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."

Comments

Re:I have used Jolla for several years

[Anonymous Coward]

It is no surprise Sailfish OS woks well, it should be remembered that Jolla is a good percentage of the old Finn Nokia Maemo Linux dev group. That group has been working on this OS and its Nokia predecessors since I think around 2005. I think even the name sailfish refers to that MSFT infiltrator Elop's burning platform speach where he threw both Maemo/Meego and Symbia onto the fire for another go at Wince.

we recommend using C++

[presidenteloco]

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.