What do you think of paying for an annual subscription to SailfishOS?
I think it could help making Sailfish more sustainable in the future.
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I believe there has been a survey already and users don’t like the model.
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the most of us have missed that survey…
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The survey was sent out on 2019-08-20, by email to all Sailfish X users, or possibly all Jolla account holders. I think that is recent enough to still be valid.
IMO the current model of licenses following phones is a good compromise. Jolla won’t be stuck with a small user base with perpetual liceces, and the more frugal among us will change phones less often, and have to pay less often. Although there are a few people complaining about having to buy new licenses none the less. I don’t mind paying more, or more often, but I know this is a divisive issue, and a majority vote needs to be respected.
The only real solution is more users anyway. A roughly 3x increase from a secondary revenue stream should not be top-of-mind for making this more sustainable.
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Thanks for your replies.I know there has been a survey already. Some however said they missed it.
I think it would be best if a subscription would not depend on a device but on the OS only. Buying a new device is a burden to the environment. My husband and children use an iphone 6s. It’s an old model, but still good. So I would opt for a good device with regular payment for Sailfish updates. The XperiaXA2 is the first device that I want to keep longer, despite not being able to open it, like with Jolla1.
Currently, when you buy SailfishX, the shop pages states what you buy includes:
Software updates as long as device is supported
I’m not a lawyer, but to me this leaves little to no possibility to move to a paid subscription for updates (at least for existing users).
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I would pay an extra amount for significient improvements of SFOS in the time to the next phone/licence i buy . That would be for instance a higher and uptodate android version for the Sony XperiaX.
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If we could pay for a subscription, Jolla hires developers to create native apps … I would be all in 
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I’d personally would be down to support. I want a 3rd operating system out there and Sailfish is a great alternative. More $$ will help develop faster and make it more competitive.
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Yes, my idea too. Paying can be an incentive for more quality. I paid for Piepmatz and for some other apps, because they are worth it. Sailfish still jas the potential to become a third alternative. I am following e-foundation, but that is not half as nice as Sailfish.
By the way, I can’t see the text when typing. Can you do something about that?
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The developer of Piepmatz abandoned the commercial approach (means the apps have been available for free for some time now) so this must have proven to be kind of a dead-end I guess.
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Not paying means that not many more ordinary consumers will flock to Sailfish. Because open source voluntary work alone is not a sufficient incentive for developing and maintaining quality. Developers need to earn a decent living too.
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In case it’s useful for context, the results of that survey were discussed in this Jolla blog post (in the section “Sailfish X survey gave us valuable feedback”): https://blog.jolla.com/sailfish-x-sony-xperia-10/
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While not exactly in line with a subscription model, if the goal is (partly) a way for Jolla to realize continued revenue then I will again recommend exploring a paid app store where both Jolla and developers can generate a source of income.
This not only allows Jolla not expand income, but would drive development of applications.
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If there ever was to be a subscription system, I’d sincerely hope that it applied to feature updates/next version upgrades only. In my opinion, making people pay for security updates would only increase chances of there being even more insecure phones around than we already have…
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Thanks, David. Yes I remember the results of the survey. If you count the annual and the monthly together, it is nearly fifty-fifty.
I am followinig the developing of e-foundation, because alternatives to G and A interest me. There they are getting the same question. Someone wanted badly a few game apps for his children. Others suggested him to go to F-Droid, which has good functional apps, but for the niceties you have to go elsewhere. Others agreed and said that paid apps should be implemented.
Paid does not always guarantee quality, that for sure, But it could.
Soon there will be an European credit card and I hope that this opens new possibilities.
This is a screenshot of a discussion in e-foundation.
(I prefer Sailfidh, don’t worry).
How much would a subscription cost? A full time developer costs maybe 200,000 € per year. If there is a team of five developers and there are 10,000 subscribers, it would be 100 € per year. I’m just guessing here.
I didn’ know that developers earned that much! 200.000 is huge to me.I think that about
E30 -50
a year would be reasonable, not much more.It also depends on what we get, if there are useful developments.
I agree the 200k seems bit high, but I don’t think they ment the developers earns the 200k, but it is the employers cost for having one. In Finland the employer pays about the same amount as payroll taxes as the employee gets as gross wage.
what about to change the model and try to get better sponsors? So expend the time and energy in that?