

The license is a one time payment for third party models. All of them are already aging. The C2 was a white label phone for Sailfish OS, the first dedicated Sailfish OS device in years and does not require any license nor does the new to be launched “Jolla Phone”. Most people ordered the Jolla Phone at 580 EUR. Whatever “postmarketOS-capable” phone you were thinking about but for 58 EUR it can’t be that great. Even cheaper Chinese competition equivalent hardware will cost around 200 EUR. The only Dimensity 7100 device I could find at this point was 260 EUR or so, with a worse screen.
I do agree that they should go fully open source but they are at least gradually opening up those parts that are still closed (mostly UI and some few stock apps). Sailffish OS is light years from mainstream adoption, at the very least. But that is not the game they are playing. This is a niche product for people that either want to get away from Google or Apple, or some that actually like the fairly unique UI of Sailfish OS or like to tinker with its Linux base (whatever you think about Sailfish OS and its not entirely open nature, it is still the most functional Linux based alternative out there, when it comes to functioning as a phone, including VoLTE, camera etc, at least in Europe).
Jolla has been years out of the wheel when it comes to own hardware. The crucial thing they need to prove now is that they are capable of delivering what they announced at maybe 15-20k sales.

The Pocophone F1 was 300 EUR when it launched. Sure you can buy used phones for much cheaper than new ones. If you want to get a cheap Sailfish OS device, get a used Sony Xperia 10 II for 50-80 EUR. Yes, it is a tad worse in performance for the CPU (and much worse for GPU, in case you care about that) than the F1 but there goes your “10x” difference, when one is not comparing apples and oranges. Or you go for a community supported phone like the Mi Note 10, which you can find for 120 EUR, comparable SOC performance but much better screen and dramatically better camera than the F1.
Btw how is the camera functionality, VoLTE functionality, battery status, etc on such a device with postmarketOS? Honest question, because according to postmarketOS documentation, there is not a single device that is listed to have all the basic functionality, other than the Librem, a device with weak hardware sold today for 799 USD.
Tinkering is not black and white but a spectrum. That is why LFS, Gentoo, Arch, Fedora, Linux Mint etc all have their justification to exist. Sailfish OS gives a a pretty functional phone out of the box but allows you to tinker around if you want to, not to the extend a Postmarket OS would but UI aside, you can get down deep and dirty if you want to, as far as I understand. In a similar way, I don’t think one should get Sailfish OS over postmarketOS, there is a place for both. That Sailfish OS costs you 10 times more, necessarily, is just false information.
The premium of the new Jolla Phone, over Chinese competition is maybe 2-3 fold. New vs New. Look at other dedicated Linux phones and that is quite common, simply because small production run phones can never compete with Chinese mass production phones on price.