Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed? - Page 18 - maemo.org

smoku | # 171 | 2015-11-24, 08:34 | Report

Originally Posted by tortoisedoc View Post

was it possible to hook a n900 to a bigger screen and a kbd + mouse?

Even better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tON2gO72b1U

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smoku | # 172 | 2015-11-24, 08:39 | Report

Originally Posted by tortoisedoc View Post

And also, the whole industry has moved in the opposite direction in the mean time methinks?

Not quite.
Ubuntu Unity vision is still to deliver a pocketable PC that you can carry around and use as a phone (Ubuntu Phone skin), and dock it at home and work to big screen, keyboard and mouse an use as a full PC (Ubuntu Desktop skin).

Unfortunately Ubuntu Edge campaign failed, and phone manufacturers are not interested in this vision and build phone only devices.

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NokiaFanatic | # 173 | 2015-11-24, 09:45 | Report

Originally Posted by JulmaHerra View Post

Cyanogen is not very good comparison to Jolla, as they build on top of Android, which is developed in many other places with considerable amount of manpower and resources. On the other hand, just by open sourcing everything doesn't mean it's going to fly. Sailfish would still face the same challenges as it does today.

Of course the comparison isn't exact - I never even said that.

The point I was making was that Cyanogen and Jolla are similar in the respect that they have the same amount of people working on the project and they're both building upon previous efforts. The difference is that Cyanogen have 90k contributors to their project. Outside of Jolla staff, no one contributes to Sailfish (yes I know you can contribute to Mer - but I cannot easily put Mer on my Android device).

Clearly, Cyanogen are doing something right and Jolla are not.

Last edited by NokiaFanatic; 2015-11-24 at 09:54.

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NokiaFanatic | # 174 | 2015-11-24, 09:49 | Report

Originally Posted by nthn View Post

If your application is good enough, people will pay for it. The people who wouldn't pay for it, would never have paid for it, and would figure out a way around the ads anyway. If they don't know how to do it themselves, they'll ask someone else to do it for them. If you can't make a living by developing applications without ads, maybe you should develop applications in your spare time and find a new (read: real) job.

And in the real world, lot of people are making a living from ad-support products

But that is neither here nor there in this conversation.

JulmaHerra | # 175 | 2015-11-24, 10:20 | Report

Originally Posted by NokiaFanatic View Post

Clearly, Cyanogen are doing something right and Jolla are not.

Clearly Cyanogen are doing something different than Jolla. If Jolla was to do the same as Cyanogen, they would be doing something on top of Android and not different OS. It's harder road but ultimately the only road to something else than "just another Android".

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NokiaFanatic | # 176 | 2015-11-24, 10:24 | Report

Originally Posted by nodevel View Post

Dual monetizing model

On a related note, one big advantage of systems like SailfishOS is how apps adhere to the design guidelines and make use of the default components. This could be leveraged not only with the 'user stats' and 'cache', but also by monetizing apps.

I am also not a fan of ads, but let's think of it this way: what if there was a switch that would add an ad to a Header {} element of Silica and when releasing it through the store, there would be three business models:

free apps (no ads)
an option between paying or seeing ads
paid apps (no ads)

Let's look closely at the 2nd option - you as a developer release an app for $4. If a customer buys it, you get $3 and $1 goes to the Store owner (the developer of the OS). But if the customer decides to go for free version with ads, you get $3 from Store owner and the Store owner then gets all the revenue from ads in that application. At any point of time, the customer can decide to pay his way out of the ads by paying $4, which would then go to the Store owner.

This model would resolve the problem with buying an app without trying it - customers could try it with ads first and then buy it to get rid of them. There would be no model that would force ads onto the user without having the option to pay for the app instead.

When I talk about monetization, I am talking about the OS itself. Right now Jolla simply cannot monetize apps in any meaningful way because for the most part apps do not exist and secondly, there simply aren't enough SailfishOS installations in place to make developing apps worth while.

I think Jolla are going around licencing in the completely wrong way. It seems like they are trying to get an manufacturer (Intex) to take Sailfish while paying them a royalty on a device sail. This presents so many problems. The problem here is that you're going to get your Sailfish OS - but it's going to be running on a sh1tty device. Secondly, you are completely beholden to a third party to actually make the device and not screw things up. Finally, you're basically going to be deny users a choice in what that might want to spend/use. I much prefer the approach where I can buy a device (China are flooding the market with ultra cheap, high performance devices) and install Sailfish on it. I do not want to spend €530 on a fairphone, but equally I am not interested in buying a landfill Intex device for €100. Would it not be better for Sailfish to release ROM's for 3-4 of the most popular devices, test and certify the ROM's, and then charge a yearly subscription fee to receive OS updates and patches?

As for an ad/services supported version of Sailfish, I really don't understand the hostility. If you want to buy a vanilla version of Sailfish, you would be able to do that in my model. If you want a free version, then you're going to have to pay for it through the bundling of services (whether it's through Google, Microsoft, Amazon) and adverts.

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NokiaFanatic | # 177 | 2015-11-24, 10:43 | Report

Of course Sailfish is the more difficult path.

Are you saying that everyone should just give up?
Are you saying that the current strategy is successful?
If the answer to the above statements is no - then what are you proposing?

It's sad, Sailfish is on its last legs here and it looks set to go out on a whimper. Perhaps it is just a case that there simply isn't enough commercial demand for it to be able to stand on its own two feet?

locusf | # 178 | 2015-11-24, 11:00 | Report

Originally Posted by NokiaFanatic View Post

Outside of Jolla staff, no one contributes to Sailfish (yes I know you can contribute to Mer - but I cannot easily put Mer on my Android device).

Actually you can

https://sailfishos.org/develop/hadk/

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JulmaHerra | # 179 | 2015-11-24, 11:40 | Report

Originally Posted by NokiaFanatic View Post

Are you saying that everyone should just give up?

Considering the amount of love that has been expressed here for quite some time, it does seem like reasonable choice at times.

Personally I'm just waiting for two things:

- are they able to close the financing round in December
- if they are, how will they alter the strategy and what are those "talks" mr. Saarnio mentions in his open letter today

Originally Posted by

Are you saying that the current strategy is successful?

I tend to look at it with broader scale than just labeling it either "success" or "fail". There are things that could have and probably should have done differently, but at least some of them are things that could not be foreseen and there are many things that could have resulted in different kind of problems. However, major problem still is the funding - how to attract investors. Of course we can argue that just by open sourcing everything there would be gazillion devs rowing the boat for golden future but being realistic about it, I don't think it would have made considerable difference. However, allowing fragmentation to some degree (ie. letting other companies to stretch Sailfish OS to different kind of devices/applications) might have lead to wider adoption. But it would have been a trade off too as fragmentation usually is not desirable.

Another thing is licensing, they are now proposing licensing scheme quite similar to Qt and it should allow broader participation in development if there is incentive for people to do it. Also, if they enter "maintenance" phase, it should save them some money. Maybe developing things further if asked/paid for by clients?

Originally Posted by

It's sad, Sailfish is on its last legs here and it looks set to go out on a whimper. Perhaps it is just a case that there simply isn't enough commercial demand for it to be able to stand on its own two feet?

If money runs out before it brakes through, it will end up dead. However, it has matured to the point where it might be serious alternative, so if they can get the funding closed in December, there is a chance for turn around. It's not likely they will generate profits in 2016, but at least losses should start to shrink. If that happens, future financing should be easier. But it all depend on December now.

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javispedro | # 180 | 2015-11-24, 12:34 | Report

Reading the comments in https://blog.jolla.com/open-letter-jolla-community/ have just made me reaffirm myself in my position that it is stupid to try and go mass market. Thus "disrupting" anything should be out of the table.

So maybe the discussion is "how you would finance a non-mainstream non-Android OS" these days?

Intuition says it shouldn't be that hard. 0.01% of the mobile market should still be larger than 0.01% of the software desktop market. If all this "mobile" hype is right, at least.

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