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

Gogo Sempai@programming.dev to Android@lemmy.world – 585 points –

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Is there something in the making with Nova Launcher? I love it and didn't hear any bad news

https://www.androidpolice.com/nova-launcher-acquired-by-branch/

Kind of old article, but yea, they were sold.

So the owner claimed in the article that any data tracking added would be opt in. I looked at the settings and found error and usage tracking hidden under an advanced button at the bottom of the settings. It was enabled and I don't remember ever being asked about it (or else it would have already been disabled because I never opt in to that shit).

Try Neo Luncher (IzzyOnDroid repo). It supports a lot of the customization options as Nova, but is completely FOSS.

I just don't recommend using Neo Launcher if you have Android 14. Been having very annoying issues with it on Android 14, but not on any other Android version. Hopefully they'll release an update soon; the last update was 10/28/22.

There is active development though.

I have been using Total launcher since the Nova Sale. A bit of a learning curve but very pleased with it. Would recommend.

ES File Explorer, those were the peak days of the XDA rom and root scene

My god you really nailed that on the head - I'd forgotten about quickpic (rip) but I'll never forget about ES file explorer.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Well, you paid and still got sold.

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

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

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.

If you dont pay for apps, they will 100% be enshittified

Hilarious that you read enough cory doctorow to know the term "enshittification" but don't know what "free" software really means

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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."

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.

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.

Unless you use the Play Store version, in which case the tainted new versions will be coming any time soon.

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

I got it from fdroid. Am I safe?

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.

AFAIK the code is all GPLv3 so they won't be able to close-source it.

I mean, a fork is indeed possible and in progress. But the main version on the Google Play Store will almost certainly be no longer open-source.

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.

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?

There's like 100-200+ individual contributors to each of the apps. Practically impossible for everyone to agree to relicense especially considering the community reaction to the sale.

Hopefully that's the case! And hopefully somebody steps in legally in case the new developers decide to just ignore the GPL terms.

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.

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.

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.

Aves Libre is pretty nice.

Isn't offline though and doesn't have a feature-rich video editor like Simple Gallery had :(

Isn’t offline though [...]

How do you mean? I was of the impression it was.

Ah sorry, I didn't know there was a Libre flavor of Aves, had just checked the regular Aves on FDroid. Thanks for this!

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

Self entitlement. They did a great job for us and probably werent paid enough.

Well, that sucks.

Guess I'll just stop updating and keep an eye out for forks that are maintained.

Thankfully I only have them via Obtainium. Flip the "track only" option to on and wait and see. Like someone else said, I'm hopeful there'll be forks for these soon enough. I'm off to fork the repos for myself anyway, just in case.

Edit: for those that are self-hosting some form of git, is would be great if more people did this, for archival purposes. I've simply left the public fork of all 19 repos in my Github account, but have mirrored those to my private Forgejo instance.

At any point I can sync the GH forks then mirror those down to my local instance. Until the original repos get dismantled, of course.

Damn it. There was a big extension that did this too. The first thing the guys did? implement a credentials stealer.

Time to disable auto update for these apps in the stores

This is why you should always install the F-Droid version whenever possible. They won't update just because upstream did without vetting it first.

Damn I actually paid for a few of these apps. What does this mean for purchase on Android?

If you paid for it on Play Store and the app gets pulled from there, you won't be able to download it again.

Either the app gets pulled or the app gets updated to harvest your data.

This is terrible news! I am going to struggle to find a replacement for the gallery app.

Have you ever herd of Aves? Kinda the opposite of "simple" in terms of feature set, but can be downloaded from F-Droid and is highly customizable. I really like it's tagging system/feature.

Just installed it. Looks good. Only missing the edit feature that Simple Gallery has.

Yeah, the lack of an edit feature is the primary issue I have with it.

The temporary solution

It's kind of a bad idea to not keep a file browser up to date. You don't really want security flaws in a program that has access to all the files on your device.

It's even worse idea to get an inevitable update that pushes ads through the file browser.

For anyone looking for an alternative to Gallery, Gallery by Iacoblonut looks better, and you can use Amaze to edit images.

It's a little janky, but seems to be heading in the right direction. The UI feels right unlike Aves. Thanks for the recommendation.

Guess I'll use Image Toolbox for simple edits (pun intended). Hopefully the developer improves the user experience for that.

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Noooooo! I love their gallery app. Guess it's time to turn off auto-update on it.

Thank you for sharing this!

Finally, Kissinger is dead β€” but for the karmic balance, even SMT gets enshittified.

Damn, SMT was great for filling in system tools on custom ROMs, anyone got any good alternative gallery apps with a similar feature set?

Sigh.

Anyone used Etar calendar app? I use Simple Calendar for its ability to export everything to one ICS file. I see Etar can use ICS, but is it a full calendar import/export? Or one event at a time? Related question, is there anything better?

Etar lacks features compared to SMT Calendar - mostly for me, the ability to assign different notification / sounds, and of course the ability to export the entire calender as ICS.

Re your question: no. If you try to import an ICS calendar generated by SMT Calendar, Etar only imports the oldest event.

Etar isn't as good as SMT Calendar but it has suddenly become very attractive. I've uninstalled SMT Calendar, and CalyxOS comes with Etar preinstalled. So now I rock Etar. Not super happy, but it's better than nothing. The next step for me is to install a CalDAV server on my home server. That way I'll never get caught unable to import my calendar into a new app. And I'll live with a single notification sound for all my events / appointments.

Oh. I didn't realize that Etar was the default in CalyxOS. That's disappointing, as I don't like the default CalyxOS calendar. I may stick with SMT Cal and just not update, and wait for someone to fork. I thought about forking it myself, but I'm not a developer, so won't be able to maintain it :/

@01189998819991197253 @gogosempai
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Install Etar, import the ICS file
and see what happens!

Same shit company bought the pixel minimal watch face, and they're now charging like 18$ PER WEEK for premium features.

I had already bought it thankfully and I kept my premium status but still. I was not happy

$18 per week?! Damn Netflix and Disney+ prices aren't even that high.

Yeah, I was REALLY pissed off that the guy sold his app to this shitty company. Now this. I didn't use the simple apps but I've heard of them since I was a pretty big f droid user.

They must give a lot of money to devs in exchange for ruining their work lol

Look, he got money, we got forks, the creator of the app might create a new project and run it on money they got from this sale

The company that purchased the app will soon find out that their whole userbase was foss people and they left for forks

Part of the reason why I prefer to use open source apps whenever possible is because of this, you never really know if an app will be bought out by someone shady and start adding gross stuff to it, but open source apps can and will be forked.

Not an ideological reason, but a practical one.

Wow I was never comfortable about the marketing vibe around those apps on f-droid, so I avoided them. I'm glad of that now. Still, someone can snag the source code for a fork if they want, and I'm sure there are alternatives.

When I migrated to GrapheneOS I chose to use all the system's native applications (AOSP) for obvious reasons but I admit that this news makes me very worried, one less dev we will have on our side.

I always try to avoid these because of how they had held users data hostage on their calendar's play store version, glad this happened so there can be a foss fork by more trustable parties. Yay!

Hmm, I think I got Simple File Manager Pro from F-droid, would I need to do something else for it?

What is a good alternative?

Also I had the simple music player app, although I have no music downloaded Β―\_(ツ)_/Β―

EDIT: hmm, strange acquisition actually, only the fee apps? Or the deal ain't over?

Material files and Auxio

Auxio is really well made. Just wish it supported the artist tag rather than the artists tag.

Material files

Dude, I actually had it already installed when I was on my quest to have a sane file manager πŸ˜…

(Why is it so damn hard to have a file manager which shows your "root" folder when you open it πŸ˜‘).

The only thing I went for Simple File Manager Pro and not for Material Files was because the former allows me to check the file size of multiple items, and I'm finding many file managers don't.

Does fx fulfil your needs?

I like FX a lot on ATV, on mobile I never got used to it Β―\_(ツ)_/Β―

Phonograph plus seems to work for me. A little buggy but nothing problematic.

F-droid version will remain open-source, but if the new owners decide to no longer support it, then it might not get any more updates.

Ah no, that sucks. I've been using a lot of those apps.

Time to download all those apks and keep them mirrored elsewhere, I fear for their future now

I think it is worth mentioning that there is an alternative for each one of Simple Mobile Tools apps. It will just mean we have to spend some time looking for such apps yet again. We as users of FOSS software must be always prepared to move from one application to another. This is why walled gardens, export to / import from open standard formats and in general easy replaceability of FOSS SW is important. This is just a sad fact about using FOSS where FOSS maintainers are just normal people, with all their needs, faults, and weaknesses.

Simple Gallery has a feature rich photo and video editor as well. I haven't found any FOSS app that can edit videos. Also, any Material You themed Dialer app? Don't want to use the old AOSP one :(

Other than these two, I think all other apps have good alternatives.

That is example that looking for new apps part I mentioned. I know there are FOSS Android video and proto editors. I just never needed any of them, so I don't know which one is better or worse, but I know there are a few I have heard about in recent years. I know I have seen several contacts and dialler apps on F-Droid. Time to check them out one by one and hopefully one will fit the needs with minimal concessions. Others in this post have already mentioned some apps. See if they might work for you, too. I wish you best of luck looking for the right apps for you.

Could someone explain what's the big problem? They're open source, you can still use the existing apps just fine. And with time, someone should fork them, shouldn't they?

Millions of auto-updating installs on unsuspecting users devices who thought they installed a privacy respecting app, but is now likely to harvest as much personal data as possible.

THANK YOU for this post, just replaced my dialer, contacts, gallery, and clock.

any suggestions for calendar apps that can use system calendars? i have my calendars synced via davx5