We all saw in the news that Simple Mobile Tools got acquired by ZipoApps and they started filling up the free apps with ads.
Luckily, being those apps open source, a new fork has been created.
It’s called Fossify. They forked all the apps on GitHub and they have a new maintainer.
Now we just need to wait for their first official release and then… we need to spread the word and make people switch from the old SMT apps to Fossify!
And we need some people to step up and become contributors and maintainers.
Agreed! I just sent some money to them.
Thats great. I consider the SMT essential apps to be honest. They are ad free, privacy friendly, and open source.
*were
This is 100% of the reason we need to support open source. How many times has a megacorp bought a beloved software and shit all over it? Now, it doesn’t matter quite as much, we can just move on.
I completely agree.
Another recent example has been the developer tool Insomnia. It went from open and free to riddled with trackers and paid-only features.
Luckily an open source fork, called Insomnium, has been created.
Will the old apps get removed on Fdroid? Who decides that?
The new owners OR f-droid, depending on whether they want to start adding badware or close-sourcing it.
They’re GPL’ed, so I’d like to see them try.
GPL only dictates that source is released to those who install the binary
Correct. Meaning it can’t be turned proprietary because if they distribute copies, they must distribute the source code to everyone who gets them, under the GPL.
That’s an interesting question. For now, the apps on F-Droid are still safe, but we have to see.
The new owner could decide to pull them out of the store.
I don’t think the new owners can just pull it from F-Droid, I hope the F-Droid team has a code backup. I think they will migrate everything to fossify. With the gallery this already happened, the SMT Gallery vanished from my phone and the fossify gallery appeared. I guess that’s a good way to go, since for now fossify is just the same thing with a different name.
Just a heads up for anyone exploring in the future, they now seem to be FossifyOrg: https://github.com/FossifyOrg
Thanks! I edited the link in OP.
I know he paid for the domain name already, but Fossify is a horrible name, it really does need to change to something else.
why do you dislike the name? I like it actually!
Well for me personally it’s because the name is not descriptive of what it does, but just what kind of software it is, license wise.
Basically, like if someone named a brand new car ‘Costsmonae’.
Didn’t know this. Thanks.
The name is still being voted on. Don’t count on it being that name soon. “Pure” is in the lead:
I just put in the 420th vote for pure.
I dont use any of this simple apps but im glad that someones have forked the apps source code and go further with them if i can i will give my contribute im not a android developer expert but i know the basics.
The constants updates of klotin code and android source code itself gives me less motivation…
Is not hard to code its hard to keep updated.
The question here is why some company invests in opensource code to flood the apps with trackers instead of created from scratch?
The answer unfortunately is simple 10% of all android users understand and cares about privacy and foss apps 90% dont understand or does not care about that.
That means 90% of android users soon or later are giving for free a lot of privat data to this companies and they can sell and/or use to make profit or booth.
How can we change this?
We can’t… there is only two ways to change this and they are not within our reach
1 on the shool everyone should have lessons about privacy on the internet.
Which shool take the initiative to start??..
2 create a law that prohibit companies to colect privat data.
Less liked to see the light of the sun…
If you got SMT from F-Droid you can go to
settings ---> manage installed appsscroll down to SMT and on each one tap it, then tap the 3 dots in the upper right corner, then check “ignore all updates”. This will keep you on the current version but you’ll be exposed should a vulnerability come to light down the line.
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The GPL explicitly allows selling the software, like a proprietary software product. You don’t even need to have the code up in a public repo. What you DO need to do, though, is provide a reasonable way for customers to get the source code, and send it to them if they ask. Just because a project is GPL doesn’t mean you’re entitled to the source for free. Of course, if someone buys it and requests the source, they can do whatever they want with it, including uploading it somewhere. Which in the end, essentially makes it available to everyone. Which is the whole point!
All of this only works if the owners of the code respect the license. In this particular case, I don’t believe a contributor agreement was ever created, so if the new owners want to close source the apps, they’ll have to get permission from all contributors, or drastically rewrite those contributions.
But again, this only matters if they respect the license in the first place…
This is probably a silly question but how do you think open source development works and what is adequate compensation?
If someone randomly starts charging me for air because they somehow acquired the rights to oxygen…
Unfamiliar with Nestle and water? They’d try for oxygen, I bet.
The Lorax
