A six-man group of open-source diehards from Nokia have teamed up to
form Jolla Mobile, a company focused on building phones using the
Linux-based MeeGo operating system.
Rather, MeeGo will be a sort of jumping-off point. On its Twitter page,
Jolla advisor and former MeeGo product manager Jukka Eklund wrote, “We
are developing [our] own smartphone OS based on MeeGo… our own UI… for
new products.”
Jolla will soon be making announcements about its version of MeeGo as well as a brand new smartphone it’s bringing to market.
The company so far is composed of “N9 core professionals and MeeGo
community alumni,” the page reads. While N9 folks will be at the helm,
there is no intention to offer support for Nokia’s N9 smartphones — more
on those later.
Leading the team is Marc Dillon, the principal engineer behind MeeGo at
Nokia up until May 2012, according the group’s LinkedIn page, which has
been disappearing and reappearing all morning.
Jolla also employs Marko Saukko, formerly a core maintainer for the Mer
Project, a Linux distro for mobile devices. A few other MeeGo engineers
and hardcore Linux enthusiasts round out the team.
MeeGo was built by a few of these guys along with some folks from Intel.
However, the project clearly stagnated within Nokia, and the FOSSies
behind it have decided to continue fighting the good (open-source
mobile) fight elsewhere.
Eklund said that Jolla intends for its OS and apps — as well as possibly the device itself — to be open-sourced.
Eklund also revealed Jolla is making good use of Nokia’s Qt SDK, which
can be used to create apps for Nokia N9 smartphones as well as desktop
environments.
More details about Jolla’s OS and product should be available within the
next few weeks, Eklund said. The company’s first release is still in
development.
Although the startup is composed of former Nokia employees, Jolla is
said to be working with Nokia on hiring issues so as to avoid triggering
non-compete clauses in employees’ contracts.
Nokia’s N9 was announced just over one year ago. At that time, it was
clear to our staff that the MeeGo-powered device was a side project for
Nokia, which was primarily investing in a long-term relationship with
Windows Phone. Because of that, we recognized the N9 was doomed from the
start. In fact, the N9 was never released in North America at all.
