Jolla Phone matters more than ever.
Every Android phone, every iPhone; your data, habits, convos: processed, analyzed, stored on someone else's terms.
Jolla spent 12 years in wilderness keeping Sailfish OS alive through die-hard community.
Next to them mobile OS graveyard filled up with names like Symbian, MeeGo, Firefox OS, Windows Phone - Jolla survived.
• Physical privacy switch (kill cam/mic)
• Replaceable battery
• Android app compatibility (practical)
What's also important: all earlier co-op and funding from AuroraOS many years back (of Russia) has been cut off by Jolla.
Sailfish OS is NOT 100% closed source, as some still claim it to be. Jolla has also promised that the REMAINING blobs will be opened. There are good reasons for this situation.
95% of Sailfish OS bases on free / open source software. The OS itself utilize Linux kernel (which is open source). Mer that was used is open-source. Qt Framework API's base on open-source Qt API's.
Here's the recent one from Jolla on their open source stance and commitment:
Attached: 1 image Open sourcing keeps progressing. The Nextcloud Account integration is now available on GitHub, gathering all related components in one place for easier access, contribution and improvement. Read more here: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/nextcloud-account-available-in-github/25335 The Hardware Adaptation Development Kit (HADK) is also moving to GitHub. Documentation available at https://hadk.sailfishos.org Read the full community update: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/sailfish-community-news-30th-october-2025-nextcloud/25312 #sailfishos #nextcloud #degoogle #european #DigitalSovereignty
@Linux "Not 100% proprietary" is still not FOSS. Sorry.
I don't think anyone is claiming it's "completely closed source" either. But at the time of writing it simply has an unacceptable end user license for many people, including me.
Regarding promises: talk is cheap, show us the code. Once there are no proprietary bits left and there is no more EULA to accept, I'll most probably change my stance on Sailfish OS.
What mostly remains to be completely opened in the big picture is the Silica UI (so the graphical user interface).
Jolla has stated that they could open source it when they've more established market space, so from marketing standpoint there is no point releasing the code too early (?). And this is "only" a graphical UI.
This is the only true independent alternative that one can just buy with pretty much all there by default for common everyday use. Android app compatibility a must.
@Linux The graphical UI that handles all the user input and display output being proprietary is a big deal.
Being a small player is no reason to defend keeping your code proprietary. None of the true mobile Linux OSes do that either. There is never an excuse to keep your code proprietary and there's no such thing as open sourcing "too early". It should be FOSS from the first commit.
At the end of the day Sailfish OS is more closed and proprietary than AOSP is. That's sad, but it's true.
@Linux Full disclosure: I don't own or use any mobile phone or tablet whatsoever, so I'm absolutely not saying that people should be using AOSP instead.
I'm just saying that Sailfish OS in its current state isn't really better than some AOSP-derived OS without Google Play Services. In fact it even contains more proprietary code.
What are these "some AOSP-derived OS's" you refer to? And what is their functionality compared to SailfishOS in daily drive for regular people as alternative? What do you think? I suppose you can only research (via other people near you or so) as you don't own or use anything what is being discussed here.
As said - SailfishOS is already ~95% open source / the main part remaining is the Silica UI (graphical user interface).
@Linux Most people around me don't use mobile phones either, and definitely not smartphones, but I'm guessing LineageOS, GrapheneOS, /e/OS, etc. are examples of AOSP-derived OSes that are not proprietary by itself.
Of course all of the bootloaders, firmware, device drivers, etc. of the phones it runs on are proprietary, but I doubt that's any different with the (Sony?) devices Sailfish OS runs on. And in addition to that, the GUI is also proprietary, which is not the case with AOSP.
@Linux To clarify, I don't endorse any of these OSes and I'd never use them myself.
But Jolla intentionally keeps code they own proprietary, and that really bothers me. It's not like we're talking about device firmware that they do not own and are not in a position to release the sources of.
They are in a position to release all of the sources of Silica, but they choose not to. Instead, Sailfish OS comes with a EULA you have to accept before you can use it, because of that UI being non-free.
Apart from guessing, you *could* try these things out in your company? It's an interesting changing area currently.
What about that usability in means of daily driving? What is your guess on that factor. You mentioned LineageOS GrapheneOS, /e/OS.
Oh, and the GUI you refer to is not 100% proprietary - it is only the last bastion to be opened. Indeed SailfishOS is about 95% open at this point (also recently more things were opened) so they don't *intentionally* keep any things closed.
@Linux I'd have to agree to legal terms and conditions I both personally don't accept and that go against my company's policies in order to try these things out, so that's what makes it rather complicated.
The situation with Sailfish OS is currently not that different from a random Android device or iPhone: I don't agree with the legal terms and conditions, so I can't use it.
As long as Sailfish OS comes with a EULA with license restrictions (point 3) it's not Free Software or Open Source.
@Linux Just look at https://jolla.com/sailfish-eula/ and compare it to the Open Source Definition (https://opensource.org/osd) and the Free Software Definition (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html#fs-definition).
It violates at least freedom 0 of the FSD and point 6 of the OSD at the first glance.
This is getting even more interesting. What kind of devices do you actually use in your company with your associates then as you can't accept regular devices legal terms? Phones, computers, TV:s, whatnot pretty much generally have some kind of legal terms and conditions, EULAS.
So what all you guys use - whereas you supposedly don't have to accept anything of that sort? Build your own or what?
@Linux We use Ivy Bridge era laptops and desktops running coreboot with the GRUB payload as the boot firmware, with the Intel ME stripped down to the BUP partition.
On top of that we run Debian with only the main repository (also not non-free-firmware).
For our networking it's all OpenWrt, primarily on Turris Omnia routers and old ath79 access points (so no firmware blobs there).
We don't use physical phones at all; only SIP with softphones. And I'm not sure why we'd need TVs at the office.
Ivy Bridge era laptops do run Intel processors, do you do something to these processors physically to make them void of any proprietary or closed areas legally?
What about these laptops efficiency nowadays? They are very very old. What kind of work do you do there with these quite low powered machines then for your buck? Interesting.
@Linux They're the last generation without Boot Guard, where coreboot has native raminit code, and where the ME firmware can be almost completely overwritten with 0xff. With all newer x86_64 hardware at least one of those points is no longer the case.
I'd have to say that compared to ARM SoCs that are comparatively free/open, even the much more recent ones, Ivy Bridge is still *much* faster.
A desktop with an i7-3770, for instance, can be used for almost anything, even today.
So, how much more years you reckon this gadgets can still fly? It's already like 13 years is it not? Discontinued more than 10 years ago?
What are you going to do when these last generation ones really go under? How long do you reckon you can keep replacing parts? Can you replace ANY part?
@Linux Oh for many more years. Even on my Lenovo X230 I can do almost all of my work without any issues.
And yes, nearly all of the parts can still be bought new. There's lots of factories in China selling them.
If this really becomes unworkable in the future, I hope by then there will be RISC-V implementations that are similarly open / low on blobs.
Of course there already are ARM SoCs now that come close, like the Rockchip SoCs PINE64 uses. But they're not faster than Intel Ivy Bridge.
Ok, so China is not a problem for your company for these parts.
Can you give examples for kinds of work you do in your company with this equipment?
You would *possibly* make an additional buck as an attraction too, for those wanting to see 100% open software / hardware company in action in your daily routine?
This is *very* rare if all you state is 100% accurate in this free as in total freedom usage in every aspect.
@Linux Everything is manufactured in China, so what can you do? We no longer have the knowledge or capacity to do so here in Europe sadly.
And what we do; well, we develop, host, support and maintain Free and open source software in the broadest sense of the word. So mainly SSH, vim and git.
Interlunium focuses specifically on people and companies who want systems and infrastructure to be as FOSS as possible, so helping others acquire a similar setup as our own is basically our core business.
Additionally - you have chosen Debian (which is not endorsed by Free Software Foundation that you appear to follow strictly) - it includes non-free software repositories and non-free firmware in its installation media by default.
Why not, as in your view, choose a more free as in freedom distro to begin with? By default you need to alter the default Debian installation image, making your own? Yet there are already those (such as Trisquel) without any stuff you cannot accept.
@Linux I don't necessarily care about the FSF endorsing things or not. Debian's contrib and non-free repositories are optional, and they are not considered to be an official part of Debian.
The addition of non-free-firmware to installation media has been a relatively recent decision (those packages were always part of non-free before), and even then the repository still has to be manually enabled. We don't enable it on our systems because we don't need any of those packages on our hardware.
@Linux So we use Debian with only the main repository, in which everything adheres to the Debian Free Software Guidelines (https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines).
And Debian also has installation media without non-free-firmware, although very few modern devices will even work then, so I understand their decision in a way.
Linux ✅
Kevin Keijzer