I am pleased to announce a significant change in Mer and Sailfish OS which will be implemented in phases. As many of you know Mer began many years ago as a way for the community to demonstrate “working in the open” to Nokia. This succeeded well enough that Mer eventually closed down and shifted support to MeeGo. When MeeGo stopped – thanks to its open nature – we, Carsten Munk and I, were able to reincarnate Mer as an open community project and continue to develop a core OS and a suite of open development tools around it. Over time a number of organisations used the Mer core as a base for their work. However, there was one that stood out: Jolla with Sailfish OS which started to use Mer core in its core and they have been by far the most consistent contributors and supporters of Mer.
Once again, Mer has served its purpose and can retire. To clarify that this will be the official ‘working in the open’ core of SailfishOS we’re going to gradually merge merproject.org and sailfishos.org.
Just another line in the footnote that is Maemo/Meego/Sailfish/etc.
Cool. Now if they can get SailfishOS onto more phones…
Why? Sailfish OS is billed by Jolla as a mobile OS solution for corporations and governments which means NOT consumers. The main government using Sailfish is Russia. I lost interest in Sailfish OS many years ago as they are just a horrible company.
^ this
I wish more people would work on UBPorts as a open mobile OS, and I’m hoping in PureOS mobile for a company-backed solution as well.
* crossing fingers *
The problem with Purism is that is a lot money to ask for the hardware you are getting on that phone. I also question the wasted effort on PureOS. Why didn’t they just partner with KDE and use Plasma Mobile which was further along? It had to use Gnome I guess…
The best thing I can say about UBPorts is it has a nice website. LOL
The same for me.
I had some (very limited) hopes for them… but all the trust is gone now.
Best if I don’t respond to your comment about the company as I’m not an unbiased bystander (but I am speaking personally). About the direction, it’s true there’s a focus on companies/government, but the X program is firmly for consumers, and the community is really important. The benefits from one aren’t supposed to be incompatible with the other.
I really wanted to use Sailfish and bought into the tablet. No dice and got half my money back. I wanted the Jolla C but wasn’t offered in the US. The X program is to little to late and I am not giving them any more money.
It’s good that all the pieces of the same OS are back together. Otherwise we could have ended up with an Amiga situation.
What is a shame is that they have chosen to focus on the Russian government, which is doubtless a cashcow, but means its very difficult for me to trust (my own bias)
The OS has been subjected to a lot of brand churn: Maemo, Maego, mer, Sailfish OS. Much as I like the blue watery mer design, this change is also supposed to be making it easier for people to work on the open source Sailfish OS code, which has to be a good thing.