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

Open Source@lemmy.ml – 314 points – 12 months ago

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.

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Jeez, why can't we have nice things ?!

What are the alternatives ? I'll be searching.

If you guys find something, please, report back.

Edit: For gallery, this looks promising: https://f-droid.org/packages/deckers.thibault.aves.libre/

The one and only up to date dialer app I could find. Updated 50 minutes ago at the time of posting this: https://github.com/oxcened/opendialer

Jeez, why can't we have nice things ?!

Because freeloaders who call themselves "open source enthusiasts" aren't really good at supporting people who create them. It's often quite the opposite. Rude, entitled, and ungrateful bunch of whiners that want everything free and some more. Then act surprised after their favorite opensource app is shutdown, sold or archived.

This guy even had paid apps on the playstore so whoever says "but opensouce doesn't mean you can't sell em" can fuck right off.

And you think the solution is to sell to a company that will instantly add data mining and ads? Often to those users, for whom we have installed these apps, but from google play for the automatic updates?

They might've done so out of necessity. I don't know if the dev(s) of the Simple Tools apps were working on it full time, but if they were and just not enough contributions were coming in from it... Well everyone has to eat.

As the saying goes, "everyone has their price". It's easy to condemn the developers for their choice until you're in the exact same scenario as they were. Whether that's because they were starving, or even just offered enough money to make their lives a lot easier - not too many people would turn it down.

lol exactly this. I never even liked those apps or the dev (cuz of the phone thing), but this makes me sympathize with him much more. glad for him.

ppl should stop wining and being very disappointed with this step and develop and maintain their own apps without getting anything back 🙄

I've been maintaining a free app for over 6 years now. It's a lot of work. It's not like you have crunch time, but it's like you can go from just doing light maintenance to suddenly needing to drop 20 hours on it within a week on a dimes notice if there are major changes to certain dependencies. On top of that, the consistency is difficult. I will get bored and not work on it for months but I still need to keep up with the latest changes or else compatibility might break.

Having monetary incentive really helps with the boring work. The work that you need to do to keep the app going. And not necessarily the feature work which is usually a lot more fun.

Aves Libre is a great gallery app, and Amaze is a good file manager

Alternatives

File manager - Material Files

That one doesnt have the security vulnerability and I think it is also better. But they are pretty much equal.

Simple Gallery - Aves

I prefer Simple Gallery though, it is pretty great

Simple dialer - Welefon

Very basic, I personally use ACR phone for call recording, with disabled internet permissions. The Dev asked on Reddit about opensourcing the App and got negative responses, so maybe unlikely.