Jolla Releases Source Code For Sailfish Browser

Finnish smartphone manufacturer, Jolla has just released the source code for the Sailfish OS browser.  This move makes it the primary internal application for the operating system to be open sourced.  The source code is to be found in the GitHub version control system, meaning that the Sailfish user community are now able to contribute improvements and also make fixes to the browser, which is built upon the Mozilla open source Gecko browser engine.

Jolla’s co-founder Stefano Mosconi says “We are very proud to announce this…Our objective with the project is to make this the first step to get official support from Mozilla Corp. to a mobile browser based on Gecko and embedded in Qt.”

Jolla says that they have been contributing to open source projects, Nemo and Mer for a extended period of time and that the viewpoint of the company is to contribute and chip-in actively to open source communities.

The company itself was founded by a number of former Nokia employee after the manufacturer abandoned the open source MeeGo platform in favour of Windows Phone for the Lumia series. Jolla’s Sailfish Operating System is a continuation of the MeeGo project and it boasts full compatibility with Android OS.

The firms first smartphone, named Jolla, went on sale in Finland last year following a pre-order method that watched orders being accepted from 136 different countries globally. A portal that invited early adopters to assist with the future developments of Sailfish OS has already been opened, with consumers able to discuss and then vote on the features they wish to see included in the OS.

Sailfish OS is not the only open source mobile operating systems that is wanting to make an impact on the smartphone market. Firefox OS and Ubuntu Mobile are at various stages of development, hoping to offer an alternative to Android, iOS and Windows Phone.

[Image via jollausers]

SOURCE: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/jolla-sailfish-browser-open-source-138810