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.
From the comment thread it sounds like the contract might be on shaky ground. The original dev seems to be under the impression that a project licensed under GPLv3 can just be freely changed to another license, which it cannot without explicit consent from all contributors. We don’t know the contract language of course, but the dev said it would “likely” not remain open source, which indicates that he told them they could change it. ZippApps’ lawyers will hopefully notice that and refuse to buy, though either way we shouldn’t trust this maintainer again and should move to the forks.
his last comment before closing the thread suggests that “99%” of the code is controlled by him and other paid contributors. still seems like you’d have to manually contact the last 1% to relicense their code.
Looks like one of the maintainers/contributors has already set up a fork.
His original comment of not wanting to fork to respect Tibor’s decision to sell his users out doesn’t make me confident in him.
I’d like to think he was just trying to be respectful of the author, probably having worked quite a bit together. But he changed his mind pretty quickly when he saw the original author had totally checked out. Maybe that’s a generous reading though.
Maybe he wasn’t even aware of this until everyone else was and got blindsided too. I’m still wary but I’ll give him a shot.
The linked statement is ridiculous. Fork the hell out of it before the repo gets removed!
It’s been renamed to FossifyOrg.
Ah yes, of course.
Aves Libre is already a far better gallery that you should be using even if this wasn’t happening.
I like the interface, but I miss the ability to show/lock hidden albums/folders with fingerprint.
It doesn’t have a video editor AFAIK. Any FOSS video editors around?
ffmpegin termux 😁
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.
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.
Simple Keyboard - Florisboard
Currently unmaintained but awesome. I hope it gets revived.
Simple Calculator
My favourite: Mint Calculator
Simple SMS
AOSP SMS/MMS, Quik Sms
AOSP SMS is poorly hard to find. That would be great on F-Droid. It also uses old libraries.
All these look way better and have unit transformations.
Some Gems
Some apps have no good replacement
Simple Gallery
Also in my opinion just the best. The Amaze Videoplayer and tools are great though.
Simple Contacts SE
That is the better version with some enhanced features.
Simple Calendar
I just got way better results than using Etar. The Widget is great too.
Forks:
- https://github.com/SimplerMobileTools
- https://github.com/FossifyX (from a big maintainer)
Aves Libre is a great gallery app, and Amaze is a good file manager
Fuck
So now I have to contact all the family members where I removed the bloatware and replaced with the smt apps, uninstall them before the “just 39 euro per week for adfree” subscription scam starts, find suitable replacements, train people to get used to new icons…
There’re good alternatives for every app, the only real lost are contacts and dialer, imo.
The Gallery is also the most feature-rich one in FOSS with even a video editor. Couldn’t find any other FOSS video editors out there.
deleted
I also was an user but Aves Libre is a very good replace if you don’t mind the video editing aspect. But yeah, that app also probably deserve a good fork.
aves +1
simple is simpler, aves is more efficient
Their are not many other good foss calendar apps that I know off
Damn it. I use their Gallery since it allows me to hide/show folders easily using a fingerprint lock. I guess I’ll just keep an old version until it no longer works.
In recent times the developer has been showing some serious miscommunication and other issues regarding their apps. Just look at their terrible handling of the vulnerabilities found in their file manager’s pdf reader (See his responses to the report)
Since around that time, I’ve been looking for alternatives to their apps, but I’ve kept using some of them because I couldn’t find anything that feels as good to use. I guess now I’m forced to really look for those alternatives, or see if there’s any serious fork that still gets actively maintained weeks from now.
So this just looks like the Community has to take care of the projects and/or find alternatives
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.
Simple Keyboard - Florisboard
Currently unmaintained but awesome. I hope it gets revived.
Simple Calculator
My favourite: Mint Calculator
Simple SMS
AOSP SMS/MMS, Quik Sms
AOSP SMS is poorly hard to find. That would be great on F-Droid. It also uses old libraries.
All these look way better and have unit transformations.
Some Gems
Some apps have no good replacement
Simple Gallery
Also in my opinion just the best. The Amaze Videoplayer and tools are great though.
Simple Contacts SE
That is the better version with some enhanced features.
Simple Calendar
I just got way better results than using Etar. The Widget is great too.
Thank you for the recommendations! Material Files seems to work well, I’ve been struggling to find a file manager that doesn’t reset the date modified metadata when transferring photos to the SMB shares on my NAS. Several folders of hundreds of photos now have completely incorrect dates attached to them because of a file manager I used previously :(
So far from my testing Material Files does not do this!
Edit: it’s extremely slow though lol, that’s weird. 250 small photos took several seconds each.
Weird, it is fast on my Pixel 4a that even struggles haaard with Opencamera
Strange, I’ll do some more testing. My S23 Ultra is not that old.
I recently found OpenBoard as an alternative to Florisboard.
koler is much better then welefon
i tried wele after your comment, i’m keeping koler
Welefon is very basic, but if it works it aint shit
fuck
NOOOOOOOOO
Don’t Panic!
and always have a towel with you
I just went through my phone and this will cause a search for a new gallery, calendar, notes and keyboard.
SECUSO apps will most probably provide the notes replacement (I admit I’m really impress with the apps lineup they have).
What alternatives can you suggest to replace the other apps mention.
I pull FOSS apps from F-Droid and do my best to avoid the App Store.
Aves gallery is fantastic, far better than Simple Gallery.
Not great, but it’s open source. If they try anything, just fork it and move on to the fork.
Who gonna maintain it? Community? Single Dev? Or You(Me)
When ZipoApps adds advertisements and telemetry to a future version of the Simple Mobile Tools apps, will my Google-Play-installed apps be automatically updated to the newer version with ads and telemetry? I don’t want ZipoApps to get any of my data.
i would encourage you to switch to fdroid or obtainium as soon as possible, if you are able to
