(Most of the) people are fine with the missing basic features, because it is clearly stated this is at beta stage, and you don’t have to pay for the access to the beta builds. If you give people an option to buy just the AppSupport right now, and even if you state it as clearly as possible, it is only for the AppSupport and nothing else, and not to expect other parts of the OS to work 100% properly yet, the forums would be filled with posts from angry people on “how Jolla dares to charge them and in return deliver an OS with such obvious flaws?”
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This is not meant for main stream customers but for devs, experimenters and people who do it at own risk.
Licence could be transferable to another working device in case development/experiments fail. In addition, nobody is forced to buy such a licence if he isn’t willing to take the risk that it stays buggy in the end.
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You are over estimating the intelligence of the average people and under estimating their attention span for warnings. You can’t state as clearly enough that some product isn’t ready for the average user and they shouldn’t buy it. Some of the average users will get/buy it anyway and then come to the forums complaining about missing features and short comings that were clearly stated before hand. Imagine if they had/chose to pay for some of the features at that point.
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They could even hire some people in sales department and wrap the licenses by hand. 
I hope they stay busy fixing stuff instead.
Sorry i don’t understand you.
Jolla can only do it wrong either way:
- wait for sony fixing their blobs and some users are complaining about missing progress
- simply release the licenses. If it is really just about the blobs this should be fairly easy but you’re right, some users will complain.
I would say the second way would be better in the long run because it would put Jolla in the correct light that they are doing what they can to give the users the best possible experience as soon as possible. The first way may be seen as they are resting on the “excuse” blobs and are just pointing to sony to buy some time.
I perfectly understand that. 
Jolla seems so have other preferences than tailoring special license deals for each amd everyone.
I believe you can still get new 10V from amazon.co.uk. Due to Brexit you will need to pay import fee and you will be surprised to find out that they are more expensive (without import fee) than original price. But still, one reliable way with warranty to get it.
Whose perspective is this? Are technicians more intelligent than non-technicians? Are ‘average users’ stupid? How many are using Sailfish as a daily driver without a second non-Sailfish device?
Of course ‘average users’ i.c. the majority of people in the world, should not put themselves under surveillance. Yet they do because they get something in return which they like: good functioning tech.
Well, we all say no or advise our supporters to say that there is no OSI layer 8. So: The average user is just right.
I personally use a second and a third mobile device. One iPhone for my job (no Apple account, only mdm software), one for stupid things I would not do with my daily driver (2fa, payments, parking, renting stuff, getting cabs etc.) and one SF Xperia for connecting to others and reading stuff. I will not travel abroad with the first one because I am not allowed to and I won’t travel to the UK or USA with the second one.
But the one I would miss and the ine I use every day is my SF phone.
And I fully accept being a fool.
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It is the perspective of someone, who has had the pleasure of responding again and again to people’s complaints about missing features, that they’ve been told about in advance.
More technical people are not always immune to this either. People need to think harder about, if a pre-release product really meets their needs, and if they are truly prepared to face the short comings that comes with it.
The average user is a special kind of stupid, who goes through Olympic-level mental gymnastics to ignore or justify that these warnings “aren’t meant for them”, when using anything that isn’t release ready (and is clearly labeled as such), and then complain as, if there were no warnings anywhere, when something doesn’t work the way they expected.
And I can imagine how these people’s wrath would rise to the second or third power in less than a second, if they paid anything in advance, even though they were told the product was still work in progress.
Finally, I want to say that, I have nothing against the “paid beta”-testing, but I just don’t want to see the forum to be filled with angry topics and posts from users who don’t fully understand what they paid for.
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Chiming in here to give my perspective even though it was not requested.
I have been with/supporting SF since I discovered them trying other Linux OSes on a Phone - the idea was incredible to me. SF was at the time and possibly is still the most advanced Kernel running (more or less) on a mobile phone. I mean that there are others, but they are more ‘projects’ as SF is trying to be a business but ran like a project.
I have bought licenses, financially and technically donated to the cause, ground my teeth like everyone else last year when they said “yeah, thanks guys but we need more money so we changed our models - again, pay up!” - but seriously if there were not the die-hard nixers/coders/testers in this community (Piggz/Nephros,and others) and us doners, SF would not exist. I am speaking of (but not limited to) the incredible people “sailors” who even trust SF on their niche devices.
As many have stated, their roadmap is not communicated nor respected because it is only a Project hoping to still be afloat in a year. Remember that the tech giants once were in positions like these - now they have nothing to worry about other than world political systems.
All this being said, it is getting pretty dismal though. I had received a 10iv, a year after their LoveFest last April when they told us veterans that we need to pay again and they have ‘new’ phones in the works… a year later that phone still cannot daily drive - extortion. That in itself if not ‘functional’ in business.
FWIW, I am back on 10iii and it there are STILL issues, kind of insane though we need to workaround/fix ourselves our devices to even to be able to make calls… great for us enthusiasts, but that will not make them money as a company to keep paying people to “code” into the future…
“Go ahead, plug it in and hope it works…” is NOT sustainable and certainly not for new money to drive your business.
We either keep paying them to develop what they say and seem to be committed to creating or we jump ship. Kind of like an eternal KickStarter with a vague Roadmap and vague timelines… I personally keep my Samsung on hand when I get fed up with my SailFish and come back a few months later to try again, but then only see little change… YRMV.
just sayin’ – thanks for reading and Sail On!
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