Why is Sailfish advertised as truly open? [subjective]

answered 2014-02-05 11:03:34 +0300

tokaru
14054 ●175 ●219 ●220

It depends on your interpretation of "open". It does not say "truely open source" or "free as in freedom". It is indeed very open regarding the fact that the system is designed to let you customize quite a lot, i.e. granting root access to the file system and thus allowing you to modify system files, fiddle with the databases etc, log outgoing network connections... that's what I am loving this phone for...

That said, admittedly I had the "open source" interpretation, too, when I ordered the phone.

answered 2014-02-17 11:34:26 +0300

2Ti
3910 ●43 ●60 ●59

updated 2014-02-22 16:11:53 +0300

I would argue that Jolla and SailfishOS are open (leaving the semantics of 'truly' aside) in terms of their development model, usage policy and operating strategy. There is no vendor lock-in, not for you nor for the hardware manufacturer, indeed not even as an app developer. Indeed QT encourages you to develop for more than just one platform, that's the entire point of the framework.

I think it is important to remember what it says on the website, truly open not truly open source. These are two very different things and should not be confused with each other. I don't know if it's justified to say that Sailfish is truly open, that mostly comes down to semantics and isn't really worth debating, at least not here.

What is worth debating is how the openness of this platform compares to the openness of the other platforms. Windows Mobile, iOS and Android are all developed in the dark and released who knows when. The mere existence of this forum and the interaction of employees inside Jolla in it makes Sailfish more open than the rivals. You as a member (or indeed a non member) of the community can have an actual real impact on what gets worked on and in what order. That community driven development model indeed appears to be built in to how the company operates.

Then there is the other operational tactics of the competition. It has by now been well documented that even though Google would have us believe Android is an Open Source project, the OS you get when you by an Android based phone isn't. Google has extremely restrictive contracts that device manufacturers have to sign, if they wish to make an Android based phone. See details here, here and here. The jury is still out on that in terms of Jolla, but given that they are a small player trying to win over market share I suspect their game plan is somewhat more open.

Then there is the issue of integration. If you use an Android based phone you are integrated to Google whether you like it or not (please note that I am talking about the normal user here, not the guy who roots the phone and uninstall Google Play Services etc - this is about normal people). You will be using Google Search, Google Location APIs, Google this and Google that, this is how the platform has been designed to work. The same arguably goes for iPhone and Windows Phone. In the case of Sailfish, they don't suck up your contacts to their database in the cloud by default, they don't force vendor lock-in for you or the hardware manufacturers (at least as far as we know). It would be relatively easy for you to leave the Jolla ecosystem, and switch to say an iPhone, what about the other way around? Google, Apple and Microsoft are driving for more and more integration of all of their various services which usually restricts your options as the user for leaving those services.