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Open source everything you're legally capable of open sourcing [duplicate]

asked 2014-11-29 01:10:06 +0300

SirCmpwn gravatar image

updated 2014-12-01 10:57:24 +0300

eric gravatar image

Jolla makes big talk about user privacy and support of open source. It's meaningless if I don't know what's running on my device. What makes you special is the mindshare and the hardware capability - leaving the OS proprietary does nothing but betray your users, rather than doing you any business-related favors. The GNU/Linux scene could really use a good open-source touch-enabled operating system, you know? Give more back to the community you depend on so much. Bonus points if you reimplement the things you are not able to publish under a permissive license!

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The question has been closed for the following reason "duplicate question" by eric
close date 2014-12-01 10:57:31.824938

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4

There is no security by obscurity this is clearly demonstrated by M$ poorly implement and insecure operating systems.

Certainly there have been and still are bugs in opensource software but these are transparent and often fixed before they can cause major problems. Opensource make s it very hard for third parties to hide malicious spy code or back doors into code that can be read by its users.

The governments and the 1% of the very rich are very anxious about any threat to their comfortable power base and so seek to monitor their citizens or customers using the technique of fear uncertainty and doubt to control people on the pretext of saving them from terrorists or child abuser.

The seek to compromise the effectiveness of encryption technologies and proscribe the acquisition of knowledge that they fear will strengthen and arm any perceived position to them. In the UK there are certain book and information that can get the reader prosecuted for reading about how to overthrow an unjust state.

Jolla has a great opportunity to provide an ethical device that protects its owner from intrusion by criminal elements of governments acting illegally and to do this it does need to support a policy of openness and use of strict encryption and secure routing like TOR (The Onion Router).

While it is true that all mobile phone act as tracking devices; the Jolla has the advantage that the battery can be removed and the phone cannot then be remotely configured to spy on its user. People need to remember that phones do not have a physical off switch and are only off when the battery is actually removed.

Richard

richardski ( 2014-11-29 01:46:22 +0300 )edit
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This is not a duplicate - please re-open it. The earlier question is asking for Sailfish to be open, which has happened. This addresses a different issue.

SirCmpwn ( 2014-11-29 17:13:21 +0300 )edit

This is exactly the same question has the older one: They both ask for the most possible to be open-sourced!! Please re-close

dsilveira ( 2014-11-29 17:22:20 +0300 )edit
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I Wish Jolla would just open source sailfish

I don't see anything in here about anything other than sailfish. Also, that question no longer has much visibility and there is now a new audience that may have an opinion to share since the tablet announcement. The last major discussion on this subject was a year ago, even if this were a duplicate then it's worth having again.

SirCmpwn ( 2014-11-29 17:25:03 +0300 )edit

That just doesn't make any sense! If you want to resurect that discussion, which I applaud, you should do it over there, instead of opening from fresh again, since it would focus the discussion on one topic, giving it more relative importance in the eyes of Jolla Oy.

It's the votes that count for them, and re-starting the discussion is splitting the votes, unnecessarily!

dsilveira ( 2014-11-30 07:12:04 +0300 )edit

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answered 2014-11-29 01:28:16 +0300

Copernicus gravatar image

updated 2014-11-29 01:59:18 +0300

Honestly, what makes Jolla special is the Silica UI, not being open source.

There are fully open phones available today (in particular, check out OpenPhoenux ). And if you don't like the OpenPhoenux UI, you're free to go right ahead and create one yourself! In particular, if you can come up with a business model that is sufficiently lucrative that you can hire the 100+ engineers working at Jolla today, go for it.

Right now, Jolla's user-friendly UI is the key to enticing hardware manufacturers to try them out. And Jolla's UI costs money. And, so far as I know, no fully open-source group has been able to come up with something comparable to what they've got. I'm willing to let them keep the UI closed, as the part I want open is the rest of the OS beneath the UI, and they've gone a great ways towards providing just that...

Edit: Ok, I stand corrected -- perhaps Jolla isn't trying quite as hard to land partnerships with major manufacturers as I had thought. If they really are going to try to manufacture all their own devices, then they may have a better chance of forcing some openness onto the hardware. At their current volumes though, I don't think much of their chances. :(

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The user-friendly UI is important to that, you're right. But Jolla already has hardware manufacturers. And you're right that no open-source group has accomplished it - which is why it'd be so valuable for Jolla to fix that problem by publishing the source.

SirCmpwn ( 2014-11-29 01:30:09 +0300 )edit
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@SirCmpwn: Ok, so, say I'm a hardware manufacturer. Say Jolla has published the source openly. So, why am I forking over a load of cash to Jolla? If I can just take the source and compile it for my hardware, I don't see why I need to involve myself with Jolla at all; I can just sell my devices directly to the public, with their software already on-board.

Copernicus ( 2014-11-29 01:33:52 +0300 )edit

That's a reasonable argument, but again - Jolla already has manufacturers. Put an agreement in place to prevent this scenario. Another possibility is to choose a license that makes it difficult for manufacturers to put in proprietary binary blobs for their tablets, and then grant them exemptions.

SirCmpwn ( 2014-11-29 01:36:15 +0300 )edit
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@SirCmpwn: "Jolla already has manufacturers" -- what do you mean? Jolla is a software development company. Their business model is selling software to other companies. Selling devices is _not_ their business model; the Jolla phone and Jolla tablet are essentially prototype devices, not meant to be Jolla's actual bread and butter.

As I understand it, they are modeling themselves roughly like how Google sells Android -- sure, Google sells the Nexus devices under their own name, but they really make their money licensing Android to hardware manufacturers for their own use. Jolla may need to sell their own devices to get people interested and build brand awareness, but I doubt they can survive just by creating and marketing their own hardware. Jolla is not Nokia, after all.

Copernicus ( 2014-11-29 01:42:05 +0300 )edit
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I wasn't under the impression that they didn't want to sell their own hardware. Can you provide a source? If that were the case, it changes things somewhat but it doesn't change the fact that they can still make their software open source. Consider the second part of my comment: "Another possibility is to choose a license that makes it difficult for manufacturers to put in proprietary binary blobs for their tablets, and then grant them exemptions."

SirCmpwn ( 2014-11-29 01:43:31 +0300 )edit
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answered 2014-11-29 02:32:03 +0300

MartinK gravatar image

What about GPLv2 & dual-licensing like what Digia does with Qt ? Or even GPLv3 (Digia actually also started using it for some modules recently).

Also trademarks - even if you can have the code, you can't call it Jolla/Sailfish/Silica unless you license the trademarks. Even Nokia kinda started doing this recently. :)

Other possible revenue streams just top of my head:

  • selling devices of course :)
  • support, consulting, hardware adaptation
  • paid feature development for Sailfish OS
  • percentage of paid apps sales

Not as easy as old-school closed source development business models, but definitely #unlike. :)

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+1 It even don't need to be FOSS for me. Everybody can also invent a new license, not? So you could put in your license that you are not allowed to use the source commercial in a product, even not if modified. But selling the same under a commercial license also. Asia not is an argument, that the would not care about GPLv3 because the don't mind either to use the UI as a blob on their products or write a similar copy of it, work is cheap there. Important is the source for the user aka customer. I would not mind if I can chance the things on my product but I'm not allowed to compile it for others. For my part, I bought really expensive products because they was very comfortable, but privacy, security and control over my devices I value more, for that I purchase today devices they are open or tend at least to be more open then others. I recently bought a other tablet to get rid of the iPad, now I perked a tablet because it looked like Jolla will promise more open source with the tablet. I would also perk on indiegogo for open all parts on SailfishOS with €100. Maybe there are not so much people to do also. But if the would change the strategy, let's say the implement the best founded features first, and let's say there is a platform like TJC or even in TJC itself you can found a feature with 10-100€. I think a lot of customers will pay for there favorite feature. And there is ever something to improve. Software never is finished.

DiosDelRayo ( 2014-11-29 02:59:17 +0300 )edit
0

answered 2014-11-29 08:35:18 +0300

this post is marked as community wiki

This post is a wiki. Anyone with karma >75 is welcome to improve it.

updated 2014-12-02 14:54:51 +0300

dsilveira gravatar image

duplicate of: https://together.jolla.com/question/35928/i-wish-jolla-would-just-open-source-sailfish/

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1

indeed, let's keep the discussion going in the initial thread...

eric ( 2014-12-01 10:57:07 +0300 )edit

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Asked: 2014-11-29 01:10:06 +0300

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Last updated: Dec 02 '14