Russia is building its own mobile OS based on Jolla’s Sailfish

Russia may be getting an official mobile operating system soon.

Russian minister of communications Nikolai Nikiforo has announced plans for Russia to build its own operating system based on Jolla’s Sailfish.

Sailfish is an open-source operating system based on Linux and Mer. It currently has less than one percent saturation in Russia.

This move may be in response to a denial by Apple and SAP to comply with the Russian government’s request for them to expose their source codes. Russia wanted to know if Apple or SAP had allowed any US spy software in their operating systems.

Nikiforo also wants Russia to reduce dependency on foreign technology as the country faces sanctions for annexing Crimea.

In developing its own operating system, Russia would have tighter control on spyware. Though Jolla is open-source, it’s not known if Russia will follow suit and allow forked versions of their official state OS.

➤ Russia plans to leave Apple, Android behind by building its own smartphone software [Yahoo Tech]