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

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.

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.

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

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."

Looks like one of the maintainers/contributors has already setup a fork!

https://github.com/FossifyX

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.

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.

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

Well, that sucks.

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

Everyone has a price.

That's the beauty of FOSS. Just download the existing app and blacklist it from updates. Someone will archive the existing code so it can be downloaded later.

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

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

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

I paid for the apps to avois this...

Big F, they had some good apps.

Damn, I recently donated to them, and this is how it turned out.

Terrible to see.

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

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 — but for the karmic balance, even SMT gets enshittified.

Damn, i will really miss the Gallery app

Recently on their blog --> Aug 29, 2023

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?

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

FFS just started using these apps

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.

Its opensource, assuming the new owners move it to a less favorable license just fork the last good version and continue from there.

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

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.

man, the gallery and calendar were great!

Any good alternatives for the dialer/contacts/sms/calendar apps?

I use material files btw, so luckily I wasn't hit quite as hard on the file manager perspective

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

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 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

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!

Nooooo

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

NOOOOO

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.

@gogosempai

So the most important question is - what happens to the F-Droid versions? Will the apps still be listed in F-Droid in the future, and if so, should they still be updated?

:(

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?

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