Great, we’re already 2. I’m leaving this thread and waiting for wondersailfish.
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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.
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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…
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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.
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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.
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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
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We did get those… What is the remaining question here?
I must have missed it, do you have the link to the final reply ? (and also, where do you see those ?)
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
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Which part of it is incorrectly documented? If you create a bug report for it, I’m sure it’ll be fixed.
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.
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.
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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 …
I agree - this seems to be almost self harm on their part. The biggest barrier to getting more people to use Sailfish is the highly technical process they need to go to to get a specific phone, unlock it and then flash SFOS - a process that is beyond the vast majority of ‘normal’ users. They should encourage such initiatives in my view - after all, this guy is hardly depriving Jolla of any profit and users with the free licence might even then decide to upgrade to Sailfish X and but a licence from Jolla.
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Indeed, but perhaps they will be bought out by Rostelcom or someone similar and SFOS will become a single purpose OS for the Russian market only. Good lesson to be learned from Blackberry here - BB10 was a development of QNX (used on the Blackberry Playbook tablet). BB10 couldn’t make a run of it in the consumer market so they withdrew. Now QNX is only used in embedded solutions - specifically in the automotive industry. Maybe SFOS will be used solely by Rostelcom engineers for fault finding and logging on their mobile network - no phone apps (email, browser, etc) required!
What a pity that you persuaded you mum to do that. Facebook is crap, certainly on a phone. Why not install Wire secure messenger for her? It’s an app in iTunes too. Wire is one of the safest and nicest chat service/video call service. No tracking, no phone number needed, only a mail address and a password. Or Telegram. Not the most safe but brilliant features. And Jitsi meet is also easy for family meetings. We use all three of them with our family. I am only nine years younger then your mum and my new son in law just gave me an old linux laptop to try. New for a Mac user like me, not easy. I installed my mail and I am typing on it now for the first time.
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Without license, does that mean that you can’t install Android apps on it? Suppose so. Well , when telecom providers skip umts we all will need VoLTE supporting phones. What a waste.
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Wire secure messenger is a nice replacement for Skype too. It works on all kinds of platforms: desktop (also Linux) and mobile and is easy to use, free for individual customers, paid for companies/business. Swiss jurisdiction.
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I didn’t install Facebook for her - she had to do it by herself as she lives at the other end of the UK to me and we’ve not been allowed to travel during lockdown. She now uses Facebook to keep in touch with her other children (who already used facebook), her brother in Australia (who already uses Facebook) and her friends (who already use Facebook) … you see the dynamic here? The vast majority of ‘consumer’ users will go with the flow and install what’s widely used by everyone else, especially if a large proportion of people they need to talk to already use that same app. My mum, or anyone else, will not be bothered to install and learn to use Wire Messenger or anything else just to talk to me - they’ll go with what’s widely used. Now whether you or I think that is right or wrong, or it could be done better by something else isn’t really the issue - Facebook succeeds because it is widely used, and because it succeeds it becomes even more widely used … and so on, and so on.
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Hello Steve, I understand that very well! Our grandchildren live in the UK. We live in The Netherlands. We use Telegram and Jitsi with each other. We are still in a kind of lockdown although not as strict as in the UK, still not vaccinated. 
My friend, over 80, lives in Israël. We Wire. With our family in the US we use Facetime. I know it is hard to persuade others not to use Big Tech.
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