TemeV | # 341 | 2015-09-15, 14:52 | Report

I guess they changed it because somebody thought there is a problem with aesthetics. Actually, there used to be a patch that made the animation like it is now. There is even a thread in together about it: https://together.jolla.com/question/...ke-slide-also/. So I guess you're outnumbered 6 to 1

bluefoot | # 342 | 2015-09-15, 15:32 | Report

I don't think anyone denies that they are moving forward in some areas, but instead of closing the feature and functionality gap with other OSes, it gets wider by the day. There seems to still be some kind of major flaw with the development process, or direction of it and motivation of staff. Small changes are still taking an age to implement, and major issues go either totally ignored or Jolla are incapable of fixing them. The farcical memory footprint of Sailfish and native apps, management of it and leaks have actually been worsened in the 10 months since it became chronic. To my knowledge, no other OS has ever had these kind of issues. Even Android in its earliest days on the HTC Dream wasn't such a battle (it had memory management issues and leaks).

Without going on too long, I think we'll know whether they've actually finally got a handle on the OS and development process by how many or how few improvements are shipped in 1.2 (which should be due about a week from now), and how quickly 1.2.1 ships after that and whether it quickly refines the new UI and adds features. If both sustain the previous glacial pace, then I don't see how the OS or Jolla have a future. I hope they give us some hope, but I'm really not expecting it.

MartinK | # 343 | 2015-09-15, 15:53 | Report

I think at least part of the problem is the half open/half closed nature of Sailfish OS.

Some features/bugs would be easy to add/fix for third party developers, but the change needs to be done in a closed component and only the already overworked Jolla developers are able to do that.

This can also project to testing - since parts of Sailfish OS are closed and developed behind closed doors you can't have a development distro branch going that people can continuously test and report issues. You have periodic pre-releases that might find the bugs too late, resulting in the final release being delayed or bugs being fixed a long time after being first reported (in the next periodic update - if your are lucky).

And the missing public bugzilla only makes this worse by adding more useless work for both the community (which has to use/workaround using a sub par bug reporting solution) and Jolla (combing through the unstructured questions on together and re-filling them in the internal bugzilla and maybe trying to keep the two in sync somehow).

Another problem could be that there is no real working community distro based on Mer (Nemo Mobile appears to be at best on life support unfortunately...) or any known major Mer user other than Sailfish OS for that matter. That would also help a lot with testing, new package and package update integration, etc. Like this it also all lands on the overworked backs of the Jolla developers...

bluefoot | # 344 | 2015-09-15, 16:23 | Report

I definitely agree, but there has to be some element of either poor focus or incompetence for some things to go on as they have. All the issues with Qt update and the 4 month gap between updates (despite the parlous state of the OS at the time) was because they had no way of branching or rolling back their code in development. They were 2 and a half years in at that point, management and senior coders were industry veterans, and they'd worked for years on Sailfish's direct predecessors. How does that even happen?? How could they go on for that long without a basic tool or function that OS or any complex software developers rely on? Whether there are now, I don't know, but there have been many major systemic failures at Jolla.

But yeah, the lack of a public bugzilla is so self defeating and such a sore point. I think I said a while ago I intended to give away the older of my two Jollas to a borderline genius level coder I knew, who's also a hardcore open source & linux enthusiast. Well, he was interested until I told him there was no bugtracker of any kind, let alone a properly maintained bugzilla ... at first he thought I'd misunderstood his question and didn't know what one was. Sadly not. He and another guy who was otherwise interested were incredulous.

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Last edited by bluefoot; 2015-09-15 at 16:32.

ste-phan | # 345 | 2015-09-15, 16:36 | Report

They call it slide & fade, but more close to wipe and fade. Slide would look cool but obviously demand those pixels being displaced.


Beats me why this got implemented with 6 voters (now 4) when already having a patch available to please the 25 or so supporters of the idea while 637 and 561 voters respectively are waiting for copy / paste and SIP functionality to be implemented

MartinK | # 346 | 2015-09-15, 16:38 | Report

Well, that's not technically correct - there is the Mer Bugzilla.

This unfortunately is correct. While things seem to be improving (more link to the Mer bugzilla tend to show up in recent detailed release notes and bugs generally seem to be less ignored than before), it is still a mess.

For example there is just a single component for all Qt5 related issues (!) and many Mer/Nemo components are missing outright, so people tend to fill bugs on the .Other component...

And of course this is just for the Mer/Nemo components, so it can't be used for report the actual issues people are having with Sailfish OS, at least until the issues is pinpointed to a Mer/Nemo component.

bluefoot | # 347 | 2015-09-15, 16:47 | Report

To someone without detailed knowledge of how Mer / Nemo / Sailfish relate to each other, the (as you point out poor) Mer Bugzilla page is going to be of limited usefulness and probably very frustrating. How do interested parties who are new to it get anywhere? Except to a probably quick conclusion that everything is highly disorganised and opaque. You get the impression that developers at Jolla have operated in an identical environment internally for most of the company's history.

pichlo | # 348 | 2015-09-15, 17:13 | Report

You are both right. The functionality gap is widening and Jolla dvelopers have a lot on their plate.

When reading your posts, the two highlighted bits stood up at me like sore thumbs. I do not know anything about Jolla's internal processes but I can tell you this from my own experience. I have worked in a wide range of environments, under a wide range of management and using a wide range of methodologies and development processes. And the things I always found the most demotivational could be summed up in just two bullet points:

• A lack of clear direction. The management may have an idea where the project is going but this is not being communicated to us little pawns. This leads to micromanagement: they tell you to do X, without telling you how it fits in the big picture or even who works on Y that directly interacts with your X. The impression is that even the management has no idea where they are going.
• An ever-growing backlog. You know there are 125 issues on the list, some of them serious and some of them with thousands of users crying for months if not years. Yet your manager asks you to work on a new feature that no one has ever asked for and while you are working on it, the backlog grows from 125 to 132.

Maybe it's just me but I found the two extremely demotivational and leading to running around in circles, with the result that you are constantly overworked and yet, when you look behind, you do not see any results.

I found this at work as well as in private life. There is no point opening a savings account while you have outstanding debts. Pay off your debts first otherwise they will continue increasing. Equally there is no point starting a new thing when you have 10 things unfinished. You will end up with 11 things unfinished.

javispedro | # 349 | 2015-09-15, 17:13 | Report

My only problem is the closed sourceness. Fsck everything and release it already, dammit!

itdoesntmatt | # 350 | 2015-09-15, 17:28 | Report

here it is very useful comment,thanks