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Damn, how did I even manage to miss that Simple apps have been bought off? I’ve used them for years and am still subscribed to the reddit community…
Some people suggest the action could possibly be deemed illegal, by breaking the licence the project was made under.
https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/General-Discussion/issues/241#issuecomment-1837452672 - the dev’s explanation, and replies which discuss the legal issues
https://old.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/1893j2p/simple_mobile_tools_is_about_to_be_acquired/
Provided that the developer can either remove contributed code or seek copyright licences from every contributor it can be done. Whether this did happen or not is unclear, the developer appears a little arrogant about having written the majority of the code, showing little appreciation towards minor contributors. We cannot tell whether the contributors gave permission for their code to be re-licenced or if their code was removed.
Personally, when contributing to GPL projects I would expect that this kind of thing wouldn’t be possible. Using the GPL is a very philosophical choice of licence and is a move to say that you really care about your users
Over the years there have been a few times I tried to communicate with the developer, and he was always arrogant.
yeah tibor was known for that
Fossify has many of them, Gallery, Files and Calendar (the main ones) are already on F-Droid!
- sms: deku sms, way better
- phone: GrapheneOSses AOSP dialer, dont know if you get that seperately, or Welefon
- music: so many alternatives, Vanilla Music is nice
- keyboard: florisboard, openboard
- phone: lol Pixel with GrapheneOS
Its sad that the community did not donate enough. People dont care…
To add to this, Fossify just released their phone app. It hasn’t hit the repos yet, but it’s on their github.
fcitx on Android is a pretty good keyboard experience now too.
Can you explain what that is and how it works? Is it a Keyboard with Plugins?
deku sms
I haven’t used this, but it seems to do way more than the average person know how to use for an SMS app
Even in the readme, it says:
The technical functionalities of the app are currently not user friendly, which would be updated with the help of PRs and issues. The reason for the lack of user friendliness is solely based on the app aiming to be as customizable as possible. Users should be able to configure the app to their custom cloud servers without being tied into using specific providers.
It just works as an SMS app with possible AES encryption.
Wow, the new owners enshittified those apps really fast.
They were sold to ZippoApps, who specializes in adding crapware to apps.
What else would we expect anyway…
For everyone still using Simple Tools apps, switch to Fossify it’s a fork that has all that crap removed
sigh. Most people will just accept the new default permissions without blinking an eye. They’re taking advantage of people’s ignorance.
You overestimate most peoples tech skills.They will never know because they have auto-updates activated.
When I saw some serious issues with Clock app (from Simple Apps), I deleted and never used it again. So many apps and so many bugs, lol.
So it begins
Throwback to when they announced releasing a simple phone. Fun times.
That was amazing. Someone linked to alibaba where you could buy the same 4? Year old phone for something like $120USD. Someone else dredged up a weird eastern European connection for the ‘FOSS’ OS. And they promised support, which ended when you bought the pos.
Already migrated to Deku SMS
sounds like an uninstall
Hopefully fossify will release fossify messenger soon. Fossify’s a project forking all the simple apps
Hmm, this app is also in the F-Droid repository with its old outfit.
Luckily it got forked : https://github.com/FossifyOrg/SMS-Messenger
There are a bunch of those “simple” apps on F-droid, such as Simple Contacts, Simple Calendar, and Simple Camera. I cannot find Simple Gallery in F-droid any more, it seems to have been replaced by its Fossify equivalent already.
In light of this, it could be an idea to check if you have any of those apps installed and consider replacing them with an alternative.
I remember testing some of the “Simple” apps when I was making the initial effort to stop using Google products, but none of them really felt right to me. I guess my intuition was right.
you try to install FossifyOrg gallery and dialer via obtainium who pulls releases directly off github.
I have several of the apps installed. I went through and checked the permissions, and they’re still pretty sparse. The play store didn’t mention anything about updates, but a few of them, like Notes, seemed to be disabled.
Am I just a version behind or something?
If they’re from F-Droid you’re good; if you’re on Google Play I doubt they’ll update anything to get more permissions without your consent.
However, if the developer has taken a turn for the worse (which this post seems to indicate), you might not receive any more updates for your F-Droid software, and you might get to a point where you don’t want to install updates from Google Play. Software that cannot be updated is generally not a good thing.
Furthermore, these apps deal with somewhat sensitive information by default, and I wouldn’t want to use apps developed by a company I don’t trust if I don’t absolutely have to. :)
why would you want or need a separate SMS/MMS application on your phone in the first place?
I use OpenContacts, it has its own database so nothing else can access it.
For Google photos/Contacts in particular, the gallery app was good because it would constantly ask to sync photos to the cloud.
Default app sucks.
- You don’t like the Google app
- You don’t want to use Google apps out of principle
- You’re using a version of Android where Google apps are not installed by default, so you need to install something
Well yeah, I didn’t consider those points, especially the last with android distros not all come with gapps.
You might want more control of how the app looks. Or maybe an app has some UI features you like.
I used Textra for years, but did eventually switch back to the default android messenger when I started encountering issues.
