SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The woes continue for Jolla, the Finnish producer of mobile devices and the Sailfish mobile operating system.
Tech.eu reports
The company just announced (PDF) that its latest financing round--which was scheduled to conclude at the end of this month--has been postponed indefinitely.
Jolla says it needs to "adjust its operations accordingly", which means it will temporarily lay off a big part of its staff, starting in December. The Helsinki-based company has also filed for a debt restructuring program in Finland to stay afloat.
[...] Reportedly, half of Jolla's 100 employees will be let go.
[...] Earlier this year, the company split in two, effectively separating (PDF) its software and licensing business from its mobile devices business.
Jolla says its Sailfish OS has "reached commercial maturity" and is ready to be licensed to commercial partners, primarily other device manufacturers.
[...] Antti Saarnio, chairman and co-founder of Jolla, [...] remains convinced that Sailfish OS is "worth fighting for" and believes Jolla can still become a profitable venture, hence the corporate restructuring program.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pTamok on Sunday November 22 2015, @09:15PM
Both iOS and Android are developed by American companies.
Sailfish is predominantly open source - as far as I remember, the proprietary bits are the User Interface and, as ever, the modems (or anything that requires a 'binary blob' as firmware).
From my point of view Sailfish provides a much needed other choice in mobile smartphone OSs, and I would very much like it to succeed. I have put my money where my thoughts lie, and a Jolla phone running Sailfish is my main personal phone.
Jolla encourage people to tinker, so it is trivial to get 'developer' access to your phone - it is not locked down.
If you look at the PC landscape, you can choose Windows, iOS (if you buy the hardware from Apple), Linux, BSD, and lots of other possibilities (OS/2, ReactOs, Plan 9...). If you look at smartphones and tablets, there is no popular choice that preserves freedoms in the same way as Linux and BSD on PCs.
I hope Jolla survive, but the omens are not good.