[Strategies] Bringing more sailors to SFOS

General
#134

Only read up to #60 or so but Sailfish is not a mass-market OS and probably never will be. If anything, the the world is heading toward more proprietary services and devices.

Its market is geeks, particularly ones bored with iDroid. This will not provide an income so Jolla’s market is Rostelcom et al.

So what do we want? Developers? More users?

Having a campaign group could work really well.
This could start now, and those shown to be helping the cause given a budget to representing Jolla at tech shows when we go post-COVID.
You’ll need a “champion” at Jolla who will advance your case.

3 Likes
#135

Between 4.01 and MLS Manager, my XA2 GPS is locking within a couple of minutes these days.

1 Like
#136

Thank you ! Finally someone able to keep with the topic’s subject !

I started chatting with bloggers to ask them if they could spread the word or make a blog post about and so it goes with youtubers too !

Yes indeed some might find this ethically wrong, but people lobby for Apple products that suck too :sweat_smile:

I’m going to dive deeper in the IRC logs to see what was discussed regarding the UI (and solutions Jolla found) and the same goes for QT. If nothing has been said about (which would be strange since people complain about it all the time, I’ll ask about it next IRC meeting !

2 Likes
#137

Well just like I said in the opening, bringing users is going to be a tough first step. That’s why I explained my personal reasons for aiming at companies and searching ways to make them develop apps on SFOS.

For the campaign group part that would be cool indeed ! Do you have an idea of what first steps the “group” could take ? (in covid area and outside)

1 Like
#138

Start a group., Find a way to communicate with them (fix Slack client?) After initial enthusiasm, you’ll need something to keep it ticking over. You’ll need a Wiki or similar for new people…

If you’re not going to lead it, you’ll need to find a leader.

Think about scope. To me, the community looks a bit scattered and probably feels unsupported. The group could work in a semi-official capacity doing the neglected private user side of Jolla’s business.

We could do with something like developer liaison. Clarifying developer needs, feeding back from Jolla, keeping track of their ‘holidays’. :upside_down_face:

Then, when you know what you want to do, ask Jolla to appoint a liaison.

4 Likes
#139

Here’s a short story of my attempt to make a small contribution. There’s a decent and maintained native browser for Aurora OS. I requested the developer to make it available for Sailfish X; my request was ignored. I suggested that Jolla could make such a request as a corporate entity (which gives it more weight), bot no one seems to care. I’d expect the same attitude from all other developers for Aurora, although there’s a number of useful apps (including Office) which could be shared with private customers. Neh, I’ve had enough of me of knocking in the closed doors.

As for ‘spreading the word’, many of my friends make fun of me when they see me struggling with my phone, when I’m trying to do some basic tasks: opening a webpage in a browser, ordering a taxi, trying to use navigation, this always “sorry, my whatsapp hang after I finished the call”. They’d see my advocating a switch to Sailfish as rather ridiculous and pathetic, because the user experience they see is a perfect anti-ad.

If you’re a blogger you can dedicate a part of your blog to spread information that Sailfish option exists. If 10 users can bring another new user, I’d consider it already a good achievement. Jolla support team would hate you for bringing another pack of newbies though, I guess.

9 Likes
#140

Good luck. I don’t waste time on phones anymore. Life is short.

2 Likes
#141

Great, we’re already 2. I’m leaving this thread and waiting for wondersailfish.

2 Likes
#142

Thank you for your experience, I share exactly the same experience with both friends and closed doors.

In your topic post about the Sputnik browser you claim that

in Russia you need to be some official entity to expect a productive communication with a company, this is just how things work here.

I would say that this is basically the case anywhere around the world with very very few exceptions.

Whenever friends mock my usage of SFOS (ordering an Uber for example), I tend to remind them that, people always complain about “how there should be no monopoly and that big companies should be dismantled”, but that by mocking competition, they strengthen those very same companies.

For the “knocking on closed doors”, I just got an other closed door two days ago but it won’t stop me to continue and ask for portability. It’s closely to an impossible task, I agree, but I would hate to go back to Android.

3 Likes
#143

Here is another approach, if not the best so far, to what you’ve been looking and might want to add on this or both discussions, to promote and enforce it even further to this goal… If I recall well, this was one of the ways I used to see/read somewhere back in the days, on how google did to promote the coding, at the university or any student level, for their android apps/system to evolve even faster (from the roots where the most enthusiastics emerge easier and might remain longer) and right from the cheapest/“free” way…

5 Likes
#144

There are some additional ways of growing the SFOS user base. First of all, start to grow a serious business partner network. Just found the page https://buy.jolla-devices.com/ managed by an Italian guy, Giovanni Minelli, selling preinstalled Sony Xperia and other phones, but without license. Jolla seems to forbid that. Very stupid. They should treat such people like gold dust. In any IT business these days, you have a business partner network over which the original manufacturers or software developers interact with their customers. E.g., you cannot reasonably expect a “normal” customer to follow the current protracted and partially incorrectly documented way to install SFOS on a supported device. And experienced resellers are something which helps any IT company to collect valid input based on longer term experience instead of end user “noise”.

Another path would be to introduce a native “meta-app”, an app which in itself is able to cover multiple purposes by way of being highly configureable or even programmable. Difficult to explain, but if you have ever worked with Lotus (now HCL) Notes, which is a programming environment plus NoSQL database plus user interface, that is what I mean (in a very stripped down lightweight manner - no way porting Notes to SFOS of course). Eg supporting workflows, reports etc… With a PC client where you can configure functionality easily in a GUI, replicating it onto the SFOS system. Unluckily I have no qt experience, maybe this is basically all there in qt. That would help with the corporate market very much.

4 Likes
#145

Same with IBM. They created the PC consumer market, but failed all attempts in securing a permanent hold in it. They withdrew to the “corporate” market believing that would be easier. Basically a very slow, very continuous process of losing contact with customers. They got rid of all branches where they had to interact with end customers, even with many corporate ones, selling the PC business, the server business, important software businesses. My fear is that Jolla, by betting on the corporate market only, will go down the same way.

2 Likes
#146

So in three days there is the community meeting which means I have a few hours left to transfer the content of what was described here to Jolla. I’ll be refreshing this page in case someone wants to correct/add something. I thought about bringing the following subjects:

  • How can we help or what can Jolla do to have a partnership with Fairphone ?
  • Is there a more professional way for the community to peach SFOS for companies ? (for them to port their apps)
  • Can we have an answer for the weekly updates as discussed the 17th December 2020 ? * removed *
  • And we know that you are working hard to improve SFOS but could we have a timeline (maybe not in months but semesters) of future developments ?
  • One more thing, how can the (non technical) community help ?

Feel free to correct/add/improve anything, I’ll be posting this tonight

5 Likes
#147

We did get those… What is the remaining question here?

#148

I must have missed it, do you have the link to the final reply ? (and also, where do you see those ?)

#149

Not sure there was a reply, they just appeared, and i guess that’s what counts.
Here is the tag for them: https://forum.sailfishos.org/tag/community-news

1 Like
#150

Which part of it is incorrectly documented? If you create a bug report for it, I’m sure it’ll be fixed.

#152

Oh, about the fastboot drivers for Xperia XA2. The documentation claimed it was possible only with older Win 10 versions, not the current one. I tried anyway to install the driver, but failed. I opened a ticket and reported it, and the page was then corrected, making it clear that a current Win 10 version is needed.

Although the solution I used myself was that one:
https://together.jolla.com/question/171151/how-to-install-fastboot-driver-under-windows-10/

Cannot confirm thus if the corrected description on the page https://jolla.com/sailfishx-windows-instructions-xa2/ really works.

#153

engaging the community is important and Jolla should take some steps towards that, maybe they have to promote some community apps with proven stability/functionality to an official-state apps, e.g. piepmaz for twitter client, and pure maps for navigation to mention a few.

3 Likes
#154

Absolutely … but its a price some of us have to pay to keep in touch with our loved ones during this pandemic. It took me all my efforts to persuade my 82 year old to use facebook so we could at least message and video call each other (she uses an iPhone bless her!). Imagine me trying to explain to her how to flash an XA2 with Sailfish …