Open Mobile Platform hiring developers
Update, May 11, 2016: Jolla officially confirms licensing of Sailfish OS to a Russian company "Open Mobile Platform".
May 6, 2016, Innopolis, Tatarstan, Russia. New company "Открытая мобильная платформа" (Open Mobile Platform) is about to begin the development of domestic Russian operating system for mobile devices. The new mobile operating system is suggested to be based on components of Sailfish OS. The company is already hiring employees. Russia aims to reduce the use of foreign mobile operating systems from the current 95% to 75% by 2020, and to 50% by 2025. Android and iOS down?
Russian company "Open Mobile Platform" to develop domestic mobile operating system using components of Sailfish OS by Jolla, Finland
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Update, May 11, 2016:
I requested more information about the news below from Jolla. Here is the official update via Juhani Lassila, Head of Communications at Jolla, Finland:
"Jolla Ltd. has licensed Sailfish OS to a Russian company Open Mobile Platform. This company was established in order to localize Sailfish OS, enrich it with domestic Russian services and preinstalled applications and to adopt it for Russian smartphones and tablets. During this work developers of Open Mobile Platform will contribute back to open source part of Sailfish OS project"
Juhani Lassila
Head of Communications
Jolla Ltd
"Open Mobile Platform is not only promoting its Sailfish OS based product but investing own recourses for Russian Sailfish OS community support. Jolla continues developing and licensing Sailfish OS, and actively participates in the related open source projects."
Original post, May 6, 2016:
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| Grigory Berezkin Main shareholder of Votron Member of The Board at Jolla |
Grigory Berezkin, Member of The Board at Jolla currently owns 80% share of Votron making him one of the biggest individual owners of Sailfish OS. Sailfish Holding located in Hong Kong is a parent company behind Finnish Sailfish OS. Other owners are at least Jolla from Finland and private investors in Russia, China and Italy.
Mr. Berezkin founded the new company OMP via Votron with his partners, the main goal of their product (OS) being "successful competition with the Android operating system on the cost of mobile devices market".
For their employees, the new company promises to rent housing for 7000-10 000 RUB, free kindergarten and school, medical center, gym membership and a modern office. Salaries are expected to be between 70-150 thousand. If you're a developer living in Russia, Open Mobile Platform is currently hiring
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| Above: Nikolai Nikiforov, Minister of Telecoms Below: Alexei Ulyukayev, Economic Development Minister Federation of Russia |
In the last summer Jolla reached a remarkable victory over Samsung in a work group in the Ministry of Telecoms and mass Communicatios in Russia. Sailfish OS was selected over Tizen to be presented in a foreign import substitution program aiming to support Russian software development and to reduce the amount of American operating systems in Russia. For the backgrounds on Russia's plans, please read this post
Minister of Telecommunications, Mr. Nikolai Nikiforov introduced the plan using Sailfish OS as an import substitution in a program requiring 2.2B RUB from the governmental budget.
This plan was not supported with governmental financing, the Ministry of Economic Development finding it "unreliable".
Still, the main goal remains. Russia is to support the usage of domestic software, and using foreign mobile operating systems should be reduced from the current 95% to 75% by 2020 and to 50% by 2025. It was time for a private money to step in.
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| Pavel Eyges CEO at Open Mobile Platform Member of The Board at Jolla |
The company's mission:
"Creation of an independent open mobile platform that could meet the demand of both large companies and organizations in the construction of trusted mobile solutions, as well as receiving a mass market of consumers in maintaining privacy when using their mobile devices. Among the short-term goals of the company - to create a system and ecosystem core corresponding to the needs of the Russian market and regulatory requirements. In a longer term - promotion on foreign markets."
Kommersant in Russia shares that open components of Sailfish OS are being used in this new domestic operating system, and that negotiations have begun with Russian Electronics to use this operating system in a Russian smartphone to hit the markets for less than $200.
Editorial
While two of the Russian Jolla Board members are highly involved in OMP, and also the ownership of Sailfish Holding is strong in Russia, we might speculate if Sailfish OS could currently been seen as a Russian or as a Finnish operating system. If a Russian one, we might actually see the development of the whole OS moving to Russia while companies like OMP are being put up. I'd call Sailfish OS at least Finnish-Russian at this point, and in my opinion these countries have good relationship also in the governmental level. It'll be interesting to follow this news story.
I'm also speculating if the device suggested by Kommersant is different from the one by Intex (India) maybe entring the Russian markets with their Sailfish OS smartphone model. Intex Aqua Fish was introduced on February during MWC16.
Read also: Our earlier news related to Russia
Mr. Nikiforov has also tweeted these nice pics of the new company:
Российский центр разработки новой мобильной операционной системы открыл вакансии https://t.co/2pyoJN4nN0 Пжлст, RT pic.twitter.com/PsUOMRDwlr— Николай Никифоров (@nnikiforov) 5 May 2016
By:
Cover Image: twitter.com/nnikiforov/status/728264659996950528
Sources: vc.ru/n/innopolis-mobile-os, spb.hh.ru/employer/2300703, kommersant.ru/doc/2980329, vc.ru/n/no-money-russian-developers, kommersant.ru/doc/2735091
Update source (May 11, 2016): email from Juhani Lassila at Jolla Ltd.
Published: 2016-05-06 10:00 UTC
Updated: 2018-03-26 17:28 UTC (updated functional links, thanks for feedback)
Hello, you seems quite active today.
ReplyDeleteThis article is quite interesting.
I remark, that there are quite big actors around jolla.
Maybe too big for my understanding, and in an high political level.
It scratch me a little bit behind the head.
Make me in other words a little bit nervous for the good and the privacy for all the peoples who look for better privacy care.
I find interesting on how it will evolve the story.
Do you means that omp will be done as fork from sfos?
Or integrate it?
Currently a lot's of nations make the run to have their own system.
Hope that russia don't look at sfos directly, but inspire themselves from it...
Cheers
> Do you means that omp will be done as fork from sfos?
ReplyDelete> Or integrate it?
Great questions to start a discussion. I'll be a bit careful on my own opinion, as it might turn the discussion into wrong course from the beginning here. But the different possibilities are: Development of the current UI (as Sailfish OS). New UI on top of the same core, maybe with some components of the current UI included (could still be named as Sailfish OS). Only some components taken from the core for a new OS. (with new name). What do you think? (everyone)
Seems that you get it what i think. But you're right, it's to early to answer on it concretely.
ReplyDeleteWould be pure speculation.
Your suggestion of different possibilities are quite interesting.
That will be great that you keep us in the picture for this theme.
My interesting is that jolla could keep their motivations and promises, to propose a system for privacy care for all the common users. And won't be corrupted from a stronger grouping with own ideologic and politic needs.
Even though, with "privacy care" and "private sphere" words, we have already a foot in a form of political motivation too...
> And won't be corrupted from a stronger grouping with own ideologic and politic needs
ReplyDeleteI trust just as much (or as little) on both western and eastern parties regarding this matter. While being solely Finnish OS, it was somewhat easier for me as a Finn to just take a word from Jolla for the privacy of the OS, but now it might become even more important for Jolla to work towards their promise of open sourcing the OS. Remaining proprietary and at the same time moving abroad (or becoming global) is not nice news for privacy oriented customers.
That's ok, and more than understandable. for a finn-man would be indeed expected to look at it ;-)
ReplyDeleteAs french (or middle europa) guy, i'm quite the man in the middle (not just geographically meant).
open-source would make for me and my "worries" a huge difference to trust and keep the system...
Keep a system proprietary is quite resource and maintenance expensive, and protect some unwanted effects or hidden business...
> is not nice news for privacy oriented customers
Indeed, not nice. i suspect behind some fears to loose the business and the party, if they do that. With their "stable" financing...
to have a Putin's backdoor and pseudo democracy?! no thanks! its sad day for Jolla fans :(
ReplyDeleteA backdoor, where? Great day for Sailfish OS development if you ask me. Also, I hope we don't mix too much politics into the comments, even that I understand some readers thinking about that while reading such news.
ReplyDeleteRegarding possible backdoors, I'd like to bring up these into the discussion:
1. There's no proof that Russian software would have any more backdoors than software from other countries
2. Any possible backdoors might just work better in the device drivers below the os. It's been suggested that for example the GSM chip, taking care of the mobile network connections, could be used for accessing location information in the currently existing smartphones. Those drivers are usually proprietary code of the chip manufacturers.
3. One should not trust any proprietary code from any country, if worried about user privacy. Only open source code which can be objectively reviewed by anyone is worth the full trust everywhere. While proprietary, the device should be used considering that privacy is possibly compromised. This goes to Android, Windows, iOS as well as Sailfish OS. Of course, if one decides to trust a certain company (including the companies providing the drivers), it's up to the one.
i have read that Jolla is currently speaking with Lenovo about bringin Sailfish to new Smartphones. In Russia are new Mobiles awaited till end of the Year! Maybe there is an interesting Future ahead of us! ;-)
ReplyDeletehttp://jollacommunity.it/sailfish-os-russia-lenovo/
http://www.corpomir.ru/25995-Smartfony-s-lokalizovannoy-OS-Sailfish-poyavyatsya-v-RF-v-2016-godu.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
links for the above (thanks for sharing Raymaen)
Delete- Jolla Community Italia
- Corpomir, Russia
So company is for 44% owned by russians. Right after there was a 12mil investment? A bit of a co incedence isnt it?
ReplyDeleteWe can't calculate the ownership based on amount of the Board Members, and we don't know how much of votes each member has on The Board when making decision at Jolla. These are business matters usually not shared outside the companies.
ReplyDeleteIn my knowledge all together more than 70M€ has been invested on Sailfish OS development and Jolla branded devices, part of that on the Finnish company Jolla, part of that as shares of Sailfish Holding in Hong Kong. The investments includes at least angel investors, governmental funding (Finland) and crowdfunding.
Good news for everywere :)
ReplyDeleteVery nice to have your comment, thanks!
Deletehttps://jolla.comes.today/russian-company-to-use-sailfish-os/
ReplyDeleteThough it was a post of May, but the content was really interesting so I translated there. Some Chinese readers commented (I've received) as very "informative" 😆
Thanks for this news😄😄😄