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.
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.
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.
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.
fossify link is a 404
Thank you, they changed the org name. Updated.
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!
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.
Looks like one of the maintainers/contributors has already setup a fork!
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.
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
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
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
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
Finally, Kissinger is dead — but for the karmic balance, even SMT gets enshittified.
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For Contacts and Clock, use YOU apps. I don’t think anything can replace the Gallery, I’ll continue using the current version for as long as there’s a new community-maintained fork. It’s quite stable really, doesn’t really need changing this very moment.
Recently on their blog --> Aug 29, 2023
Noooooo! I love their gallery app. Guess it’s time to turn off auto-update on it.
Thank you for sharing this!
NOOOOO
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.
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?
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
Damn, I recently donated to them, and this is how it turned out.
Terrible to see.
