread either.

and then you get response like................... oh, wait, you don't get it at all. So you decide to give it another go and ask one of their employee over PM and again you don't get any response. Should one travel to Finland to knock on their doors?
I was offering help with localization, and that maybe isn't something considering the market size but it is still something that someone else would do and something that is common for all other OS.

Perhaps the question should really be what the community can do to help itself?

Are there areas of the OS that we can help with? There's already a load of code up there on github that needs working on in the Mer and Nemo side of the OS as well as some on the Jolla side.

Can we fill in the holes and by doing so improve the OS for ourselves AND free up Jolla's resources to work on stuff only they can do currently?

eg. Can we get SIP working so that Jolla don't have to?

Do we need project ideas?

How about bounties?

Yeah, maybe we are too centered on Jolla Oy. I mean, lots of people here have the device, and I'm sure there are many ways for users themselves to make the user experience better... Communitites are usually formed around some positive activity towards some subject, after all.

PS: I do know this forum currently house two or three communities: N900 community, N9 community, and Jolla community. Maybe that's one of the reasons there seems to be so much debate around Jolla?

I think establishing an environment for users to collaborate need some planning and executing, maybe they haven't had the resources to make this possible? By the way I always feel silly when I try to speak for Jolla as I have no way of knowing what's the case. Maybe a better reply would be -too bad mate hopefully they'll make that possible in the future.

I don't know what they have or don't have. But when someone offers you help with something then it would be OK to say something. At least to reply with some generic message like all others do. It's not that I am offended by that but that is exactly the problem here. You can't help someone who doesn't want any help. You can't help someone who doesn't want to communicate and to tell you what he needs.

So, shall we just get on with improving Mer, Nemo, Sailfish and the relevant components?

Improving those WILL help the community regardless of what Jolla are able to contribute.

Isn't that the point of open source projects?

Nothing written to date on Jolla has been a crowd pleaser; in fact, I'd gamble and say that most apps are made to please just one person... the app dev.

Then why ask this question now?

Then why help a company that's not made their stance clear? No need for double speak here; what I've seen, they have their agendas clear to themselves and they've survived so far on their own path.

Ever thought that adding your (or my) 2 cents to the mix is just meddling unless you've seen otherwise where they'd want outside help? For such a small company, they've produced a phone, an OS, a launcher, a way to get in contact with them, and above all... they've done it without community input for the most part.

I'd say those sailors know their way around. Perhaps it's ego that's driving this discussion because things are not going in the way you (or I) would like for it to go.

If they seem comfortable with how things are going, so should we.

That's my take.

In other words, the answer to the question in the thread title is, "nothing". Case closed.

Let's then focus on helping ourselves. That seems to make more sense.