Source.

Simple Mobile apps have been very popular among FOSS enthusiasts. I’ve personally been using the Gallery, Contacts and the Phone app since a few years now. It’s a shame that it has come to this, will be on the lookout for their forks.

  • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
    147·
    1 year ago

    For posterity, but also for forks if the repos go down, I have created https://github.com/SimplerMobileTools and downloaded all the original repos, branches, and tags which will soon be uploaded there.

    I have already got SM Gallery compiling, so thats a start, and will upload all the repos tomorrow when its not so late.

    Note: Any former maintainer of SMT will be added on to SrMT upon request.

    EDIT: All forks updated with notice of rationale and link to this discussion.

    EDIT2: https://github.com/FossifyOrg is a soft fork created by one of the current maintainers. I will keep the hard fork up just in case.

    • sadbehr@lemmy.nzEnglish
      27·
      1 year ago

      Not all heroes wear capes. Thank you for your service. A hero among thieves. The hero we didn’t know we needed and didn’t deserve. Insert other hero quips.

      Na but thanks. What a legend.

    • Sphks@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      19·
      1 year ago

      Now you need to change the names and make these new names famous, since that’s the thing that the company has really bought. The brand.

      • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
        12·
        1 year ago

        Not my intent. I’ll do this, but don’t have the time to fully maintain or distribute. Maybe I’ll organize releases for Obtainium, where FOSS elites will grab them, but I’m not in it to “promote”, just to “save”.

        Hopefully someone with more motivation comes along and does what you are saying, though.

  • Abe Froman@lemmy.worldEnglish
    109·
    1 year ago

    Terrible news. These apps are really great. Reminds me of what happened to Quick Pick and ES file explorer and u could also add Nova Launcher. More apps assigned to the graveyard. Hopefully they get forked quickly and updated when needed.

  • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    95·
    1 year ago

    Wtf. I paid for the apps to avoid exactly this…

    Too many people think the “free” in free software means “without monetary cost”. Development costs money. If nobody pays, it gets sold

    • itsmect@monero.townEnglish
      19·
      1 year ago

      Same here. Donated not only to cover my installs, but also for everyone I recommended it to. I hope the f-droid version wont be affected, otherwise I have to uninstall the upcomming bloat- and spyware ridden versions manually from a bunch of devices smh.

      I mean I am fine with apps not being maintained and eventually break, but selling out and breaching trust like this is exactly how regular companies would treat me and why I chose FOSS in the first place.

      • rucking@feddit.deEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        Looks like the community is already forking the project. It would be cool if fdroid has a clean transition to the fork.

        • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          That would be a terrible precedent…

          Oh we’ll just “cleanly” (silently) update to a different fork by a different dev.

          Thats exactly what we are trying to avoid google play “cleanly” updating our apps to the new, spyware apps

          • Sanyanov@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            Agreed

            F-Droid should halt updates if app stops being FOSS (which F-Droid is all about) and then introduce the most popular fork as a standalone app.

      • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        Yeah… Fuck me, for trying to compensate someone for their work so that they dont have to sell it to a spyware company… I’m the moron here

        /s

    • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nlEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      Yeah I also paid for it.

      I would rather let the project die than my data being sold out to a gang of parasites like it has been

    • Venia Silente@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      Wtf. I paid for the apps to avoid exactly this…

      And this is why I never pay for apps. You never know what changes (external or internal) are going to enshittify it next.

  • Snapz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    89·
    1 year ago

    Incoming, “We don’t plan to change anything you love about these apps!”

    Narrator: “They were planning to change EVERYTHING you love about these apps.”

    • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.mlEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      They will do what every other buy-happy tech company does and strip all the charm from those apps and turn them into the same horrible, corporate, enshitified apps that they were originally supposed to be an alternative to.

  • KISSmyOS@lemmy.worldEnglish
    42·
    1 year ago

    Terrible News!!!
    The developer of these apps I’ve been using for years, and who hasn’t seen a single penny in donations from me in all that time, has decided to sell them!
    Now I’m really mad at them for selling out, and am forced to move to another set of apps someone else has made for me to use free of charge.

    • hypertext@feddit.deEnglish
      23·
      1 year ago

      you know, I’d really love to get a good app that i pay for and that in turn doesn’t collect or sell my data and has no ads, but there’s so many but’s.

      • one time payment is not sustainable for development
      • i can’t have a subscription for each and every app
      • with free and fairly decent apps from big Corp like Google photos, most people won’t bother

      just to say: I’m not sure there is a good solution where everyone wins :/

      • moitoi@feddit.deEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        What could be more sustainable for the development is to make updates with new features paid. People have a one time payment for the app and then pay for new features.

        It’s absolutely ot perfect. But, it’s not a subscription and the dev still earn something.

        • padge@lemmy.zipEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          This would cause a maintenance nightmare for the devs though. And from what I hear, the app stores discourage multiple versions of the same app these days.

      • IdleSheep@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        In ye old days the reigning model was a pseudo subscription where you paid for a version of a program and that’s all you got, if you wanted the next version of that program you had to buy it again. This made developing updates profitable and people who didn’t care to pay for the update could still use the outdated program. It wasn’t perfect by any means but I feel like it was one of the better compromises compared to everything else.

        Sadly with the advent of mobile apps such a model is heavily discouraged.

          • IdleSheep@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            Yeah it’s not the perfect model for sure. Usually you did get updates to fix vulnerabilities and bugs, but any major version release would require a new purchase/license.

            But any software that requires connecting to a server anywhere just doesn’t work in this model.

            In the end there’s not much of a choice. Either you pay more for apps to compensate for the time spent on them, subscribe to reduce your costs and assure continuous revenue, or ads.

            Anything that’s perpetually free, unless it has massive communities willing to maintain it, typically ends up like the tools we see here: abandoned/sold.

        • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Well to be fair, for most software it was the major releases that were paid, and the minor ones were given free, on the understanding that these ~never contained functionality changes, additions or reworks.

          So 3.1 was purely a bugfix for 3.0, for example. Hence you got it free. Often when 4.0 came out (which you had to pay to get) there’s also a be a 3.2 update that served as the “final” rleease of that branch. Any bugs in it now are there to stay.

          And yeah. Although, I feel in a way that’s what we got here, no? If I paid for these I can turn updates off and use the version I bought, so to speak.

    • Gogo Sempai@programming.devOPEnglish
      12·
      1 year ago

      I donated to them directly once and then again opted for the PlayStore versions to buy these apps. Sadly, I will have to move to the FDroid version now because the PlayStore one, the ones I paid for, can get infected with adware any day now.

  • stifle867@programming.devEnglish
    41·
    1 year ago

    All the code is GPLv3 so it will remain FOSS. There’s no need to immediately switch to other apps. You can optionally fork then build the apps for yourself.

      • stifle867@programming.devEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        I was talking about immediately switching. There is enough time to build the apps from source for yourself before they upload their shittified version.

        • Carlos Solís@communities.azkware.netEnglish
          7·
          1 year ago

          If the next version is close-sourced, that means that it won’t be published in the repository that F-Droid follows to build their version. Yeah I think you’re safe.

              • stifle867@programming.devEnglish
                1·
                1 year ago

                Why do you say that? Unless they completely rewrite the app from scratch it is not even possible to have a closed-source version of the app. That’s what the GPLv3 does.

                • Carlos Solís@communities.azkware.netEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  If all the developers of the GPLv3 version agree to relicense their contributions, it’s unfortunately possible to close-source further versions of the source code. Does somebody know if Simple Apps accepted external contributions?

  • LCP@lemmy.worldEnglish
    34·
    1 year ago

    Ugh.

    I migrated to Simple Gallery after QuickPic was similarly sold to a sketchy buyer. Been using it for so many years, supported the dev(s) by purchasing some of the apps and the “Thank You” app they have.

    Time to look for yet another gallery app.

    We can’t have this happening every time. There needs to be a better way to support and sustain such apps.

    • gornius@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17·
      1 year ago

      I mean, GPL guarantees code remains open and free. If they release an app based on the source code licensed under GPL, they have to give a source code along with essential build instructions to anyone who is using it, and then you can do anything with that code, including sharing, compiling, and distributing that app, provided it’s under GPL license.

      Edit: I see it’s licensed under GPL 3.0, so no worries.

      • LCP@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        1 year ago

        Yeah thankfully the code’s GPL 3.0, but I’d imagine there’s a good chunk of people using the app from the Play Store who may not be aware or may not want to compile the app themselves, who might be affected with whatever future updates come out.

    • linuxdweeb@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I’m not a lawyer either, but the GPL doesn’t say anything about commercial use. Zipo can sell the code in the apps without having to ask permission from contributors. The only restriction is that they have to keep their modifications open source (which that Github response says).

      But the main point is that the Zipo people bought out the Google Play listing, giving them access to the millions of users who have those apps installed on their phones. They likely don’t give a shit about features/keeping the apps closed source. It’s just a purchase of the userbase, likely for shady reasons.

      This also means that forking the Simple Mobile repos isn’t even likely to accomplish much. Sure, it’ll put control of the repo in the hands of a more trusted party (which is significant), but since it’s open source anyways, it’d be easy to catch any attempts to sneak malware into the apps. And if all development effort moves to the fork, Zipo can still take that fork and redistribute it under the “Simple Mobile Tools” name.

      Ultimately, the fucked up thing here is that the original developer, Tibor Kaputa, sold out millions of users. Forking isn’t going fix that. Fuck him. The only thing that will fix this situation is if Google takes down their store listing, but that’s not going to happen. Hopefully F-droid does.

      • BrioxorMorbide@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        The only restriction is that they have to keep their modifications open source

        And since it’s GPL that any additions are compatible with the GPL, which the ad / tracking stuff they’re likely to add likely isn’t.

        And if all development effort moves to the fork, Zipo can still take that fork and redistribute it under the “Simple Mobile Tools” name.

        Only if they don’t add their own proprietary shit, and if they don’t, how would their “bully users to pay for features” business model work?

        According to https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/General-Discussion/issues/241#issuecomment-1837837729 “like 99% of the current code has been written by me and other paid devs, so no need to overreact the licensing thing” it seems like the remaining 1% is going to be ignored or possibly even removed if they think that leaving that in might open them up to DMCA claims by disgruntled contributors - which taking code from an open source fork would definitely do.

        • linuxdweeb@lemm.eeEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          And since it’s GPL that any additions are compatible with the GPL, which the ad / tracking stuff they’re likely to add likely isn’t.

          That’s a good point, although I wonder if there are any ad SDKs that are GPL compatible? There’s no reason that couldn’t exist AFAIK.

          However, there’s also the much simpler scenario where they straight up replace the apps with something completely different. This company buys apps all the time, so I’m sure they have at least a few calendar, gallery, file browser, etc apps lying around that they can reuse.

  • sag@lemm.eeEnglish
    25·
    1 year ago

    Why? I hate this another loss for us. This year is pain in ass for me.