This is because since the beginning in the 80s, the x86 platform and later the x64 platform is an industry standard and everyone who wants can write an OS for this hardware platform, no matter if you use an ASUS or Acer or IBM or whatever other manufacturer of laptop or motherboard.
Smartphone hardware is mostly proprietary including closed source low level drivers.
Providing a standardized hardware platform brought the commercial ruin as hardware manufacturer for IBM, so in present time, I think, phone manufacturers will not follow this way.
I hope other projects, like Glacier, are still viable, if it ever comes to this. Besides Glacier I hope there are other components available from Nemo mobile project as well.
I know Waydroid works (somewhat) with Sailfish, so that’s an alternative to AD. The only thing I don’t have a solution to, right now, is Exchange support, but I have problem with that with my official Sailfish license as well, so I guess I can manage.
I think it is rather an infrastructure (app store etc) problem, than a hardware problem. If the alternative OS, e.g Sailfish or Ubuntu Touch, is good enough, I think a hardware manufacturer can actually manage to create a device with open spec/drivers.
The IBM was forced to publish everything about its AT IBM compatible technology by the anti-trust and even if IBM could complain about it, the market size increased a lot - exponentially. Therefore, it was a wise decision also from the PoV of capitalism.
The main difference between IBM technology and nowadays mobile devices was that a 1980 or 1990 personal computer was an big, heavy, slow and expensive machine. Between 1993 and 1999, I was involved in that market and believe me it was more about screwdriver skills and software piracy than an IT branch. Now, we have mobile devices on SoC and those SoC are almost immutable once get out the factory.
Their production is relative cheap but the design and the chip foundries are not. Therefore, the tendency is that every company in this field try to win the game inventing its proprietary solution and competing on the logistic chain. On the others side, these devices are sold by few companies and the Android collect almost all of them apart Apple. Finally, the end-users do not care about how their devices are working but just playing with them.
All these considered, the IBM anecdote and every related moral can be considered an exception of that time rather than something to learn about or fear to repeat again. The day in which an alternative market apart from end-users will appear and shown its opportunities, that day someone will start seriously to ask for open platforms {hw, firmware, OS, sw}.
I had a look right now on Glacier homepage, but under Devices/Volla, the many x and ? in the feature list are a huge tragedy! That looks very unusable at present time.
This is oversimplified, in my experience as a software engineer who worked in large multinational companies for decades such way of thinking is bound to fail
A lot of words to say that you don’t know what you are talking about. Listen, I couldn’t care less about your ego and your own methods. I’m here to participate in discussions around SailfishOS and I think we should stick to this topic.
I think you have big issues and you are not being able to connect with other people. That is the main reason why you are not able to keep a job more than 6 months, because they never hire you as an internal, and in 6 months they realize who you are and they prefer to fire you because you cause in such a short period of time so many conflicts. The main skill every company is looking for, is the communication skill. Without it, it doesn’t matter how good technical you are, cause you will not be able to communicate with your team, and there will be no benefit for the company. And no offense, but you lack of it, big time. I know your type, you can see them now and then in the corporation, but they come and go fast, and nothing remains after them. In 2-3 months, nobody remembers them.
On topic: I am not good at hardware, but someone here mentioned “standardized hardware platform”. What does it mean by that? Are not SoC such as Qualcomm Snapdragons standardized? Yes, ok, cameras and displays are different, but how many suppliers are? Maybe iphone could be a “standardized hardware platform”, if apple will do the right thing
Please, stay on topic. This is a forum about the operating system SailfishOS and this thread is about which operating system for smartphones could be an alternative.
