From the launch of Jolla smartphone, to the opening of Jolla Harbour (accepting apps to Jolla Store), to the recent introduction of the Jolla tablet, our community members have asked for a Developer Program they can participate in. This demand for a Developer Program certainly did not go unnoticed!

Already about a year ago, we introduced the community beta (cbeta) group as an endeavor to collect feedback from our community. We take this opportunity to thank our cbeta members for making this a success by giving us honest feedback on how each release candidate is perceived!

In addition we’ve been paving the road for a smoother developer experience every step of the way. Some of our efforts have included: accepting more APIs for Harbour, regular Sailfish OS and open source collaboration meetings, renewing Sailfish OS portal at sailfishos.org, and also bringing the missing Silica documentation back.

Introducing the Jolla Tablet Developer Device loan program

We are now ready to take the next step in our Developer Program, and pilot a developer program for the Jolla Tablet! We have decided to make the pilot phase invite-only, to keep the program focused and manageable as we start it off.

We aim for an Unlike Developer Program, fitting the unique needs of our community. The developers who will be getting their personal invitations within the next few weeks are hand-picked based on their technical contributions to Sailfish OS. These are active community members (including current cbeta members), and we trust that they will provide appropriate feedback during the pilot to serve the program expansion in the future.

What we are piloting now is the Jolla Tablet Developer Device loan program. Within the program we will ship a number of loan devices to selected developers by the end of June, along with early access SDK and tablet Software Release(s). As the SDK and tablet software releases aren’t public yet, the devices and software will be given out for selected developers under a common Product Loan Agreement (PLA).

In return, we expect feedback in the form of failure reports and suggestions for better process. We are taking this step by step, so please be patient. We will see how it goes and evaluate what else we can provide or what is needed from the developer community.

If you do not receive an invitation for the program pilot, please do not worry and bear with us for a little longer. We will share info about future opportunities to join the Developer Program as it grows. Watch this space!