11 ms·

Jolla’s Sailfish certified as Russian government’s first ‘Android alternative’

176 points by eth0up 10y ago

CaptSpify 10y ago
One of the good things that I hope will come out of these cyber-wars: Better FOSS systems. If everyone distrusts each other then the only way to stay in the game will hopefully be to lay all your cards out on the table. I really hope we see more open hardware come to fruition as well. I'm sad that the US keeps pushing other countries away from our platforms, but I do think better competition will come out of it.
- superuser2 10y ago
  That'd be nice, but I see it going in the opposite direction: the internet becomes too hostile for casual operators. The only way for an average company to survive is to hole up inside the datacenters and on top of the walled-garden platforms of the bid cloud providers, using locked-down and mostly immutable thin clients (i.e. Chromebooks). Already the only way to withstand a DDoS if you are small is to wrap yourself in someone bigger (Cloudflare, Amazon).
  - EGreg 10y ago
    OR you can easily survive DDOS by not relying on friggin centralized servers accessible over the internet for your social networks and apps. Run them on intranets for your local communities, village etc. and run them on VPNs elsewhere. Then mitigating DDOS can simply be done on the virtual router level.
    - pfisch 10y ago
      That sounds incredibly inconvenient.
      - EGreg 10y ago
        For who? And why? Elaborate
        ben_jones 10y ago
        Everybody. One of the reasons software products are so lucrative is that it can be distributed easily, especially when compared to the logistical challenges of shipping physical goods. Take away my ability to sell Hello, World! to some guy in Japan, I might as well be selling candy door to door.
        EGreg 10y ago
        Guess what, "social" apps should help local communities without the signal having to go to a server farm halfway around the world. India rejected internet.org for that reason. Rural Africa doesn't need drones to organize community dinner or call a plumber.
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        It's the last mile that's the hard part, not the backhaul. The internet.org objections were totally unrelated.
        Johnny555 10y ago
        That depends on why you're using the social app. If you're using it to find a local plumber, then sure, you only need ot to stay in your local area (but what's 'local'? Is that within your town, your county, your state or your country? If you want to fix a leak, you probably want a plumber in your town, if you're replumbing an entire school, then you may be happy to get bids from plumbers 50 miles away). But if you're using your social network to find the solution to your recurring plumbing problem that the last 3 plumbers you hired couldn't fix, then you'll probably be just as happy with an answer from a plumber from across the world as you would from an plumber next door. The power of online social networks it that they aren't limited to whoever is in your town.
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      Why not work towards a decentralized model instead, webrtc is a good start.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        Also, IPFS anyone?
      - the8472 10y ago
        webrtc is a fairly bad start because it cannot establish connections to known endpoints (think address:port) or speak multicast for local neighbor discovery in a p2p network. it generally relies on a signalling server or at a minimum on an exchange of one-time session tokens the user could enter for each connection. it's not distributed and barely decentralized. it's more geared around a client-server approach where some of the traffic is offloaded to peer-peer connections. compared to protocols like tcp and udp it's incredibly crippled
    - duaneb 10y ago
      Sounds like you just WROTE a ddos vector. What easier way to bring down a router?
      - CaptSpify 10y ago
        You can have multiple routers. Sure, if your edge router is getting DDOS'd, you can't get to the internet, but your intranet services will still work.
        EGreg 10y ago
        Exactly.
        duaneb 10y ago
        I meant DNS.
        CaptSpify 10y ago
        I feel like I'm not following what you mean, but DNS can run on multiple routers as well
        duaneb 10y ago
        No, I think you're following me fine. I was, erm, rather unnerved by the recent DynDNS attack, which is a definite minority of the internet.
    - themihai 10y ago
      So you endup giving up your privacy to mitigate DDOS. I'm not sure if it's a such novel idea.
      - EGreg 10y ago
        Actually it's MORE private
        themihai 10y ago
        How is that if you are traced at the ip/auth level?
forgotpwtomain 10y ago
Anyone have experience using Sailfish OS? Any reason to think it wouldn't end up like Firefox OS?
- ucaetano 10y ago
  Government backing can make it last longer, but, as Russia should have learned during the Soviet times, consumer goods aren't commodities, it isn't how much you can produce, but how much people want it that matters.
  - tetromino_ 10y ago
    I suspect that the Russian government wants an OS it can trust for its official and military mobile devices, but realizes that the project is utterly hopeless unless the devices are also sold to consumers, to help pay for the R&D and ensure competitiveness with the market leaders.
    - ucaetano 10y ago
      Indeed, but it isn't just about being sold to consumers. Consumers have to buy it too. Both blackberry and windows phone were sold to consumers, as well as the fire phone. All 3 failed miserably.
      - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        A big thing will be dependent on Russian companies supporting it. Bear in mind, Yandex is the chief of the online services land there, not Google. If Yandex is providing top notch apps and features on Sailfish, it's going to be appealing.
      - jerbs 10y ago
        And blackberry really is a good example here, as the USG loved it and is a massive customer, but no one customer is able to keep an OS thriving
- intopieces 10y ago
tetromino_ 10y ago
An interesting side effect of the creeping googlification and closed-sourcing of the Android platform [1] is that it's making Android less attractive to reasonably paranoid non-American government users. [1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-...
- dispose13432 10y ago
  Why are there no Open Source implementations of Google's API? Except for that, most of their complaints don't hold water. No OS texting app? Go to f-droid and find them. No browser? Go to f-droid. The only issue is the API, much of which actually depends on Google Data (for example, Geolocation would be a problem without Google's WiFi data)
  - JonnieCache 10y ago
    There is one: https://microg.org https://microg.org It's very much an alpha however.
    - lima 10y ago
      Still works surprisingly well for most basic usage.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - hackuser 10y ago
    There are several alternatives to Google Apps, if that is what you are referring to, including TK Gapps and the MicroG project (as far as I know - I haven't used them myself). > for example, Geolocation would be a problem without Google's WiFi data UnifiedNlp[0] geolocation, when I looked into it a little while ago, could use various data sources including Mozilla's, Apple's, OpenWlanMap, and others. ---- [0] https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_UnifiedNlp/ https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_UnifiedNlp/
jethro_tell 10y ago
I've been trying to buy one for a couple weeks for unrelated reasons. How do you have a phone alternative if they can't be bought?
- maheart 10y ago
  > How do you have a phone alternative if they can't be bought? I think that's the reason for the shift stated in the article. P.S. Try having a look on eBay. That's where I bought my Intex Aquafish. Alternatively, if you're a tinkerer, you could try a community port (note, there's no AlienDalvik Android support): https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris
hackuser 10y ago
I wonder if it's a great move for Jolla: Cooperation with the Russian government may raise more doubts than it eliminates. And what happens when the Russian government wants the OS changed somehow? Jolla may find itself under tremendous pressure to agree, or Russia could fork it and corrupt the brand's image.
- codedokode 10y ago
  Any open source product can be forked. The brand is probably owned by the company so the fork has to use another name and branding.
- pdimitar 10y ago
  I have the same concern. I don't think when the Russian government is your biggest (or sole) investor that you can say "no" to backdoors similar to those recently found in quite a lot of Chinese Android devices. In theory you can but in practice they can twist your arm enough for you to agree. Even though I am more likely to trust the Russian gov't compared to the USA gov't, I still can't safely assume they are the best-hearted people in the world and they'll just open-source all the Sailfish OS code and keep the process fully transparent. I want to believe it but IMO this is the modern arms race and the superpowers are simply trying to make their weapon better than the others. :(
gnipgnip 10y ago
It looks like the process of building apps is far simpler on Sailfish, and linux-like. https://sailfishos.org/develop/tutorials/creating-application-in-python/ https://sailfishos.org/develop/tutorials/creating-applicatio... I tried fiddling with Android, but the soft lock-in to Java, IDEs wasn't particularly exciting.
- gnipgnip 10y ago
  I just spent my morning installing Sailfish; I can't recommend it enough for Linux users! The effort put into localization far surpasses what Android has (for Indian languages). Comes with systemctl and all familiar text-file configs ones heart can wish for. Goodbye Android, it was nice knowing you.
codedokode 10y ago
I think it would be better just to remove all references to Google servers from Android code and maybe install Play Services while blocking them from connecting to Google (for compatibility with Play Store apps). I don't understand why they decided to rewrite UI wih C++. Is not Java easier to use than C++? And as a result native Sailfish apps won't run on Android. I doubt there will be many people writing them if OS share will stay low.
- amiga-workbench 10y ago
  Sailfish is nothing like Android, its a continuation of Nokia's old Meego platform, its built on the same tech stack which closely mirrors what you have running on a desktop Linux machine. There is no JVM unless you install the Emulation layer yourself.
whyagaindavid 10y ago
For the moment for less the €100 you can buy a sailfish phone (but only IN) https://www.snapdeal.com/product/intex-aqua-fish-4g-16gb/656496788094 https://www.snapdeal.com/product/intex-aqua-fish-4g-16gb/656...
bikamonki 10y ago
There are countries where the chances of a new mobile OS succeeding depend mostly on the ability to run Whatsapp. Simply put: WA is the free SMS in many developing contries where air-time is still expensive. Carriers even offer plans with unlimited data for WA usage and that is key to drive new sales (I know this for a fact). I still argue that the main reason FFOS on a ultra cheap ZTE failed to gain market share on developing countries was because potential buyers realized they wouldn't be able to chat with friends and family. For this reason, if Sailfish can trully run any Android app, I'd say they have a better chance.
- skykooler 10y ago
  Sailfish can run pretty much any Android app I've thrown at it - but only on an official Jolla phone. Any phone where SFOS is just a "port" cannot run the emulation layer (and sadly this is a limitation with the software itself, not just a licensing issue).
kogepathic 10y ago
tl;dr - Jolla tried to make a tablet based on an existing Chinese tablet design (Aigo X86). [0] They screwed up the project management to legendary levels, lied to backers, and kept the money. Backers have received NOTHING from Jolla and still don't have a refund. What Jolla did to Jolla Tablet backers borders on fraud. Jolla had the chance for a popular product with people who wanted an Apple/Google alternative, but destroyed their relationship with the community through their repeated delays and lying. === I would celebrate, but I have first hand experience with the incompetent management at Jolla. So, I don't expect this to really make an impact at all. Jolla ran an IndieGoGo campaign to manufacture a Jolla tablet. [1] They raised over $2 million dollars, then spent the next 18 months mismanaging the project into the ground. By early-2016, their ODM in China had manufactured all the tablets for the backers, something like 10,000 tablets were made. But Jolla ran out of money to pay the factory for the units (and in the mean time, mislead all the backers and said there were no tablets at all). Now, I know people are going to say "it's crowdfunding, they're not required to give you anything" and that's true. But what Jolla did next was really, really angering. They only delivered a hand full of the tablets manufactured [2]. The factory actually started selling the finished tablets directly on Taobao, so people who weren't even part of the IndieGoGo campaign could buy them for LESS than the IndieGoGo perk amounts. [3] It was only after the community found out about the factory direct sale that Jolla admitted to anything. There was extreme backlash from the community for being lied to, and eventually to stop the extremely negative PR, Jolla offered a partial refund for contributors. Their CEO even showed up for a token apology, it was lip service at its best. In May this year, they offered backers 50% of their contribution back as a refund, with the other 50% being refunded in 2017 with "our financial situation permitting." [0] https://together.jolla.com/question/110875/we-hadnt-jolla-tablet-so-lets-talk-about-it-it-hardware-update-and-some-other/ https://together.jolla.com/question/110875/we-hadnt-jolla-ta... [1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-first-crowdsourced-tablet https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-firs... [2] https://blog.jolla.com/jolla-tablet-closure/ https://blog.jolla.com/jolla-tablet-closure/ [3] https://together.jolla.com/question/124628/the-jolla-tablet-is-there-/ https://together.jolla.com/question/124628/the-jolla-tablet-... (P.S. Jolla, if you don't want backers to post negative things about your company, maybe you'd consider refunding their money you kept?)

176 points by eth0up 10y ago

One of the good things that I hope will come out of these cyber-wars: Better FOSS systems. If everyone distrusts each other then the only way to stay in the game will hopefully be to lay all your cards out on the table. I really hope we see more open hardware come to fruition as well. I'm sad that the US keeps pushing other countries away from our platforms, but I do think better competition will come out of it.

superuser2 10y ago
That'd be nice, but I see it going in the opposite direction: the internet becomes too hostile for casual operators. The only way for an average company to survive is to hole up inside the datacenters and on top of the walled-garden platforms of the bid cloud providers, using locked-down and mostly immutable thin clients (i.e. Chromebooks). Already the only way to withstand a DDoS if you are small is to wrap yourself in someone bigger (Cloudflare, Amazon).
- EGreg 10y ago
  OR you can easily survive DDOS by not relying on friggin centralized servers accessible over the internet for your social networks and apps. Run them on intranets for your local communities, village etc. and run them on VPNs elsewhere. Then mitigating DDOS can simply be done on the virtual router level.
  - pfisch 10y ago
    That sounds incredibly inconvenient.
    - EGreg 10y ago
      For who? And why? Elaborate
      - ben_jones 10y ago
        Everybody. One of the reasons software products are so lucrative is that it can be distributed easily, especially when compared to the logistical challenges of shipping physical goods. Take away my ability to sell Hello, World! to some guy in Japan, I might as well be selling candy door to door.
        EGreg 10y ago
        Guess what, "social" apps should help local communities without the signal having to go to a server farm halfway around the world. India rejected internet.org for that reason. Rural Africa doesn't need drones to organize community dinner or call a plumber.
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        It's the last mile that's the hard part, not the backhaul. The internet.org objections were totally unrelated.
        Johnny555 10y ago
        That depends on why you're using the social app. If you're using it to find a local plumber, then sure, you only need ot to stay in your local area (but what's 'local'? Is that within your town, your county, your state or your country? If you want to fix a leak, you probably want a plumber in your town, if you're replumbing an entire school, then you may be happy to get bids from plumbers 50 miles away). But if you're using your social network to find the solution to your recurring plumbing problem that the last 3 plumbers you hired couldn't fix, then you'll probably be just as happy with an answer from a plumber from across the world as you would from an plumber next door. The power of online social networks it that they aren't limited to whoever is in your town.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    Why not work towards a decentralized model instead, webrtc is a good start.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Also, IPFS anyone?
    - the8472 10y ago
      webrtc is a fairly bad start because it cannot establish connections to known endpoints (think address:port) or speak multicast for local neighbor discovery in a p2p network. it generally relies on a signalling server or at a minimum on an exchange of one-time session tokens the user could enter for each connection. it's not distributed and barely decentralized. it's more geared around a client-server approach where some of the traffic is offloaded to peer-peer connections. compared to protocols like tcp and udp it's incredibly crippled
  - duaneb 10y ago
    Sounds like you just WROTE a ddos vector. What easier way to bring down a router?
    - CaptSpify 10y ago
      You can have multiple routers. Sure, if your edge router is getting DDOS'd, you can't get to the internet, but your intranet services will still work.
      - EGreg 10y ago
        Exactly.
      - duaneb 10y ago
        I meant DNS.
        CaptSpify 10y ago
        I feel like I'm not following what you mean, but DNS can run on multiple routers as well
        duaneb 10y ago
        No, I think you're following me fine. I was, erm, rather unnerved by the recent DynDNS attack, which is a definite minority of the internet.
  - themihai 10y ago
    So you endup giving up your privacy to mitigate DDOS. I'm not sure if it's a such novel idea.
    - EGreg 10y ago
      Actually it's MORE private
      - themihai 10y ago
        How is that if you are traced at the ip/auth level?

forgotpwtomain 10y ago

Anyone have experience using Sailfish OS? Any reason to think it wouldn't end up like Firefox OS?

ucaetano 10y ago
Government backing can make it last longer, but, as Russia should have learned during the Soviet times, consumer goods aren't commodities, it isn't how much you can produce, but how much people want it that matters.
- tetromino_ 10y ago
  I suspect that the Russian government wants an OS it can trust for its official and military mobile devices, but realizes that the project is utterly hopeless unless the devices are also sold to consumers, to help pay for the R&D and ensure competitiveness with the market leaders.
  - ucaetano 10y ago
    Indeed, but it isn't just about being sold to consumers. Consumers have to buy it too. Both blackberry and windows phone were sold to consumers, as well as the fire phone. All 3 failed miserably.
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      A big thing will be dependent on Russian companies supporting it. Bear in mind, Yandex is the chief of the online services land there, not Google. If Yandex is providing top notch apps and features on Sailfish, it's going to be appealing.
    - jerbs 10y ago
      And blackberry really is a good example here, as the USG loved it and is a massive customer, but no one customer is able to keep an OS thriving
intopieces 10y ago

tetromino_ 10y ago

An interesting side effect of the creeping googlification and closed-sourcing of the Android platform [1] is that it's making Android less attractive to reasonably paranoid non-American government users. [1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-...

dispose13432 10y ago
Why are there no Open Source implementations of Google's API? Except for that, most of their complaints don't hold water. No OS texting app? Go to f-droid and find them. No browser? Go to f-droid. The only issue is the API, much of which actually depends on Google Data (for example, Geolocation would be a problem without Google's WiFi data)
- JonnieCache 10y ago
  There is one: https://microg.org https://microg.org It's very much an alpha however.
  - lima 10y ago
    Still works surprisingly well for most basic usage.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- hackuser 10y ago
  There are several alternatives to Google Apps, if that is what you are referring to, including TK Gapps and the MicroG project (as far as I know - I haven't used them myself). > for example, Geolocation would be a problem without Google's WiFi data UnifiedNlp[0] geolocation, when I looked into it a little while ago, could use various data sources including Mozilla's, Apple's, OpenWlanMap, and others. ---- [0] https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_UnifiedNlp/ https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_UnifiedNlp/

jethro_tell 10y ago

I've been trying to buy one for a couple weeks for unrelated reasons. How do you have a phone alternative if they can't be bought?

maheart 10y ago
> How do you have a phone alternative if they can't be bought? I think that's the reason for the shift stated in the article. P.S. Try having a look on eBay. That's where I bought my Intex Aquafish. Alternatively, if you're a tinkerer, you could try a community port (note, there's no AlienDalvik Android support): https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris

hackuser 10y ago

I wonder if it's a great move for Jolla: Cooperation with the Russian government may raise more doubts than it eliminates. And what happens when the Russian government wants the OS changed somehow? Jolla may find itself under tremendous pressure to agree, or Russia could fork it and corrupt the brand's image.

codedokode 10y ago
Any open source product can be forked. The brand is probably owned by the company so the fork has to use another name and branding.
pdimitar 10y ago
I have the same concern. I don't think when the Russian government is your biggest (or sole) investor that you can say "no" to backdoors similar to those recently found in quite a lot of Chinese Android devices. In theory you can but in practice they can twist your arm enough for you to agree. Even though I am more likely to trust the Russian gov't compared to the USA gov't, I still can't safely assume they are the best-hearted people in the world and they'll just open-source all the Sailfish OS code and keep the process fully transparent. I want to believe it but IMO this is the modern arms race and the superpowers are simply trying to make their weapon better than the others. :(

gnipgnip 10y ago

It looks like the process of building apps is far simpler on Sailfish, and linux-like. https://sailfishos.org/develop/tutorials/creating-application-in-python/ https://sailfishos.org/develop/tutorials/creating-applicatio... I tried fiddling with Android, but the soft lock-in to Java, IDEs wasn't particularly exciting.

gnipgnip 10y ago
I just spent my morning installing Sailfish; I can't recommend it enough for Linux users! The effort put into localization far surpasses what Android has (for Indian languages). Comes with systemctl and all familiar text-file configs ones heart can wish for. Goodbye Android, it was nice knowing you.

codedokode 10y ago

I think it would be better just to remove all references to Google servers from Android code and maybe install Play Services while blocking them from connecting to Google (for compatibility with Play Store apps). I don't understand why they decided to rewrite UI wih C++. Is not Java easier to use than C++? And as a result native Sailfish apps won't run on Android. I doubt there will be many people writing them if OS share will stay low.

amiga-workbench 10y ago
Sailfish is nothing like Android, its a continuation of Nokia's old Meego platform, its built on the same tech stack which closely mirrors what you have running on a desktop Linux machine. There is no JVM unless you install the Emulation layer yourself.

whyagaindavid 10y ago

For the moment for less the €100 you can buy a sailfish phone (but only IN) https://www.snapdeal.com/product/intex-aqua-fish-4g-16gb/656496788094 https://www.snapdeal.com/product/intex-aqua-fish-4g-16gb/656...

bikamonki 10y ago

There are countries where the chances of a new mobile OS succeeding depend mostly on the ability to run Whatsapp. Simply put: WA is the free SMS in many developing contries where air-time is still expensive. Carriers even offer plans with unlimited data for WA usage and that is key to drive new sales (I know this for a fact). I still argue that the main reason FFOS on a ultra cheap ZTE failed to gain market share on developing countries was because potential buyers realized they wouldn't be able to chat with friends and family. For this reason, if Sailfish can trully run any Android app, I'd say they have a better chance.

skykooler 10y ago
Sailfish can run pretty much any Android app I've thrown at it - but only on an official Jolla phone. Any phone where SFOS is just a "port" cannot run the emulation layer (and sadly this is a limitation with the software itself, not just a licensing issue).

kogepathic 10y ago

tl;dr - Jolla tried to make a tablet based on an existing Chinese tablet design (Aigo X86). [0] They screwed up the project management to legendary levels, lied to backers, and kept the money. Backers have received NOTHING from Jolla and still don't have a refund. What Jolla did to Jolla Tablet backers borders on fraud. Jolla had the chance for a popular product with people who wanted an Apple/Google alternative, but destroyed their relationship with the community through their repeated delays and lying. === I would celebrate, but I have first hand experience with the incompetent management at Jolla. So, I don't expect this to really make an impact at all. Jolla ran an IndieGoGo campaign to manufacture a Jolla tablet. [1] They raised over $2 million dollars, then spent the next 18 months mismanaging the project into the ground. By early-2016, their ODM in China had manufactured all the tablets for the backers, something like 10,000 tablets were made. But Jolla ran out of money to pay the factory for the units (and in the mean time, mislead all the backers and said there were no tablets at all). Now, I know people are going to say "it's crowdfunding, they're not required to give you anything" and that's true. But what Jolla did next was really, really angering. They only delivered a hand full of the tablets manufactured [2]. The factory actually started selling the finished tablets directly on Taobao, so people who weren't even part of the IndieGoGo campaign could buy them for LESS than the IndieGoGo perk amounts. [3] It was only after the community found out about the factory direct sale that Jolla admitted to anything. There was extreme backlash from the community for being lied to, and eventually to stop the extremely negative PR, Jolla offered a partial refund for contributors. Their CEO even showed up for a token apology, it was lip service at its best. In May this year, they offered backers 50% of their contribution back as a refund, with the other 50% being refunded in 2017 with "our financial situation permitting." [0] https://together.jolla.com/question/110875/we-hadnt-jolla-tablet-so-lets-talk-about-it-it-hardware-update-and-some-other/ https://together.jolla.com/question/110875/we-hadnt-jolla-ta... [1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-first-crowdsourced-tablet https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-firs... [2] https://blog.jolla.com/jolla-tablet-closure/ https://blog.jolla.com/jolla-tablet-closure/ [3] https://together.jolla.com/question/124628/the-jolla-tablet-is-there-/ https://together.jolla.com/question/124628/the-jolla-tablet-... (P.S. Jolla, if you don't want backers to post negative things about your company, maybe you'd consider refunding their money you kept?)