Jolla – Developers Dream
After five days of the first Jolla Smart Phone sold in Finland, experienced and Linux oriented customers are already sailing in deep seas with their Jolla’s. In the second day we could already find instructions about how to install Google Play into this phone, and a video showing how nicely GTA3 is running on Jolla Sailfish OS.
So, modifying the Jolla’s Sailfish OS is possible, and Jolla has made it easy too – In the phone settings you can change the phone to Developer Mode (caution on this, this is really ment for experienced users). No other mobile OS offers a developer mode, but in other systems like Android this can be done a bit trickier, via rooting the phone.
It’s obvious that Jolla hasn’t offered this option without purpose. Some possible benefits to Jolla for offering their customers a Developer Mode:
- Jolla is looking for the best individual developers to hire them
- Jolla gives part of their own work to the community, and via that Jolla Crew can offer better updates, faster, to all their customers (this kind of community work is common in Linux based, OpenSource enviroments)
- Jolla is hoping for users to develope some of The Other Halfs
- Jolla needs native Sailfish Apps fast, and this is one way to offer complete test devices for all interested in developing
- Jolla’s Sailfish starts to spread around the world directly via the community
- Jolla gains the votes of experienced mobile enthustiastics, and gains some marketing value via that
I see Jolla’s phones as a huge marketing fleet for the Salefish Operating System, which seems to be the main product of the company. In future we might see Jolla running campaigns where they award their customers for their work to develope and spread Sailfish all around the world.
Jolla’s strategy by Stefano Mosconi:
“Our plan is a three-phase one: first, we’ll do phones that are Jolla-branded. Then we’ll do co-branded phones – “Sailfish by Jolla.” And then the third wave will be to license the OS to third parties so that they can build on top of the existing open-source project -which we plan to keep open-source- and then we’ll differentiate with the UI.”
Jolla’s strategy by how I see it:
“Give a million ships to free, open minded sailors and follow them visiting all the harbours of the world, equipping their ships even better and showing their nice ships to their friends, inviting them to sailing with them.”
For developers: harbour.jolla.com
to JollaTides by Simo
Simo, to JollaTides
currenty studying more IT and writing to blogs.
Already sailing, Jolla phone In Hand.
Latest posts by Simo, to JollaTides (see all)
- User report tool: Jolla battery consumption - December 12, 2013
- User Report Tool: Jolla smartphone Apps - December 9, 2013
- Jolla: Landing to pre-order customers *UPDATED 12.12* - December 4, 2013
Das Linux User on 
Giova on 
garry on 
mced on 
Mich on 
Hey,
developer mode isn’t working anymore. In the beginning it launched normally with terminal etc. Now nothing happens. Not even after booting the device. Any help?
Do you have Developer Updates ON? If so, do a factory reset, enable developer mode again but don’t touch the update option.
When [the hell] will I be able to order? I enlisted, joined, funded some half year ago, and now the time is there to order, there is no support to do so. Support request give no response. This is not a nice way to treat crowdfunders.
I really get your feeling, hopefully [email protected] will answer you soon. Meanwhile, let’s stick to the article – there are other forums for that, thanks.
Ok so where is the open source of SailfishOS?
So far the distributable version is only a promise from Jolla’s CEO Pienimäki, and that promise includes only Android devices – I too hope it’ll be there. At the moment we can’t call Saifish to be OpenSource, we can only see some signs that it might become one. Most propably it’ll include some closed code by Jolla anyway, just hopefully less than many others have their. Refer to sailfishos.org and merproject.org for more on these issues.
My problem is that even though there was a lot of talk about Jolla being open I haven’t even found the GPL parts for the phone anywhere.
Where’s the kernel, the open source Mer parts ? And no, I can’t accept that I should look at merproject or something else for them.
Open Source, FOSS, is a crucial differentiator for Jolla in the phone market. Even the big players like Intel and AMD are offering Open Source products.
With the current climate of state sponsored spying, like the latest French legislative proposal, it is all the more crucial not to have proprietary binary blobs that may have the potential for backdoors in them.
Richard
Agreed, and I’m gonna shout for joy and share awfully lot when Sailfish OS will be shared like any OpenSource should be – as an installable distribution. I’m already happy that Jolla phone is more open than most competitors, offering root entrance out of the box. For me it’s also ok that Jolla has included closed source inside Sailfish – that’s their own work and there lies the workers salaries and the future of the company. But everything else will hopefully be as OpenSource as ever possible. Trusting them on this.