As a hacker I want to work on things which are interesting to me and are in line with my values ;)

There's plenty of free software stuff to work on with Linux that a ton of people use and enjoy. And then there's stuff that, to me at least, seems like a "suicide mission":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openmoko

Bright people, good work, and so on, but it's sad to see something you do go nowhere.

Jolla looks to me better than Openmoko when it comes to adoption chances. And they are doing things right, basing their work on the common middleware (Mer + Nemo). PlasmaActive also uses Mer. They aren't suicide mission, they are a startup with planned strategy and aim to be profitable. Let's see how they fare.

I wish them the best of luck; I was just explaining why as a developer, I'm a bit leery of a new platform like this. I feel for them, as I know it's a very tough spot to be in.

It's tough on one hand, and it's a wild frontier waiting for more pioneers on the other hand, since there is lack of innovation (Android and iOS are pretty much stalled when it comes to introducing new ideas). So newcomers have good chances of providing interesting alternatives. I'd worry more about the sickening patents situation, than about lack of interest in new platforms.

But surely they'll need to attract developers more, since many aren't familiar with Sailfish. There was a recent post about from Mer folks:

http://mer-project.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-sailfishos-co-crea...

From the infamous burning platform memo, the rationale for leaving Meego for Windows Phone:

>"The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyze or join an ecosystem."

Jolla's move to support Android apps is to try to mitigate the above effect, but it may lead to the Windows vs. OS/2 scenario where OS/2 ran Windows programs too well, so companies never bothered making native OS/2 apps, after all, why waste precious resources on supporting yet another incompatible platform?

On the other side, as I said in another comment, you have huge companies selling smartphones at or below cost using their profits from other lines of business(Nexus 5, Moto G, Lumia 520(a surprisingly good smartphone for $59 off contract?!!)). They're doing this to either gain marketshare for the ecosystem effects(Microsoft) or as a moat, to sell ads, or to commoditize and reduce Apple's smartphone margins(Google)[1].

Jolla has to compete with these and ultracheap Chinese and India OEMs at the low end and the iPhones, high end Galaxies, Lumias with 41MP cameras and 6" screens, HTC, LG phablets at the high end.

I wish them luck, they need it.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/25/search-googles-castle-moat/

On the other hand, one can create Sailfish-native Qt apps that run on Android and iPhone as well. I'm not sure if Qt iOS support is completely ready, but it is something to look forward.