11 mo. ago • 98%

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

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.

74 comments

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

59
- 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.
  
  26
  
  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?
  
  14
  
  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 🙄
  
  -7
- Aves Libre is a great gallery app, and Amaze is a good file manager
  
  12
- 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
  
  Calculator
  
  yetCalc
  
  Unitto
  
  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)
  
  1
Oh no, those apps have replaced many of the OEM' supplied ones on all my devices. I was fed up with constantly changing UIs and all the different feature sets on every device. I thought I had finally found something useful to consolidate on for the long term!

At least the current versions are pretty bug free and will stay.

37
- Same here.Also apps are completely offline with nice backups. Think like We have to switch
  
  4
  
  Let's hope some volunteers pick up the codebase. But it's a vast number of apps and some will probably be left behind.
  
  1
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.

34
- 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.
  
  3
Looks like one of the maintainers/contributors has already set up a fork.

https://github.com/FossifyX

33
- 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.
  
  11
  
  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.
  
  23
  
  The linked statement is ridiculous. Fork the hell out of it before the repo gets removed!
  
  2
- It's been renamed to FossifyOrg.
  
  3
Working source: https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/General-Discussion/issues/241

32
- Damn, I was not aware what kind of company this got sold to. Thats a shame.
  
  18
Aves Libre is already a far better gallery that you should be using even if this wasn't happening.

19
- It doesn't have a video editor AFAIK. Any FOSS video editors around?
  
  7
  
  ffmpeg in termux 😁
  
  3
  
  https://f-droid.org/en/packages/protect.videoeditor/
  
  3
- I like the interface, but I miss the ability to show/lock hidden albums/folders with fingerprint.
  
  2
Not great, but it's open source. If they try anything, just fork it and move on to the fork.

18
- Who gonna maintain it? Community? Single Dev? Or You(Me)
  
  10
just fork it

16
- Got forked by one of the Contributors:
  
  https://github.com/FossifyX
  
  15
  
  Damn, I think I'll donate what little I can so FossifyX keeps things running
  
  1
- fork you
  
  11
  
  Fork you too and, while we are at it, fork us all.
  
  We all got forked with this one.
  
  With a large barbecue one.
  
  10
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.

16
- i would encourage you to switch to fdroid or obtainium as soon as possible, if you are able to
  
  25
- Yes. If you have automatic updates enabled, it will install the newest version with trackers and ads. You could disable the automatic update for these apps and hope they stay relevant to your os for a little while.
  
  15
- I would also recommend switching ASAP. You can make a backup of their internal data with App Manager (available from f-droid) which you can then restore to the f-droid version
  
  9
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

Calculator

yetCalc

Unitto

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.

15
- What about OpenBoard? It is maintained and a great keyboard
  
  NVM, it is not maintained, but there is a very active fork: https://github.com/Helium314/openboard
  
  8
  
  Dann that is nice!I It will probably be the replacement for people needing autocomplete!
  
  Testint it currently and I think it is the perfect replacement for iPhone people as the cursor thing is similar.
  
  I love the granular autocorrection as I would set only suggestions without correction if the language was new to me.
  
  I will stick with Florisboard though, I prefer the pitch black dark mode (and dont need anything else) and I love the internal clipboard, history, deletion etc. It is so much better for privacy.
  
  Also the text editing shortcuts are great and needed for the clipboard.
  
  1
- I recently found OpenBoard as an alternative to Florisboard.
  
  4
- 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.
  
  1
  
  Weird, it is fast on my Pixel 4a that even struggles haaard with Opencamera
  
  1
- koler is much better then welefon
  
  i tried wele after your comment, i'm keeping koler
  
  1
  
  Welefon is very basic, but if it works it aint shit
  
  1
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.

14
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...

13
- I thought you were excaggerating, but looks like 39€ wouldn"t be enough, they'd take closer to 60€ 😂 See this comment on github
  
  2
Even if it's removed from fdroid because they want to close source it, I assume my current installations of their apps would be unaffected - just become stale and obsolete over time since they won't get updates... But as they're offline anyway, not too concerned in the short term. Hopefully the company respects the privacy amd care of the open source community and won't take that away from us, though. One way to find out.

12
- In the linked github issue it has turned out that the company is expected to turn up data mining and ads as much as they can
  
  4
NOOOOOOOOO

11
- Don't Panic!
  
  5
  
  and always have a towel with you
  
  2
Thanks for pointing out.

9
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.

9
- Aves gallery is fantastic, far better than Simple Gallery.
  
  8
  
  Already installed!
  
  1
- you-apps might serve to replace a few too
  
  3
  
  I've seen these but nothing I use currently
  
  2
There're good alternatives for every app, the only real lost are contacts and dialer, imo.

7
- 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.
  
  8
  
  deleted
  
  3
  
  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.
  
  2
- Their are not many other good foss calendar apps that I know off
  
  2
Permanently Deleted

6
Ah yes, of course.

6
Oh :( should we do a 'what apps are you using post'?

4
fuck

4
Permanently Deleted

3
Goodwy seems to be forks of SMT apps https://github.com/Goodwy?tab=repositories. Open source, no ads, no trackers and no internet permission, unfortunately you have to either compile yourself or download them from the play store. https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=8268163890866913014

3
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.

2