| Jolla/Sailfish had (and quite frankly, continues to have) many problems, making it unsuitable as a phone, or for mobile development. * Jolla has always used (and continues to use) outdated hardware, Ubuntu Phone OS shipped with or ran on reasonably performant hardware. Only after several years is Jolla now discussing the possibility of porting the OS to a somewhat modern device (Sony Xperia) * The Sailfish SDK relies on VirtualBox for the emulator and for native compilation, a drain on resources and memory, and an indication that the development team was not well versed in creating cross compilation ecosystems or tools. Ubuntu Phone SDK was limited to Ubuntu Linux, but ran natively (Sailfish SDK required VirtualBox even on Linux) * For years, Jolla withheld from or misled the public on the state of internal affairs (Canceled tablet, no refunds for crowdfunders, CEO and key employees quitting, lack of funding, relying on volunteers for key areas of development) * Sailfish OS has always lacked basic security features for applications (QT Quick embedded in plain text) or for the phone itself (encryption, permissions). Sailfish's security problems may be just as problematic as Tizen's * Sailfish OS was never true open source, even less so than Android, although it has always been advertised as such. * Very poor/non-existent developer relations - A few developers attempted to make games for Jolla, but encountered serious problems that the developers weren't interested in fixing (i.e. SDL2 on Jolla not supporting landscape mode, preventing games from being submitted), even worse, the developer for the SDL2 Wayland port flat-out refused to fix the problem or provide the source code for other people to fix the issue. Such problems or resistance from the developers were never encountered on Ubuntu Phone OS. |
But Jolla has shipped. Jolla 1, Intex Aquafish, Turing Phone, Inoi R7[1]. Limited runs of Jolla C, Tablet. Sony Xperia X should be coming soon. This is a startup of (these days) less than 50 people, cut them some slack, they're competing with giants.
> The Sailfish SDK relies on VirtualBox for the emulator and for native compilation
It's infinitely more efficient to build and ship 1 VirtualBox OS Bundle, v.s. building and maintaining at least 3 different cross-compilation toolchains (one for each of: Windows, MacOSX, Linux). With limited developer resources, I'd choose the latter route too.
I also prefer this setup to things like scratchbox2 and Android's (or iPhone's) emulator. It's portable between base OS's and it makes use of existing and well-known tools (VirtualBox).
> For years, Jolla withheld from or misled the public on the state of internal affairs
The Tablet fiasco could have been communicated better. At the same time, that's the risk you take with Kickstarter/IndieGoGo. It's a startup.
I don't agree with any of your other points, they're a startup, it's not all smooth sailing.
> Sailfish OS always lacked basic security features for applications (QT Quick embedded in plain text) or for the phone itself (encryption).
In regards to packaging, or app isolation, Jolla's wisely chosen to work on "mobile problems" and leave package management to the heavyweights (e.g. RH with Flatpak).
VPN support was added in the last release. The public git repos show ongoing work to filesystem encryption.
> Sailfish OS was never true open source, even less so than Android
Significant pieces of SailfishOS are proprietary. However, I think it's a more "inclusive" OS than Google's Android. Google develops Android. SailfishOS is GNU/Linux, it's developed by Red Hat (e.g. Linux kernel, systemd), Intel (Connman, ofono), Qualcomm (BlueZ), Qt (Qt Company), Mozilla (Firefox), GNU (CLI tools), KDE (Calligra), Collabora (gstreamer), etc.
I'm hopeful that one day SailfishOS will be fully open source.
> Very poor/non-existent developer relations
Disagree. They hold fortnightly meetings (#mer-meeting on Freenode). Most of the code is public (https://git.merproject.org/). There's a public Bugzilla (https://bugs.merproject.org/). There's discussion boards (https://together.jolla.com/). Community translation portal (http://translate.sailfishos.org/).
[1] https://together.jolla.com/question/136143/wiki-available-de...