... the default _is_ open source in this day and age. Reasons should be provided for the exceptions to the default.

Why is community support required? I'm pestering a company for a reason!

Allowing community support is nice, and probably something that would distinguish a "ideal" Jolla from Android, since Android's "throw it over the wall" model doesn't really encourage community. Functioning community support ultimately provides the highest level of customizability for the final user, and with almost zero developer or regulation or documentation or ... cost to the parent company.

But I don't think that any company should be _expecting_ people to work for free.

Android is, to my annoyance, actually more "open source" than Sailfish (albeit not free software). For me, this discussion has been obsolete for at least a decade, and 'closed source' has lost.

(Sadly, free software didn't exactly win)

Even Windows CE was practically open source.

I'd buy one! I'm exactly asking the same. I thought Jolla would be this.

To put it simply: because if they fail at it, they'll alienate a portion of their early user base (which includes me).

And as I said, the default is free software. Unless you can really show how closed source is going to help their business, then the default should be free software.

And where are all those early 'Nokla' N800 clones?

Heh, thanks!

I think you're right that they can't completely lose sight of the consumer market, but this would fit in quite nicely with something they are already doing quite well, in a way that competitors aren't: shipping security updates regularly. Surely that's important for businesses, even if most consumers don't really care?

You can install packages as nemo using pkcon, but not zypper:

Surprised me!

Something simple like a pattern lock would be fine, surely? I would probably make updates for already installed apps automatic (like unattended upgrades), but installing and removing sotware require authentication.

It's something I've been meaning to research for a while now, I must confess I only have a vague idea of what it does and how it works.

to long-wave? i think they are going to turn that off in the next year or two.

don't get me wrong, i've been here since the n900, but we need to reach this nirvana soon....

Implement OneDrive and Dropbox backup/restore sync plugins

https://bugs.merproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1323

It is actually not that much of a security issue and for example Fedora does the same thing. You can use the packagekit (pkcon) interface to only install signed packages from trusted repos - not just any arbitrary package from an URL or local file.

So as long as your repos are properly signed and are not compromised this should be fairly safe, with only possible attacks being some sort of ddos (which can be done much easier with user-level capabilities) or exploiting vulnerabilities in signed packages until they are fixed (packaging scripts executing untrusted input at root, etc.).

While I don't care about OneDrive or Dropbox myself, this seems like a move in a good direction and opens the way for adding more backends, such as for OwnCloud or Seafile in the future.

https://twitter.com/stskeeps/status/644081075128532993

Is it updated to current version source code we had already or more thing were open?

what does it mean for unexpert user like me? what parts they have opened?

I'm always reading "open-source this, open-source that"... but would it really bring a benefit?

Most people are consumers, not contributing to the open-source stuff they use at all. The people who develop and contribute to open-source projects are very rare.
I think this thread resembles this as well. There are only a few developers among many consumers.
So we also don't see much progress with Nemo or the open-source parts of Sailfish, except for the work Jolla is doing.

The successful open-source projects are successful, because people employed by companies do paid work on them in the interest of their company. The Linux kernel is a prominent example of how a range of companies are working together on a common
operating system.
And if you look at Mer or Nemo, you'd notice that most contributions are coming from people paid by Jolla. And with open-sourcing the few remaining closed parts of Sailfish, this would not change.

The community of developers is a utopia. The community consists of consumers with a few active developers among them. Most open-source projects are one-man-shows that disappear once the developer loses interest. Almost all bigger projects are actually paid work.

Why don't we see open devices running Mer? I think the best person to answer this question would be Aaron Seigo of the Vivaldi project. It simply is not possible to find
acceptable mobile hardware running on open drivers. The Jolla devices are as open as
it can get. And they are running Mer on top of a closed-source Android hardware adaptation layer dictated by the manufacturer.

On the other end is the Silica UI that was promised to be opened (stay tuned as stskeeps said...), but actually is almost entirely BSD-licensed and open already.
Why didn't anyone reimplement the small closed-source part of Silica to make the
BSD-licensed open components run on top of Nemo, so that you have the full
Silica experience on Nemo? After more than two years of having the BSD-licensed Silica code out in the open, I really wonder. Maybe because the community of developers is a utopia...

IMHO it is NOT Jolla who is to blame for the lack of contributions to Sailfish.