Simple Mobile Tools is being sold to a for-profit firm ZipoApps - eviltoast

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.

  • 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.