[Mi 3 Original Android Development] pawz:
I was a big follower of MeeGo since I realised that it was the only Linux distro that supported the integrated graphics on the awful CedarTrail Atom series of netbooks. I got heavily into following their background and enthused about it with my friend who was a collector of rare Nokia phones. I always wanted to see whether SailfishOS ended up being any good, so when I saw this port I was thrilled. I was even more surprised (if not shocked) when it actually worked flawlessly without any bugs straight from the moment I flashed it. It took very little time to work out how to get new community developed software from Warehouse and I was stunned at how silky smooth everything was and that the native apps for Facebook and Youtube not only worked but were smoother and faster than the native apps on Android.

And then I got to the point where I wanted Android support so that I could use my favourite photo manipulation apps and such (which SFOS completely lacks) and stumbled across the whole licensing issue. I was so utterly disappointed. I poked around the net thinking someone must have ported Alien Davlik to other platforms as they had done on the Nexus, but my search results were so stark as to indicate that it was just not a thing. Not wanting to abandon my pretty new OS that I'd fallen in love with, I decided "Screw it. I need a new phone anyway. I'll buy a Jolla phone online". Looked on Ebay. None. Looked on AliExpress. Nadda. Looked on Jolla's shop and apparently they don't even sell them there anymore. All I could find was a list of small batch releases in overseas markets like South America or Russia, but ultimately they were in such short distribution runs that no one was shipping them overseas or reselling them online.

What a crying shame that Jolla's efforts have been so badly handicapped by their license with Myriad. In every forum I looked there were enthusiastic adopters suddenly realising they couldn't have the AD support like on the official Jolla phones, which seem to be manufactured out of pure unobtainium and then swansonning out of the forum going "Well, that's never going to catch on. I would have loved to use this on my main device but not if I can't run any apps. What an epic fail".

Myriad's licensing reminds me of something out of the Silicon Valley tv series. They basically create a really cool thing that allows apps to be ported onto anything, and they they... won't allow it to be ported onto anything. It's so bad that most commenters who've seen the demos don't even think AD is a real thing. Their farcical 2011 promise of being able to "run" Android apps on iPad, whipping every news outlet into a frenzy turned out to be one of the most facepalm inducing lies I've seen in the tech business when all they ended up showing was a remote desktop app that ran the apps on a remote server and there's been virtually no mention of the technology since that embarrassing non-demonstration. Most people took one look at that and decided "These guys are total liars. They thought they could do something, but then they couldn't do it at all so they faked it". If Jolla's implementation didn't exist I would likewise believe that Alien Davlik was complete vapourware but since I've never even seen a Jolla phone in the flesh, essentially I've never seen any proof that AD actually functions as claimed.

What a missed opportunity for them to offer a limited license for personal use so that enthusiasts and developers could actually get the tech in their hands and show their friends and say "Look, this alternative SFOS is really amazing and check out this thing called Alien Davlik". If the license let it be installed for personal use but not shipped with any device or made available on any app store, they wouldn't be losing anything because it would only be hackers and modders who used it, but at least it would get both SFOS and AD into people's hands so that "Sailfish OS" wasn't something that was met with a "Huh ?" by anyone except a hardcore alternate OS mobile user or OS historian and then they'd have a chance of actually shipping SFOS compatible phones. If they wanted us to pay a similar amount for an AD license as they received from a Jolla phone customer, I'd paypal one click that **** up so fast I wouldn't even think twice.

But no. Great team of developers creates cool OS, can't drum up funding for widespread manufacturing, doesn't even sell the devices themselves online, can't put the tech on any other platform because their hands are tied by a greedy IP holder who can't even demo the technology running, and won't let the only licensee who's made it functional distribute it except on devices no one can even buy, and almost a decade later the technology fades into obscurity so badly that they remove it from their website because essentially it never really made it to market.

Way to shake up the mobile OS industry there Myriad. I'd say that you had a cool thing that could change the whole industry but without having ever seen it, I have my doubts that it even exists as advertised. I wonder.. is that because it's full of bugs or performance problems and just doesn't function properly, or is it because the technology probably infringes on Oracle or Google's licenses and they're so deathly afraid of being sued into oblivion that they'd rather just bury the tech completely ?

I'd still love to play with SFOS further, especially on a tablet. Its Cairo/Wayland/QT combo with PulseAudio etc is nicely standardised and it uses so many common libraries and API's that I can see that development for it is temptingly easy. I love the way people have been able to quickly whip up YouTube, Facebook and Messenger apps with minimal coding just by leveraging common Linux tools like youtube-dl, xmpp etc.

But if Alien Davlik is kept as heavily under wraps as an Area 51 corpse that even the hacker community isn't quietly passing it around, the whole thing may as well not exist. I may be wrong about AD. I certainly couldn't find a version for cancro devices nor any hint that people were reproducing the Nexus technique to get it working, but considering it's technology that has allegedly been public almost a decade and is still as hard to find as the Philosopher's Stone, it looks more like it's disappearing than gaining ground.

So sad. My Sailfish dreams have been dashed. Not because the OS is a failure, but because they appear to be being f****d so badly on one of the core technologies that would enable it to be widely adopted. I hate seeing good technology disappear into obscurity just because some IP holder is too greedy with their licensing. It's a harsh reminder of what made me find the whole Maemo/MeeGo/Mer/SFOS scene in the first place ... the damn proprietary Power VR video chip in the CedarTrail Atom that rendered millions of devices unable to be upgraded beyond Windows 7 as promised, giving Atom such a bad name that many people like myself never want to touch it again. I'll add Sailfish OS to my list of great projects that got screwed by restrictive licensing.

I just wonder... if Alien Davlik is so revolutionary and effective, why can't Myriad ever demo it on something ? Why couldn't they actually get it to run Android apps on iOS for real, even just for demonstration purposes on a hacked device ? They don't even talk about the Jolla port, which almost feels like the only one in existence. Is no one else capable of reproducing this miracle, or do they see it as impossible to achieve without getting sued ? The more protective of their tech a company is, the more you start to suspect that it wouldn't pass public scrutiny. I just feel sorry for Jolla. Their OS seems heavily focussed on security and privacy and at a time like now when Apple and Google and other companies are in such hot water for their outrageous data collection techniques, the market for an alternative mobile OS that's security and privacy focussed must be bigger than ever. But no one would want to fund their company for widespread distribution if the platform's adoption relies on some largely highly encumbered IP from a small company who won't release their deathgrip on it. Makes you wonder right... why don't Samsung for example just buy Myriad in its entirety to acquire the technology so they can make their own successful alternative OS, either with or without Jolla's help ? I bet the answer is that the technology in question is dirty and patent infringing and no one wants to touch it.

In case you're wondering what my point was in writing all that in a dev thread for a rom port, what I'm trying to say is "Pssst. I love this rom port but does anyone know where to get Alien Davlik and whether it can be made to work on my Xiaomi ?"