Android competitor Sailfish becomes official OS of Russian Government

Sailfish OS has become the only mobile OS to receive domestic certification for corporate use by the Russian Government. Finnish company Jolla, who owns and develops Sailfish, made the announcement today, stating that the certification process had been on-going for almost a year and a half before it was finalized.

“The Russian government has a list of software which can be seen as a national software and which are audited and certified, and in this list of software, our software is the only mobile OS software — currently,” Jolla co-founder and chairman Antti Saarnio told TechCrunch.

The news follows a number of moves by the Russian government aimed at reducing reliance on iOS and Android, both of which are maintained by US companies. According to TechCrunch, the Russian government said it wants to decrease the usage of foreign OSes in its territory from approximately 95 percent to 50 percent by 2025.

Saarnio also said that the Russian version of the OS would be a custom platform that suits the government’s own needs, and that Jolla may replicate the process in other nations.

“Essentially we maintain the open source and the open Sailfish, and keep releasing it and we always produce the latest release [to our licensing customers]. So our responsibility and role here is to make sure there is no forking of Sailfish here — but it happens exactly in collaboration together with our licensing customers. And this is the model that we believe that we can successfully also establish to other markets,” said Jolla CEO and co-founder Sami Pienimäki.

Like Android, Sailfish OS is an open-source platform based on a custom Linux kernel. Jolla has released several Sailfish OS devices in the past but currently doesn’t have any branded smartphones on sale.

What do you think? Fancy using the official OS of the Russian government?