Today 10 years ago I went to Poland to buy a Phone with pre installed #Firefox OS on. The Phone was a Alcatel One, so very shitty. Two years later I installed Firefox OS on my Nexus 5 instead.
It was a very good concept, but sadly rolled out on too shitty hardware so it never caught on.
Also Sailfish OS (though it's not fully open source), which I use.
I sincerely hoped Jolla would at least continue to make one technology demonstrator hardware model available for purchase by enthusiasts. The current situation where I have to buy a phone and then buy OS separately is not feasible for me.
I mean, the license cost me $50 (maybe €50, not sure). It's not that much, just pretend the phone cost $50/€50 more.
Jolla can also be purchased and used in very few countries. 4 according to their list. I don't mind paying for an OS and a phone, but their phone support is also only for very expensive Sony Xperia phones. So I can see why it is not feasible for a lot of people
If you mean the OS, it can be purchased in all of European Union plus some other countries. With VPN you can purchase it everywhere. Though I read that the Xperia phones don't have the necessary bands for USA.
I really wish they had opened all of the system.
I mean: what is it they can still lose? I'm pretty sure a few licenses are not making them break even. Do they fear some third parties would copy the OS and release phones with it? Would that not be a sign that other companies trust in the OS and help them land bigger contracts?
/e/ managed to get a business off with a full opensource stack, without building the phones themselves. What prevents Jolla to try the same approach?
They could have been the main developers of the true Linux opensource phone OS. Instead, they're going to get passed by Plasma Mobile, and then they'll have nothing left to offer.
I think they can't open the Android part because of aome 3rd party licensing, but yeah, the rest should be open source.