
Open letter to Jolla community: through the tough times - Maakuth
https://blog.jolla.com/open-letter-jolla-community/
======
kogepathic
They brought this upon themselves. Their progress updates on the tablet
project have been consistently late, vague, and they withheld information from
the backers for as long as possible. They didn't even change the pre-order
page when it was clear they missed the promised shipment date.

Example: their press release about debt restructuring was released on Friday
(20 November), but there was no explanation to IGG backers until this post on
24 November.

So, yes, they are in financial difficulties. But in the process of developing
the tablet, they completely lost all credibility to the community (at least
those of us who aren't Jolla apologists) when they didn't communicate openly
to backers, and consistently missed deadlines they themselves set (e.g.
shipping, communicating delays, requests for details).

Guys, a tip: "open" means that you have a dialogue with your backers. Thus
far, "open" to you means that you communicate late, vaguely, and with
absolutely no community interaction. This includes barely answering community
questions in your blog posts (see:
[https://blog.jolla.com/tablet_schedule_aptoide_store/](https://blog.jolla.com/tablet_schedule_aptoide_store/)
) where you spend most of the blog post spewing marketing shit and not
answering the fundamental question people had been asking, which was: hey,
where the hell is my tablet and why aren't you giving us straight answers to
questions?

In my view, it is irresponsible bordering on criminal to continue accepting
pre-orders from people when the schedule is wrong, and you don't provide any
details on the schedule when asked.

------
TheAceOfHearts
Dang... This is the most expensive IGG I've ever backed and they've just kept
pushing back, and it sounds like we won't even get the tablet. That's really
disappointing. I was actually pretty excited to try out the OS.

I feel a little cheated too, when I backed them I was under the impression
that they were a lot more open. Not just in terms of communication, but I also
thought their OS was open source. I only found out a few months back that it
wasn't the case. This is probably my own fault, though. I really should've
looked more closely into it before signing up.

------
otabdeveloper
Not surprising at all given that they haven't yet figured out what their
product is.

(Note: if your product is an OS, then your customers are OEM's, not regular
people. Haven't heard of _any_ efforts by Jolla to court OEM's.)

~~~
toyg
I guess this is what they mean by "We’ve already had many interesting
discussions with potential new partners about using Sailfish OS in their own
projects". But yeah, if this was the original vision all along, it wasn't
communicated very well.

This is not the first "alternative" tablet that failed. It looks like pretty
much all Linux-based alternatives to Android have disappeared or are
struggling (the KDE one, Ubuntu, Maemo/Meego, FirefoxOS etc etc). Most of
these projects have been way too optimistic about the sort of muscle required
to significantly attack this market at such a late stage. Hopefully these
developments will focus minds and get people to cooperate rather than compete.

~~~
niutech
Firefox OS is still doing well in developing countries.

------
lolc
I ordered a phone from them last week. The shop said it's 2 to 5 days
delivery, the confirmation said allow for 5 to 10 days, now this post tells me
it will be 10 to ∞ days.

I don't think debt restructuring is a fun process, so I wish them well.

~~~
lolc
Actually when I wrote this my letterbox already contained a notice from FedEx.
So I guess they did send it! (Still have to pick up the package but I assume
it's the phone.)

------
fijal
They completely brought it upon themselves. You can't just release a phone and
then essentially abandon your users - the phone is buggy, email client and
browser are borderline unusable and they break features in between releases.
It also crashes randomly. Recent update completely broke push-USSD feature
which my bank uses, there are open bugs, no response.

If you want to enter the phone market now, even if it's possible at all, you
need to deliver ROCK SOLID experience, not something that resembles symbian.

------
Tharkun
Can't say i'm surprised. Their support and communication has been consistently
horrible. Their focus on the OS entirely misplaced -- no, more eye candy is
not the first thing we need. The platform had a lot of potential, but they've
squandered it time and time again.

------
hardlianotion
Sorry to hear this. I signed up for one as I thought it would be fun to be
involved, in a small way. But the delay will kill the product and the company.
The market moves too fast.

------
williadc
I put in an order for a Jolla tablet. With the layoffs it doesn't seem as if
the order will be fulfilled.

------
jasonlingx
Typo in the title "tough"

~~~
dang
Thanks, fixed.

