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Pay for new functionality?

asked 2020-06-14 23:59:53 +0200

ds1979 gravatar image

Dear Sailors, dear Jolla team,

just an idea. I know, that new functionality needs code and that this needs the time of a programmer. Well, is it possible to estimate the time for completion of a function and then offer this to the community with a price tag for crowdfunding? I guess, that there are some people, who would give 10 or 20 or (much) more euros just to get some stuff fixed.

I make this offer:

  1. Fix battery drain on SONY Xperia 10 – 20 €. With Android: 3 days, with SFOS on my device not even half a day.
  2. Upgrade the browser to a decent standard – 20 €
  3. Fix the freezing mail app – 10 €

Have a good time!

Cheers!

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Comments

1

Yep, I think this is worth giving it a try. Maybe we can discuss it as a topic at the next community meeting on IRC?

Max-Might ( 2020-06-15 09:51:55 +0200 )edit
2

At least for bullet point 2, it is going to happen anyway, it just takes ages, because everything (including compiler, C-library, other system libraries) need to be updated in lock-step. (Jolla has blogged about it around the time they started updating the lib C and compiler).

Basically, you can't take the latest version of mozilla's gecko library and compile it as is on Sailfish, when Sailfish still has a C library from 10 years ago. And the current C library do not compile on a 10 years old compiler. And then there are multiple other libraries which are going to make troubles during the update.

So Jolla's approach is to make everything updated to a more recent version that should more or less work (not to old, but not to recent to not break everything), then update fix everything and then repeat the next step of updating, until we have something modern in Sailfish.

And that's only the library part. You'd very likely need to also update the actual app itself so it works better with the latest Gecko engine. And that's going to be a bit harder, because nowadays Mozilla only produces Firefox for the desktop and a couple of android apps. There's no more "Fennec" version, so basically Jolla devs are more or less on their own to pollish the browser into something that works.

So, the TL;DR: browser upgrade is happening, but it's going to take a lot of time until all the massive efforts are accomplished.

DrYak ( 2020-06-15 10:29:11 +0200 )edit
1

@ds1979: I like the idea.
Just two comments: All of the above are bugs or at least improvement issues. So what you're suggesting is rather a bug bounty programme. Having that would be awesome.

A feature such as a new browser or, for my part, baseport 8 (Kernel upgrade and newer Android Support) for Xperia X might in fact be much more expensive than 20€. So as much as I'd love to see that (and pay for it) I'm sceptical.

rozgwi ( 2020-06-15 10:33:50 +0200 )edit
2

@DrYak/rosgwi: Fixing that stuff has to happen eventually. Now: SFOS is an OS - so the apps around it are not in focus. They have been for demonstration purposes and now they are obsolete. The system itself is developped to meet the requirements of OMP in Russia and other institutional license buyers. This is, why they need to implement their needs first. And: This is OK, because Jolla needs to buy their food from it and I want to have a good OS base and apps have to come from app development - like 20 years ago on computers.

If we as a community want to advance our situation and our leverageto be able to use the device better, then we need to put some money together. 100 people with an Xperia 10 with battery problems with 10 Euros each is 1000 Euros. With 1000 Euros I can buy the time of a programmer to at least find the problem and perhaps even fix it, if it were a minor issue. With more people, there is more money. Even in increments of 1 Euro, it would help. And perhaps even Jolla would see that we are willing to help - and they double our money.

There has a smartwatch been funded, so that the app "Amazfish" could be developped further. I don't use this, but it's a great idea, so I have given some money so the developer could buy the watch. There might be other guys who think the same way, and we can get some money together and "take back" some of our leverage as customers.

ds1979 ( 2020-06-15 10:54:50 +0200 )edit

I fully agree!!! Add another 30,- Euro from me for an up-to-date browser. Despite being the most important app the current browser is full of security holes and crashes on 5% of the websites I'm visiting and can not display another 15-20% correctly.

mlohse ( 2020-06-16 10:23:03 +0200 )edit

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answered 2020-06-15 01:28:37 +0200

nas gravatar image

The topic (Pay for new functionality) is similar to this question: https://together.jolla.com/question/219693/are-you-willing-to-pay-for-native-apps/ I suggested there (and I have read it also from others) that it would be a nice idea if jolla store had that kind of functionality.

For your bullets, in the first I have some better battery times than android

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Which device? On my Xp10, it is really much worse than on Android 9. I have bought it, testet it on Android from 100-0% to be sure the device is OK and then flashed with SFOS.

ds1979 ( 2020-06-15 10:42:05 +0200 )edit
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Asked: 2020-06-14 23:59:53 +0200

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Last updated: Jun 15 '20