Sailfish OS open sourcing situation

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This page is about the promises and claims regarding open source Sailfish OS.
FOSS is an abbreviation of Free and Open Source Software
Last update on November 2, 2017

1. Is Sailfish OS open source licensed?

Currently not.
Sailfish OS is proprietary software of Jolla Oy, Finland (license).
However, the software includes a lot of open source licensed components.

Unfortunately, some people in the marketing is/are continuously expressing Sailfish OS as open source, leading that the media all over to world makes mistake presenting it as one. Last time this happened by Los Tiempos and La Prensa, two quite big magazines in Bolivia, after the latest Sailfish OS phone 'Accione' was announed by Jala.

So, is it going to be open source licensed? 

       November 2, 2017 James Noori, Community Manager at Jolla:

It's not annoying really :) circumstances and lack of resources + a lot of projects that keeps our resources busy haven't allowed us to get to open sourcing yet. As you know, it's not as simple as opening the source and making it available to the masses. There is loads of documentation to be written, testings to be done, etc etc. We haven't had a chance to put that in our priority yet. SOURCE (community meeting)

       June 14, 2017 Vesa-Matti Hartikainen, Program Manager at Jolla:

We have a plan of open sourcing more of the components, and Silica would be part of that. So far we haven’t been able to open more components as our investors have been very cautious due to financial situation. -- If our customer work proceeds nicely, as it looks now, then we should be able to proceed with opening up. SOURCE (community meeting)

      February 8, 2017 Sami Pienimäki, CEO at Jolla:

Previously we’ve also mentioned that we’re working on the further open sourcing of Sailfish OS. We have now taken the necessary steps and preparations to enable us to further open source Sailfish code, in particular in the areas of apps and UI. We have a decision process ongoing but you should expect exciting news on this during upcoming months. SOURCE (blog)

      November 29, 2016 Sami Pienimäki, CEO, and Antti Saarnio, Chairman of the Board, Jolla:

“We are working on that,” says Pienimäki. “We are currently looking for a step-wise model that we would be opening further in the application and the UI layer. We will share that plan in more concrete detail once we have it more fully available to be implemented. But that’s something we remain committed to.

“As you can maybe see also from this collaboration model together with our licensing customers they also prefer a very much open source, collaboration type of a model in combination with the licence.”

“Open sourcing is actually an investment from our side,” adds Saarnio. “It doesn’t happen in that way that we just simply open source the code and then think that everybody’s happy. We have to build support processes for this so that the community can actually make something meaningful out of the open source code.

“And it’s not a small investment from our kind of a company… But we are committed on proceeding on the same path… But it has to be a carefully managed process — otherwise you don’t get any contributions.” SOURCE (Techcrunch interview)

      May 28, 2015 Antti Saarnio, Chairman of the Board at Jolla:

We have a timeline to open source basically all of the non-commercial parts, some of them are third party parts which we can’t open source of course. But we have a timeline to open source most of the platform — because it helps us to work with the developer community and also our partners. But we are not yet releasing the timeline. We will come out very soon with an announcement about the scale of this open sourcing schedule. SOURCE (Techcrunch interview)

      For more mentions of "open source" either as a promise or an existing feature, see subtopic 6.

2. What components are already open source licensed

• proprietary packages framed violet
• open source licensed framed green

3. Community powered translations

Sailfish OS user interface is open for contributions for its translations under separate terms and conditions. Jolla has shared the language files of Sailfish OS open source components, and of its proprietary components.

Unfortunately, the service in use (Pootle) does not enable filtering the files by the component's license, and neither is that license shown anywhere. For those contributors who are willing to join only open source projects, picking only these files from the list (currently 84 files, of which about 10 are for translating open source components) is practically impossible. Anyway, here's a couple of examples of language files for translating components carrying an OSI compliant license:

4. Available open source code on Sailfish OS

Sailfish OS sources & Linux kernel sources:

• https://releases.sailfishos.org/sources/

Mer core (middleware software):

6. "Open source" used in marketing purposes

Jolla or their partners have used words "open", "openness" and "open source" in the marketing of their software. Wrong usage of "open source" during Jolla Tablet Indiegogo campaign was also publicly notified by OSI on 2015. Few examples, latest known on top:

• 2017-10-15 Los Tiempos
  "Sailfish OS es de código abierto"
• 2017-10-14 JALA ACCIONE
  "ACCIONE is the first action of Jala to achieve technological independence. With 'Sailfish OS,' an open source operating system, and the choice of world-class 'Qualcomm' hardware, we cover the needs of Latin Americans." (translated from Spanish in Accione home page)
• 2017-10-13 La Prensa
  "Sailfish es un sistema de código abierto"
• 2017-07-08 Find Best Open Source
  lists Sailfish OS claiming it has a "Public" license 
• 2016-02-24 Jolla at MWC16, Press Event, video at 0:11:05 -->
  Antti Saarnio, Head of the Board at Jolla presented Sailfish OS to the press:
  "We have Sailfish operating system, unique open innovation platform ...",
  "Then, we have lots of interest from the security device vendors, who sees that our open source platform very interesting and very unique opportunity to start building on more security features on top of that." , and
  "...open source is that when the core is visible, you can really see that there are no backdoors."
  Related articles after the event: 1, 2, 3, 4
• 2015-08-14 Jolla to Kauppalehti (Finnish video, Subtitled version)
  "security is based on fully open source OS" (04:00, translated)
• 2015-07-23 Androidpit (article)
  "The open source Sailfish OS" 
• 2015-05-08 Jolla (article)
  "-- several open source projects, and Sailfish OS is one of them."
• 2015-03-02 Softpedia (article)
  "-- real open-source alternatives like Sailfish"
  2015-03-02 Tech Week europe (article)
  "-- running the open source platform"
• 2014-11-15 Jolla at Slush 2014 (video, time 17:40)
  Tablet announcement, spoken, claims it's open source
• 2013-10-02 Jolla at Mindtrek (image below)
  "We don't use open source - we are open source"
• 2013-05-20 Laptopmag (article)
  "Sailfish OS is an open source mobile operating system"
• 2012-12-29 Engadget (article)
  "this open source mobile OS" 
• Undated: Engadget (product listing)
  "Sailfish OS, key specs, source model: open"