What is the difference of SailfishOS and Mer Project?

asked 2017-11-25 03:06:19 +0300

jsommer
3324 ●97 ●142 ●154

The Mer Project is the base respectively core system of SailfishOS. But what are the components of SailfishOS, that are going beyond the Mer Project.

After I have studied the Mer Project Wiki, I learned, that this project was initially to keep MeeGo alive after Nokia dropped the further development and support for their devices. It seems, that the Mer Project is split up into SailfoshOS and Tizen. Tizen is very interesting, because it is clearly open source. Unfortunately Wikipedia references a report about significant security issues. Wikipedia reports, that also Plasma Mobile is based in the Mer Project, but this OS seems to be in a very early alpha stage. Let's see , what Purism will do.

So, again: What is the difference to SailfishOS, because the developer documentation is referencing of the Git repository of the Mer Project. It seems to me, that the pure Mer Project died and is only alive under the contribution of Jolla. This is an interesting fact, because the Mer Project claims, that the operation system is open source. What are close source components of SailfishOS?

answered 2017-11-25 10:23:16 +0300

Damien Caliste
6535 ●105 ●139 ●161

https://github.com/dcalis...

You can read Sailfish wiki to know more about the specificities of Sailfish with respect to Mer.

edit flag offensive delete publish link

Comments

Thanks. The Wiki page gives me an idea of the difference on a high level. The Mer Project is a core component. Nevertheless, proprietary components like Lipstick are published in the Git repository of the Mer Project. Thus the difference is not transparent in particular. This is not only a technological, but also legal issue. Do you have an idea, how to get the transparency?

Anyway: The Mer Project is a core component, the Android compatibility is - so far I know - intellectual property of the Myriad Group AG, Qt is intellectual property of the Qt Company. Further more the Wiki mentions „other middleware libraries and services“. This is a very vague description. Lipstick seems to be proprietary software of Jolla, licensed under LGPL and clearly SailfishOS specific. I think the „other applications“ could also partly run on other systems supporting Qt. So they are not SailfishOS specific in general. I think the Qt Silica is SailfishOS specific, isn’t it?

Do you know, whether the Mer Project is developed independently from SailfishOS? It’s really hard to distinct the components like the distinction of a FOSS Android and the Google add on.

I conclude from my web search, that the Mer Project is only alive as SailfishOS and Tizen. Is this true?

jsommer ( 2017-11-25 12:48:21 +0300 )edit

What is the difference of SailfishOS and Mer Project?

1 Answer

Comments

Question tools

Stats

Related questions

What is the difference of SailfishOS and Mer Project?

1 Answer

Comments

Question tools

Public thread

Stats

Related questions