OpenRepos provides personal respositories. It's a catalogue. With client, and update notifications. In your terms that means 'extra-devel'. No -testing, no -stable.
You can refer to openrepos thread to find(using search) some details.
I have plans for some app verification/testing (i.e. "it does not brick your device on first run"). Check the discussion here.

Which is exactly where this thread started.

They scared away most of community and developers. Why would any company want to step into that?

Someone's forgotten how far we've come. A couple of days with aegis and a MALF or two should fix that.

What kind of MALF are you referring to?
Never ever happened to me. And even if I would have no problem to solve!
Maybe someone forgot about OpenMode / Power kernel, full flasher utility and full provision of firmware blobs.

While indeed OpenRepos are the de-facto Extras-Devel of Sailfish OS at the moment (haven't heard much about the Chum project lately) there are a few important differences from how Extras-Devel works on the N900:

• OR has separate repositories (which can hold multiple packages) and N900 Extras Devel is a single repository
  • Different versions of packages can coexist as long as they are in separate repositories and it is possible to provide system package replacements with relative safety.
• OR accepts any binary RPM package while all packages on N900 Extras Devel are built from source on the Autobuilder
  • While nothing really prevents you from just unpacking an archive with random files during the Autobuilder run you can still be quite sure for properly packaged applications that the binary package matches the source.
• OR have information pages, rating and discussion page, which Extras-Devel on the N900 don't have (Extras have in in the "Downloads" section - if it still works).
• OR has per-package download statistics but there are AFAIK no such working download statistics for the N900 Extras-Devel

Maybe there could be something like "Build from source on OBS" badge with link to the SRPM/spec & tarball ? That would provide a possibility of knowing what the app does before installing it & could be an overall nice feature for people wanting to tweak/contribute to open source apps. Also developers like me who build their packages on the Mer OBS would not have to download the binary packages just to upload it to OR right away every release.

I can't believe this attitude exists. Under Nokia, things were locked up and held back because Nokia chose to do that. Jolla have been clear from the outset that they are unable to release a firmware blob because they didn't consider the licensing problems of that when they were deciding how to structure the firmware.

They are a small company. They make mistakes, but have the rare openness to admit them, as in this case and with the FM radio antenna. I really don't know what your complaining is supposed to achieve, except attempt to undermine what little support they have.

If you want to switch over to some doomed fork of android that is utterly at the mercy of Google, then fine. But please leave us in our little dream of a GNU-based mobile OS that might be a little more free than that.

*Sigh*

I appreciate trying to get this thread back on track, but we all know they wouldn't and couldn't. No Android support and this OS would be dead.

Uhm... sadly for most users that would be the case. I don't particularly care too much - happy to carry around my work android phone to summon a cab.

OTOH, and I mentioned this before, I haven't seen a Sailfish implementation that runs _properly_ on other phones just yet. Nexus 4 is the semi official port and it doesn't feel as good as it does on the Jolla. I think that has to be tackled first, and it probably it is work in progress (e.g., icons rework so that they aren't hardcoded to a particular resolution).

Having said all that, I do need Maps. Not sure they'll just give that away for free, or at the very least we need a fully featured maps application that comes from the free world. Modrana is excellent and I use it, but it isn't at the level that the normal user would expect.

I'm just dancing around the subject here, I don't pretend to have a solution. OFC ulitmately the solution is $$$$.

I think it's got to the stage now that Jolla are so late with everything, and so many developers have been alienated, that a new focus on the software ecosystem (monetisation, less strictures on Jolla Store apps, dev outreach etc) would actually be counterproductive. The number of people that you'd bring back, or the amount of fresh blood that would appear, would be so miniscule as to make it a complete waste of time.

They'd be better off concentrating on fixing up the OS, adding basic features, making the core apps fit for purpose, removing bugs and making it a hell of a lot faster, given how slow it is relative to the alternatives. Then maybe, just maybe, the "Sailfish Alliance" will actually mean something, with some OEMs considering it a viable alt.OS ... rather than Autumn '12 > MWC '14 > MWC '15 > MWC '16 > MWC '17 > MWC '18 "Jolla would like to announce that Sailfish is ready for licensing."

Without backers it's never going to go anywhere anyway, and the basic state of the OS will influence potential backers much more than the total lack of software ecosystem.