Librem 5 funded - wonder if this will impact Jolla?

Yeah, I don't really see it as competition but rather as another initiative trying to achieve the same result (an open Linux mobile platform) by a slightly different, less pragmatic and more radical means.

A lot of good can come from that if they succeed as more people would be working on properly done open mobile Linux technologies, not embedded hacks or outright proprietary mobile stuff.

But there is still the big if part - I have been following the mobile Linux arena since the Neo FreeRunner (have one in the drawer! :) ) and it's hard on many fronts. Things have slightly changed to the better since the OpenMoko days, but it's still a tall older to not only buil and open hardware device but to also create a useable mobile software ecosystem around it - touch optimized system UI & touch optimized apps cover the needs of users. Especially if #unlike Jolla you don't ship a compatibility layer for an existing mobile platform from day one.

I think it's agreat announcement that they reached their funding goal, it might give Jolla the kick up the arse they need. The fact that you can't run android apps is what (security wise) people have been asking of SFOS, how else do you get privacy if you incorporate propietary software. I'd be happy to buy one and will be looking at the used phones down the line, it's only money that stops me now, after all, I bought into the ideal with Jolla on the J1 right? Now 4 years or so down the line they're still going at a snails pace, and because they didn't clarify on the blog that one needed to make sure the bootloader had the ability to be unlocked, I ended up with an XperiaX that's unlockable, so thanks Jolla, I won't be joining in after all. The upside is android has improved enough in 4 years to make it usable to me, and the hardware's great, so I'm not arsed anyway, I can happily live with it. Pictures are crystal, why would I want to downgrade that? Good luck to the Librem team I say, with windows all but giving up on mobile the gap's just got a little bigger in the market for that elusive '3rd OS', don't be surprised if it's not Jolla filling it.

@davekelly:

__Android closed source apps security:__

• in theory, by sandboxing the shit out of it. If you put it into a closed box and only pass controlled data to/from it, the amount of damage a closed app could do is limited.
• Andbox (using LXC - Linux containers) and Shashlik (using an emulator) could be possible solution in this direction
• In practice, it's hard to make a perfect isolation, and you'll always be at risk of the app trying to escalate out of its box (e.g.: exploiting a kernel bug to break out of the LXC), so you're better off NOT installing any closed source android app (or no android support at all).

__Regarding your Xperia X:__ try returning it to the shop (you're supposed to have a couple of weeks of return policy in most European shops), or alternatively selling it online/to a 2nd hand shop to someone who loves android.

__3rd OS:__ That could take also the form of a federation of GNU/Linux OSes that happen to share a similar app framework (such as Qt apps), e.g.: could end up being a combination of Sailfish OS, Purism's upcoming KDE/Plasma interface and maybe even OpenWebOS / LunaOS if some corporate effort and salary help them pick up the effort (I mean real corporate backing, not LG basically only using it for their TVs and not giving a donkey's arse about the larger community that used to be back in the Palm/HP era), might even motivate Canonical to reconsider Ubuntu Touch, and Samsung to add official first-class support for Qt on their Tizen.

But fort that to work on a larger scale, you would still need a sucessful app ecosystem, which means inter-operating with Android App, at least for the time now.

Sure. But what good is it to have a deal with South-America, when the majority of App-Developers is from Europe? Sailfish X seems like a rather haphazard approach to mitigate the hardware drought.

And believe me, I tried to buy an INOI R7 from buyon.ru to Switzerland.