As reported in a reddit post and confirmed in a github discussion, Simple Mobile Tools is being sold to ZippoApps which is known for shady business practices.
It is not yet clear whether they will make the app suite closed source (which would infringe the rights of all contributors since they contributed under the GPLv3 license).
In response to that situation, one of the main contributors forked the project under the name FossifyX and will continue to work on it.
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This is open source at its best: the original developer somehow decided to sell out to the dark side and someone rescued the projects within a couple of days. Brillant!
And thank goodness for that too: I used SMT Calendar but Etar misses a couple of features I really need that would make it a good replacement, so I’ll be sure to install FossifyX Calendar as soon as F-Droid picks it up.
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(IANAL)
Since the software is already distributed under the terms of the GPLv3 (which guarantees irrevocable rights) there is no way to forbid any distribution of the current version of the software.
It is however possible to distribute future works under a different license, but only if you aren’t bound by the GPL yourself. This would be the case if you wrote the code yourself or all contributors grant you the right to do so (eg. using a Contributor License Agreement).
There are clever ways to split software via different abstractions that allow to avoid some license features from affecting future developments too. That is to add new closed source features without relicensing the existing codebase.
Once someone exists publicly as code with an attached valid license it cannot be retroactively removed the right to use it. So only new versions could have different licenses or something.
Some folks seem to forget this feature of open source when it comes to projects like Chromium. History has plenty of examples of forks of small and large projects. Chromium (Blink) itself is one.
the original developer somehow decided to sell out to the dark side
It’s pretty ungrateful to frame someone who developed and provided software for free for a long time as a sellout.
Well no, it’s factual: the man very generously did invaluable work for years. And then he sold out. That’s just what happened, however grateful I am to him for the work he did for all those years.
I assume there were no other companies willing to buy Simple Mobile Tools, otherwise he wouldn’t have sold to that particularly hateful bunch of sumbitches. One doesn’t provide free tools with total abnegation for so many years and then choose the worse possible buyer this side of the law without a good reason. So I accept his choice and his reasons - whatever they may be.
But surely there were other ways to handle this. Like for example, telling the community that money has run out and he will be forced to sell to unsavory characters, and appealing to the community to fund him if they wanted to keep Simple Mobile Tools ads-free. But instead, he went about it all hush-hush and sprang it on everybody - users and contributors alike. Not cool.
Finally, remember that some people actually paid for their copies of Simple Mobile Tools, and they paid precisely to prevent this happening. They must feel pretty betrayed, and rightfully so.
he is selling his app suite to a comany known to ruin apps with trackers and ads, making the simple mobile tools suite no longer simple, but just another app in the ocean of crap. Also he likely violated liscences doing so
he could have at least sold to a better company, and considered the wishes of his fellow contributers as he have should according to his liscence
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At the very least I imagine they will flag it with the undesirable features tag once someone gives them a heads up 🤞
I think they will migrate everything to fossify. With the gallery this already happened, the SMT Gallery vanished from my phone and the fossify gallery appeared. I guess that’s a good way to go, since for now fossify is just the same thing with a different name.
Forgive me if I’m wrong because I’m a bit confused, but I think only the free version or non pro version are the sold ones?
Aren’t the pro versions available in F-droid already? Would those be affected?
I’m certainly rooting for Naveen and wishing him the best of luck. Hopefully he can make the apps his own and take them to new heights, it helps that they’re all pretty much feature complete.
Just read the entire thread. This is sad. I was about to recommend the contacts app to my Dad, glad I didn’t.
There is also another fork for the contacts app called Simple Contacts Pro SE by Stephan Ritscher.
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I’ve tried it a few times in the past but have always come across bugs that give me functional issues. I can’t remember exactly what they were right now but give it another few months and I’ll probably try it again.
Wondering if ConnectYou will work with my contact list in NextCloud.
if you use DAVx5 to sync them, every app with contact access will be able use them.
That sucks, I used to use them.
That’s nice to see though I changed my apps after the developer endorsed that shit phone that was quickly abandoned.
The tl;dr is someone went to him with a cheap Chinese phone that they then marked up a few hundred percent. Pre-installed SMT apps and marketed it as privacy centric, de-googled, free range, etc. When he was called out on it he doubled down. There isn’t a link to it on his site anymore, but this is it https://simplephone.tech/eu/
Tibbi has not updated his blog to say he sold out, nor his Reddit sub. The only confirmation from him is a short response on GitHub. This is totally on brand for them.
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Makes sense why I never felt like recommending Simple Mobile Apps. Trust the gut feeling. And never put all your eggs in one basket.
I’m a happy user of simple sms. I didn’t know it was a series of apps! Thank you!
Gimme new Play Store links kthxbye.
Is there a remindme bot on Lemmy?
!remindme: 2 days.
It‘s 5 days now, but better than nothing, I hope?
Thanks.
Still no Play Store links in sight.
I’m not sure who exactly maintains f-droid builds.
Thanks for the heads up. I don’t use these apps as much as I used to but I always appreciated that they exist.
that’s good, these tools have been abandoned and unusable on chromebooks ever since the switch to ARCVM.
Edit: I get the feeling that none of you know what ARCVM is.
Chromebooks are not even possible to degoogle. If you use these devices, you buy into Google…
