I am sorry to say that I am leaving this community now. I have been involved since the earliest days of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and have had a lot of fun, made some contributions myself, and greatly appreciate the efforts of all who have been involved in Maemo, Meego, Mer, Sailfish and Jolla, through ups and downs. As a former community council member, I have used a Maemo-derived phone as my main phone for a long time.

Unfortunately we seem to have lost the battles to create an open phone platform, attractive enough to app developers and users (who are the ones who make or break a platform by their mutual dependency) and open enough to have a strong community of developers to support the manufacturer/software developer. It is great that we lasted (a lot) longer than Microsoft, and that some efforts continue but I am giving up. My Jolla C is failing and more and more of my life requires apps that are only available on Android or Apple and will never be available on other platforms, whether Sailfish, some other Linux platform, or even on Android derivatives like /e/ or LineageOS, let alone true FOSS like Replicant.

I am not going to criticise Nokia, Jolla or any of the community leaders who have taken us this far. We had a good go!

In case anyone is interested: I have ordered an iPhone. I am hoping that Apple, who have made privacy a part of their commercial message, are at least better than Google in that aspect. They seem to understand that some people are willing to pay a price premium to not be the product and have more control than Google allows. Not that I am recommending Apple to anyone else - both Apple and Google are companies I would prefer not to do business with. Make your own decisions.

So long. Thanks for everything. And best of luck to the whole Maemo and Sailfish communities.

From one who used iPhone and loved it for years and who still thinks it is an awesome device and who understands your standpoint, I say: you should have both. Because using your brains to make things work with these devices is something unique. There is the burden, there are goals, successes and fails, but the most important thing is the community. I doubt you can have it elsewhere. I was only for summer wirhout hassling with my N900 and used android instead and it was easy but made me feel stupid. After using N900 again for couple of minutes I felt alive again inside my head.

I would advice to step aside from the frontline but not to say goodbye. Unless of course you find morally hard to continue being a member of this community for some reason.

Farewell,
as said over here

and awaiting to see/read you again...

'Losing the battle' happened long ago. Having a great community of people around open-source portable computing devices is an ongoing, living thing.

No clort, it is better as Graham said "losing battles". There have been battles people have lost but it doesn't mean the end of war. As long as people stand up even after they have got beaten up battle continues, and the war goes on untill everyone surrenders. That will not happen. Too many have this idea of freedom in their heads.

This community is one group keeping that fire alive. Sometimes just covering the warm coils but then something comes up and people start to blow to the coil and we are in flames. F(x)tec is one, Leste is another, Sailfish is alive, LineageOs, Cosmo communicator, Pinephone, Purism. We are not alone and we are not defeated. Individuals can be defeated though - untill they rise up again and join the battle.

Privacy, freedom, and in my case the concern is of being profiled to make profit with my virtual personality. I don't like that. I want to help people to have a choice. There will be a day when opensource platforms will be acknowledged and put above everything. For sure. When? Who knows. But the constructions which are reaching the sky based on big companies with monopoly status - it is a pyramid scam in the end.