Why are you developing for SailfishOS?
 

Hi all,

I am pretty curios, what is your motivation to develop for SailfishOS and, if yes, what is your motivation to push apps to Harbour?

I'll start with a little information about my background and my motivation:

I do all the work on apps etc. in my spare time.
I do this primarily because it is fun to play and tinker with technology and because I had requirements for certain functionality that wasn't there yet.
I also think that the freedom we get with SailfishOS/Mer is truly great and I really appreciate the great work of the people at Jolla.
I am using my Jolla as my primary phone since the day I got it and am very very happy with it.

With respect to pushing things to Harbour:
I thing that pushing to Harbour as the "official" app store is one way to show good support for the new platform.
To a little lesser degree I also want to provide a nice user experience for end-users.


Now, I hope some more devs will join in and explain why they develop for SailfishOS. :)

Re: Why are you developing for SailfishOS?
 

I was using my Jolla as my primary phone since the day I got it and am very very happy with it, but wait some bug fixed before being able to use it as primary phone.

I do devel because, i like making devel and for things i need.

No my apps aren't in Harbour, until Python apps are accepted.

Re: Why are you developing for SailfishOS?
 

Basically my Qt-day-one was the day when i got my Jolla phone, and installed SDK.

My background is heavily on the hardware side, so basically i started googling things like "c++ class".

With the Jolla phone, the "other half" gives me a open (unfortunately no specs yet from Jolla OY) interface between hardware and the software - this has been the thing keeping me wake to 3 AM, either doing layout or coding.

So i'm having a very big learning polygon here on the software side. On the otherhand it seems that in my daily work i need to know more and more about Linux in hw interface level, so tinkering with Jolla helps also there.

Pushing first app to harbour was just something that i had to do. (Maybe not the "GOTY2013" as someone commented) But i made it and got it approved after couple of attempts. Second app went on the first attempt.

Maybe there is also some "love"...

Re: Why are you developing for SailfishOS?
 

Like others, I do it in my spare time primarily because it is fun and useful to me personally (my N900 can't last forever!). I want my Jolla to take over from my N900 as my primary phone very soon.

I am also keen to support the most open phone around. However I am not yet convinced that that goes as far as learning Qt/QML and creating apps for Harbour. I will certainly create some things as rpms and make them available (mainly tools useful either for development or for my use -- for example I had intended to port syncevolution but Ove Kåven is doing a great job on that already).

I am not really a GUI guy. But to the extent that I create any apps, I had decided to try to use HTML5. The browser support for that is currently quite weak (although intended to improve, I understand) but I feel that if I am going to create anything useful it would be good if it could also run on my work phone (Android) and other phones.

I realise that Jolla would be best served by having apps in Harbour but, trust me, you are not missing anything by not having anything in there from me! My UI skills are just not good enough :)

Re: Why are you developing for SailfishOS?
 

I'm a programmer, I can't really help playing around with whatever I get my hands on...

As a matter of fact. Jolla is the first mobile phone I own or use. Haven't really seen the need for a phone. But I do felt the need for a networked handheld computer. Started looking at android phones about two years ago, but I didn't like the OS and the fact that I couldn't buy an unlocked device (i.e. iPhone wasn't even considered).

Now I have my Jolla, and I've started playing around with it. Mostly trying different things so far. Writing a small game as a test. Might put it in harbour, might not. Lots of ideas, not enough time.

Re: Why are you developing for SailfishOS?
 

Everytime I wanna make an app, boom its already been made. But with Jolla there are hardly any apps I know i can make an app and it be an actual contribution, it'll be on of few fart apps, and not the thousandth fart app, cause you know those things take time.

Re: Why are you developing for SailfishOS?
 

I'm a developer in my daily job, writing Accounting Software. In my free time I like to extend my technical/programming abilities by trying new platforms/languages etc..

Since I'm a proud owner of a Jolla since December the natural thing to do was trying to write an application for it. So SailOTP was born to let me get rid of the Android Google Authenticator app. If the things I produce are usefull to others, then that's an added bonus.

I haven't pushed the app to Harbour yet, but will do so once I'm statisfied with the features and handling. At the moment I have published the app via openrepos.

Re: Why are you developing for SailfishOS?
 

Simply because it's there. ;)

Re: Why are you developing for SailfishOS?
 

Great, thanks a lot for the replies so far.
It is very interesting to see the sometimes different and sometimes very similar reasons for developing for Sailfish. :)

I hope some more people will join in.

By the way:
Quoting Capt. James T. Kirk here? ;)

Re: Why are you developing for SailfishOS?
 

Because SailfishOS is the 'true' Linux mobile OS with full Qt support. (I hate the JavaVM bullsh*t on Android)

EDIT: Technically speaking, full Qt support is not entirely correct as it does not support some not important module like QtWidgets, so it should be "heavy Qt support". See next post by xerxes2 for what it means by 'true' Linux.