or 3) the PR department has just left? (sorry )

Well, to take up the silence, you need a good conspiracy theory (if there is such a thing...) How about, since Jolla is strengthening ties with Russia and Dillon is a US citizen, he was, shall we say, nudged out. Or, he figured this is about as good a time as any to leave, considering what is likely to come down the road

Hmm. Honestly, I'd more likely attribute it to what I call "corporate constipation". Jolla is one of those unfortunate businesses that have chosen to adopt the religion of "Agile Software Development"; unfortunate, because agile development seems to encourage the placing of artificial deadlines on all sorts of processes (both by folks inside and outside of the company). If you can break a project into a collection of small deliverables, Agile works fine; if you've got something large and complex to construct, Agile usually just seems to get in your way.

Luckily, Jolla doesn't seem to have lost itself in the jargon -- they do manage to get large, complex software and hardware projects done. How do they do this? Well, it looks like when they need to, they drop all the external monitoring required by Agile, pick up their shovels, and just get to work. And so, "corporate constipation". We've just seen that this week with the release of 1.1.9.28; practically no communication before the release, then Bam -- a blog entry, TJC posts, tweets everywhere, etc.

Honestly, in the current world, this seems a more _professional_ way to work. Certainly, this is how Apple does it -- no news at all for months, then everything gets updated in a matter of hours. You don't see all the two-steps-forward, one-step-back that Apple goes through to create its products; you just see the end result.

Jolla, too, must face two-steps-forward, one-step-back issues, because that's how the world works. Yes, we've got another period of black-out w.r.t. the tablet; so, something new has gone snafu. But I expect that soon enough, there'll be another deluge of info from Jolla, once the current problem is passed.

(BTW, I like the fact that Jolla doesn't have a 24/7 PR department. Constant spin with no hard facts is a really disgusting feature of many modern corporations...)

You mentioned Apple before as a shining example. And I agree that silence is good in some cases. More specifically, in these cases:
1) ...silence... BAM! A new product!
2) "We are working on something new but are not telling you what it is"... then case 1 above.

In cases like that, silence is really golden.

However, silence is not good in cases like...
1) Something happened. Reaction is required. (Case in hand: Marc's departure)
2) We have promised to deliver something but have not delivered when promised. (Cases in hand: Jolla tablet, update 8, many reported bugs and missing features...)

Maybe Marc Dillon left Jolla because he replied to the Nokia job announcment and they said yes

Ok, devil's advocate here: Is silence really not good in these cases?

1) Yes, Marc has left Jolla. Does that mean that Jolla is now dead? If so, and Jolla comes out with a statement saying everything is fine, would that improve the situation? If not, and Jolla comes out with a statement saying that everything is fine, would folks really believe it? And honestly, what does it even matter to those inside the company what the general public thinks of their internal organization? Jolla will work things out or not themselves, it's literally their own business.

2) Yes the tablet has been delayed. It is quite obvious that Jolla underestimated the amount of time it would take to produce it. So, again: let's say that Jolla put out a blog report every week or two this entire year, stating things like: "Yes, the tablet display we chose has a problem with yellow blotches." "No, we still haven't been able to fix the yellow blotches." "No, we _still_ haven't been able to fix the yellow blotches." "Yes, we've given up and started looking for another display." "No, we still haven't found another display." "Yes, we finally found another display, but it is incompatible with our hardware." "No, we aren't going to throw away our hardware and start over, we'll find a way to patch it." "Yes, we've finally found a patch to work around the hardware incompatibility, we're re-working our circuit board to adopt the new hardware."

Honestly, would this really improve Jolla's public relations? I can't imagine that it would. And yet, this sort of effort is exactly what it takes to produce a complex device.

In short, I'm willing to wait out the silences, in order to let Jolla get their act together before they go public. Because, I guess, I don't trust the public.

Yes!

They would appear as a trustworthy partner. As it is now, everything they say has to be taken with a huge dose of skepticism. I for one no loger trust a single word they say (yes, I was that naiive in the past).

Touché. Indeed, their target dates seem to have been misses much more than hits. However, I don't think they've ever knowingly put out false information; they seem to have actually believed themselves that they would hit the dates that they specified. (Again, I tend to blame this on Agile development, which just never seems to work well with long-term projects...)

So yeah, a lot of target dates have turned into a lot of "soon" statements which has turned into long periods of silence. Frustrating, but not in my opinion malicious...

Maybe the Apple way is the best way in this regard. Don't tell anything, until it's ready to be released. Hide the whole development process until that, because if you open it up even a small amount, you'll be in endless circle of demands for more information, details, explanations that will satisfy nobody and finally ended up being labeled as untrustworthy...

I never accused them of malice. I would not even go as far as using the word Mr Hanlon (Heinlein?) used. Inexperience, naïvety or, if we want to be really harsh, incompetence.

That is a good idea in general but, unfortunately, every company has some moral obligations to their investors. Everying would have been hunky-dorey had they been developing the tablet behind closed doors but they opened the Pandora's box themselves by soliciting investors ("contributors") through IGG.