Jolla, the Finnish mobile company that created the Sailfish OS, said demand for a new initiative designed to boost the operating system's community of fans and developers was so high it sold out within a day of being announced.
The Sailfish Community Device Program was fully subscribed on the day it was announced, the company stated. The initiative aims to expand the community working on the open source Sailfish OS, and is Jolla's first step towards extending the functionality of the software since it secured fresh financing to advance its Sailfish OS licensing program in the opening months of 2016.
Jolla co-founder Sami Pienimäki explained that an "active developer and fan community has always been a core part of Sailfish OS" and that the speed with which spaces on the program sold out "is a strong message of the willingness to change the world together."
Program members gain exclusive access to Sailfish OS developer sessions led by company experts, and from July will also receive a Jolla C smartphone -- a new device unveiled by the company as it announced the initiative that features a quad-core Snapdragon processor, 2 GB of memory, a 5-inch HD display, and dual-SIM.
Members will also receive access to Sailfish OS updates, and can opt-in to a testing program for future Beta releases of the software.
Pienimäki said Jolla launched the initiative because the "role of an active community gets even bigger" as the company expands its Sailfish licensing program.
Jolla announced in early May that it would press ahead with extending its Sailfish OS licensing program after raising a total of $12 million (€10.7 million) in financing since December 2015 -- a move that chairman of the board Antti Saarnio said put the company on a "strong path out of our third start-up death valley."
The Sailfish Community Device Program will initially run for a year (through May 2017).
Pienimäki said Jolla is already "investigating if we can extend" the scope of the program.
For more:
- see this Jolla statement on membership (PDF)
- read this blog announcing the program
- view this financing announcement (PDF)
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