Sailfish Alliance

Sailfish Alliance is the open alliance established in 2011 by Jolla company to support MeeGo ecosystem with new products, services and business opportunities around or using Sailfish OS, a Linux operating system combining mer with proprietary components either by Jolla or other sides including participants, for every various purposes and devices in the mobile industry and every other interested in. Also to continue to develop the Linux MeeGo ecosystem, as the Sailfish OS is a part of it.

The alliance is seen as a competitor to other groups like Android's Open Handset Alliance.^[1]

Alliance

In 2011 some of the MeeGo team working at Nokia left, and were funded by Nokia though their "Bridge" program to fund spin-out projects by ex-emloyees.^[2][3][4] The Sailfish Alliance has sought to collaborate between the Finnish software developers, and overseas handset manufacturers, some of which are in China.^[5][6] The news media reports that a number of manufacturers in China and India want an alternative to Android.^[1][7][8]

The Alliance aims to "unite OEM and ODM manufacturers, chipset providers, operators, application developers and retailers." ^[9]

Participants

The Sailfish Alliance is open with constant invitation to join, for both contributing in and/or just for the effects can be used (like results of the cooperation and contributions of other partners).^[10][11] Hence list of participants and their status de facto is fluctuating from time to time. Due to business reasons not always collaboration and details is publicly widely known. So far the partners in the Sailfish Alliance were following:

• Cyberport in Hong Kong – digital community with a cluster of technology and digital content tenants.
• D.Phone – China’s largest retailer for mobile phones and accessories.
• Digia – in 2011, Digia acquired the commercial licensing business for Qt from Nokia and in August 2012 acquired Qt from Nokia.
• DNA – Finnish mobile network.
• Invesdor – Northern European crowd funding platform.
• Joiku – produces Mobile WiFi HotSpot software for Nokia phones.
• Jolla Ltd. – Finnish smartphones manufacturer.
• Merproject.org – open source project developing the Mer tools and the Mer core based on MeeGo, on which the Sailfish OS has been built.
• Myriad Group – Myriad Alien Dalvik enables Android applications to operate on non-Android devices.
• Opera Software – company that makes browsers for most major mobile phone platforms.
• ST-Ericsson – defunct company doing design, development, and the creation of mobile platforms and wireless semiconductors.
• Tekes – Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation.
• Tencent Holdings – one of the largest portal service in China.

Business strategy

The aim of the Alliance is to offer unique differentiation opportunities and sustainable competitive advantage for OEM and ODM manufacturers, chipset providers, operators, application developers, retailers and other interested in sides.^[12]

This alliance is part of Jolla business strategy of free gathering 3rd parties, not necessary bound with partnerships or other agreements and also not necessary for contributing in Sailfish OS development. Besides the OS possibilities participants were motivated by Jolla model's advantages of open source and open community collaboration like: cost reductions, improved service for the customer, sharing skills, knowledge, specific resources towards providing new products and solutions which could not happen otherwise. This is the first time a business alliance conception was used in this way with meritocraticly governed Jolla's model and for open source and open communities. Its important parts are:

• companies supporting and using developed code and software in various devices like netbooks, laptops, computers, mobiles, in-vehicle infotainment, cars, yachts, navigations, household goods etc.
• hardware vendors
• innovative entrepreneurs and start-ups
• the merproject.org, which develop code of core on open source basis
• the open source community by all means, especially Linux and MeeGo Harmattan enthusiasts.

Uses

The Sailfish OS can be used for many kinds of devices like mobiles, computers, notebooks, tablets, navigations, smart TV, cars and in-vehicle infotainment, yachts and boats, household devices of many kinds etc.^[13] - this is similar situation as with MeeGo.

Jolla's Sailfish OS works in a tablet too.^[14] In November 2012 it was said that "we could see Sailfish tablet, but Jolla itself will on this first wave (note: of devices to be delivered to markets) concentrate on a smartphone".^[15]

Software Overview

The Sailfish OS software development kit (SDK) uses Qt with virtual box for development and it can be used with various systems like Linux, iOS or Windows. This approach allow for development with Sailfish SDK when a host computer is running other OS. That mean best skilled can be involved as inside SDK they have provided with emulation the full Sailfish OS environment for development or testing new products and this process is separated in VM from host resources. This and the open source nature of SDK allow to shape and rebuild it for particular and specific needs of a company or an organization or a group of developers, what allow to create context specific environment (eg with unique procedures, resources, restrictions or methodology implemented into it). That approach and abilities allow for collaboration and cooperation of even entirely different organisations with different limitations and routines used internally, but following rules they agreed for collaboration externally to obtain expected effects.

As Jolla's Sailfish OS uses the Mer core distribution, then various hardware and architectures can be used like Intel, ARM and many others. It is possible because the Mer core distribution does not contain any kernel, but libraries above the kernel and below user interface (UI) layers. To make a working Linux distribution, a kernel compatible with a particular hardware and UI are to be added – this creates the distribution of Linux Sailfish OS for any particular hardware or any specific purposes. Also this allows Sailfish OS to work on every hardware with appropriate kernel. Because of open source basis and rules, this can be used by all interested in using of those solutions e.g. to adopt for a particular hardware or any special needs.

References

External links

• Sailfish web site explain the development roadmap, provides open source binaries and further links for contributors and potential partners interested in joining the alliance.