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Jolla Sailfish Will Build A Google-Free Mobile OS For China (silicon.co.uk)
Jolla released their Android-free mobile Linux OS (Sailfish) on their own smartphones, "but has always intended to offer it to other manufacturers," according to Silicon. The next Sailfish smartphone was the Inex Aqua Fish, and people with Sony Xperia phones can now also run Sailfish through the Sony Open Devices Program. But their next big customer is the nation of China. Mickeycaskill
quotes Silicon.
The Sailfish China Consortium has gained the exclusive rights and license to develop a Chinese operating system based on Sailfish. Russia is also using Sailfish to build a national mobile OS in a bid to reduce its reliance on Western technology and reduce the risk of foreign surveillance. Jolla claimed that there have been many attempts to build a national OS on Android but these had been unsuccessful because of Google's control over the code.
One of the consortium's investors claims "several" major Chinese companies are already interested in joining them, adding "I have been closely following Sailfish OS development, and seen many Chinese projects fail, while Jolla's Sailfish OS has been steadily progressing. Sailfish OS is the only viable alternative for China."
One of the consortium's investors claims "several" major Chinese companies are already interested in joining them, adding "I have been closely following Sailfish OS development, and seen many Chinese projects fail, while Jolla's Sailfish OS has been steadily progressing. Sailfish OS is the only viable alternative for China."
A non apple OS with no ties to Google or Microsoft.
What is not to like?
Finally the people of China can be free of tyranny!
For the last couple years I have used a Jolla phone as my primary phone.
When i got it I expected it to be a shaky unstable alpha/beta/pre-release product, I bought it mostly out of curiosity, but to my surprise it worked well enough to use as a daily phone.
In some ways it works better than say an Android, for instance the underlying Linux OS is much more readily available for direct use by the enduser.
Google has no control over existing Android code. The only thing they control is new versions of Android, right up until it's released. Android is open source under the Apache 2.0 license (free, as in beer - you don't have to release your modifications). If you don't like what Google is doing with it, just grab a copy of the Android source and fork it. Like Amazon did for Fire OS.
The only reasons for not starting with Android (where 99% of the work has already been done) is if you don't like Android's core design, or if you want to add all sorts of other "features" that you don't want users to know about (like back doors), or if you deliberately want to make it incompatible with existing Android apps.
Extracted from the sailfish developer documentation: "we recommend using C++" to develop apps which do anything non-trivial, to paraphrase.
Ok that's all I need to know about sailfish.
Wake me up when you have a mobile OS where the main app development language was invented in the 21st century, and is, for example, safe, simple, and well-designed.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
.. and finally build that tablet I sent them $275 for.
Simplifying oppression.
I'm not a fanboy of google, and really it's solely developed by them and periodically has an open source snapshot, but what's stopping them from taking a snapshot and running with it? If they do things against the TOS, they'll lose the google apps, but they can do with it as they wish outside of that can't they?
Just not seeing how google's control is stopping them.
I am dwelling the face of this earth with a broken smartphone screen on my Jolla for like two years.
Meanwhile even my wife broke the screen of her tablet.
We are both in the market for something (sail)fishy, but who will offer us something?
I guess that's what you have to do when no other major markets care about your product.
Is stuff like that still possible on Sailfish . . . ?
Basically: yes .
Jolla's Sailfish OS is based on a GNU/Linux base called "mer", a direct descendent of the Meego / Maemo that was featured on Nokia Nxxx devices.
Actually written by the same exact people. (When Nokia left their R&D department, the engineer started Jolla and kept working on the same).
You can indeed run most of regular Linux software on it.
There's even an "openbuild system" server that can produce appropriate RPMs for you (no need to locally compile them with the SDK) and a 3rd party repos for the RPMs. (openrepos, just like to good old Maemo days).
The only key difference is that they have switch their interface from GTK to Qt-Quick / QML.
And though it's not released under a Free/libre license yet, you can still see the source and hack it due to the textual representation of QML.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Android is open source under the Apache 2.0 license
The problem is, only Google gets to decide what goes in there, unless you go to the extensive effort of forking it and maintaining your own separate lineage of android-like OS.
That might be uncomfortably too much control to one single US company.
On the other hand, Jolla's Sailfish OS is build on the "mer" core, a descendant of the Meego / Maemo that the same engineer were designing back when they were still at Nokia :
it's a fairly standard GNU/Linux platform, with much more diverse contributors.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You can install Sailfish OS on many different phones.
Fairphone
Intex (official)
Motorola (+Atrix / RAZR)
Nexus (N4 and N5 also with unofficial Android apps support, WIP)
OnePlus
Oppo
Raspberry Pi
Redmi
Sony
SSH (official)
Xiaomi
ZTE (+Beeline / Moche / MEO / Skinny / Optus )
Other devices
I am glad to see that the Jolla Team found an potential market for Sailfish OS in China. My N9 (Meego Harmattan) is collecting dust and my Nexus 5 is running fine on Sailfish OS (2.4.13) for the last months. Apart from the unofficial ports, the Jolla Phone 1/2 and the mentioned Aqua Fish, there is not much to chose from. If new phones are produced in China and are supported officially by Sailfish OS, great!
Where is my tablet? Fuck you Jolla.
Someone who knows how to play the bagpipes...
but doesn't.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
This mobile OS paired with a self driving vehicle or autonomous drone would be awesome.