Paid Updates to support Development - what do you think?
asked 2015-11-19 23:10:33 +0200
This post is a wiki. Anyone with karma >75 is welcome to improve it.
Hi everyone,
as we all know by now, Jolla is curretly facing financial problems. In order to secure some revenue, would you be open to paying for updates, instead of getting them for free? What do you think? Any other ideas on how to keep the ship afloat?
P.d. I want to thank all sailors for all their work and effort. I really like my phone. Thanks!
Edit 2015-11-20: Thanks for all the great aswers everyone. After reading all of the arguments posted here I decided that this might not be such a good idea. I agree that this would only promote fragmentation and be harmful on the long run. I think the most realistic solution would be for Jolla to focus on delivering a stable OS, nothing more and nothing less, for free, while generating revenue from paid apps/harbour transactions and additional services (f.e. Alien Dalvik, buissness solutions, etc. ). Sailfish OS should be open sourced to widen its adoption and improve community involvement. Thats my current opinion. Thanks for the brainstorming guys. Cheers!
I would be open to pay for upgrades. A possible solution would be a subscription model, for example a one-year subscription for getting updates. I think that might not be too hard to implement into the currently available infrastructure.
wanderer ( 2015-11-19 23:33:53 +0200 )editThey most likely need (much) more money than that. And the OS, I think, would need to be completely open to follow such a future. Difficult.
chappi ( 2015-11-19 23:49:08 +0200 )editLook... I've supported Jolla by buying the phone (First One) as well as the tablet. The deal was that this allows Jolla to keep developing the OS by getting real user data and feedback. Paying for updates seems like paying extra for fixing something that wasn't complete to begin with.
I think Jolla should be more creative and commercial in finding a scalable and repeatable business model. I don't think selling licenses will really work, since manufacturers can get Android free of charge. Why pay to equip the phone with an OS that is still less functional/attractive for the average person?
So, Jolla should come up with ways to increase the value of the OS to the end user, which allows hardware manufacturers to sell more units.
They could for example sell a secure mailbox.org account with the phone and take a bit of revenue there. Paid apps and in-app purchases are a no-brainer. They never really got around to monetizing the TOH idea with branded or exclusive content. Etc. Etc.
I would be willing to pay for services like these, but not for OS updates.
bilgy_no1 ( 2015-11-19 23:57:18 +0200 )editWe're getting into some paranoia. Once again. Jolla is a company, not Open Source project that needs donations to survive. It was their decision to do things the way they decided to do. As bilgy_no1 said. I bought the phone, bought the other half. Would probably buy bunch of other half more if they were something more than colourful plastic covers I can print on my printer. There is million ways to get revenue, jolla did not do anything. Phone, few extra other half (mostly out of stock). Not even batteries. Not to mention only promises about open sourcing Sailfish. Why should I pay extra money now?!
Paid updates?! That would be very unlike indeed.
muppeth ( 2015-11-20 02:58:06 +0200 )editI would clearly prefer to pay for some apps ...
stephan ( 2015-11-20 10:21:25 +0200 )edit