I don't necessarily blame the developer for selling: I understand that some offers are difficult to refuse. But I absolutely do blame him for being dishonest to his users and contributors.
No one was told about this. People only found out about the sale by chance, because someone noticed that the Play Store listing details were changed and made a post on Reddit.
When confronted on GitHub, the developer gave evasive answers, citing vague and unrelated issues, such as "the quality of the Android ecosystem dropping".
I assume a lot of users bought these apps with the expectation that they were not infested with ads, data mining, dark patterns, etc. Most people have automatic updates enabled, and they will get all of the above shoved into their face before they can prevent it.
The value of these acquisitions is determined almost entirely by the userbase. The developer was only able to get this deal because of his users. At the very least, they deserved to be treated with some basic amount of respect.
I once found a nice open source ambient noise generator on F-Droid. Fully local, offline.
One day the developer decided to switch to a pay SaaS model. They updated the open source app to be a thin client for their web service.
Surely many existing users on the play store found quite a surprise when they updated!
F-Droid at least provides a little protection here, with the independent builds and easy downgrades, and if the community is big enough you see forks appear. But sadly this kind of cashing in is always going to be a risk with open source software in app stores.
So, to be fair, the thing about his displeasure with Android was in response to somebody asking if he would be involved in helping maintain a fork that’s being set up. He said no and gave his Android reasons. Which to me sounds like he’s literally getting out of Android development.
Now, I didn’t read all the way to the bottom of that thread and GitHub, but no one really seem to ask him why he didn’t give notice of to anybody. The comments were either like, no, don’t do it, or we’ve gotta fork this. They weren’t really about how he has handled the issue.
Doesn't the GPL protect third-party contributions in ways that liberal licences do not? I think the author might have trouble re-licensing third-party GPL contributions under a proprietary licence, but IANAL.
From what I gather, the author isn't re-licensing the code but is selling their copyright and brand (trademark?) to Zipo, who in turn will probably try to re-license it (without permission from other contributors) or will simply choose to violate the license.
The latter part is not legal as far as I know, which then makes the first part moot. Unfortunately, I cannot find a good reference for this from the FSF's website, I am going off of memory. But I believe this matter is precisely one of the reasons not to use a liberal licence, or be wary of contributing to liberally-licensed projects.
If all the other contributors had signed over their copyright to the original author, then the author or whoever he sells the copyright to could release future versions under a different license. Copyright assignment is often done (for instance, with official GNU projects) because it makes license enforcement easier. However it also makes re-licensing easier. As far as I know, other contributors to these projects never signed over their copyright, so the original authors can't sell that code to this company in the first place. Since the company doesn't own that code, they can only use it under the terms of the GPL.
With liberal licenses (BSD, etc), the license permits distributing binaries without releasing the code so re-licensing isn't even necessary. Any corp can take the code and make it proprietary in full compliance with the original license.
Makes sense, thanks for clarifying. Also, I take it whatever adware they want to add is proprietary, so that won't be compatible with the GPL'ed code anyway. The legal basis for this sellout seems very thin to me altogether. I think the company's only option would be to remove every single third-party contribution?
> GPL, on the other hand, can make it possible for a corp to buy the project and effectively prevent further development, like it happened with MySQL.
That's not correct.
All of the MySQL GPL code was and is free for continued development. The company has no right to stop you or me from continuing to work on it. MariaDB was forked from MySQL and continues to be GPL licensed.
How do you think the GPL "effectively prevent further development"?
Oh, sure you can develop it - same as with every other open license, including public domain. But it prevents you from replicating the original business model.
Explain? Isn't MariaDB the fork of MySQL that derived from that sellout? Oracle can't prevent further development of it or any other forks. The GPL is doing its job here.
This is very sad. It understand that everyone needs to put food on the table and probably Tibor got an offer he couldn't refuse, maybe combined with burnout working on these apps for so long. So I can understand that.
That being said, the lack of transparency is not acceptable. Apart from one little acknowledgement in the above GitHub issue, there's zero communication on his part. Given that people actually paid, donated or even contributed source to his projects, even if it was not much, he has an obligation to these users/contributors and be open about the future of these apps. Most importantly:
- Will the apps remain FOSS? If a license change is planned, what about people who contributed and don't agree with that change?
- Which releases will be affected: What about the "Pro" version people paid for? What about the versions on F-Droid?
Oh, no. I liked those tools, but I don't let them update since they started having "premium versions".
The web site still says "A group of simple, open source Android apps without ads and unnecessary permissions, with customizable colors." They're on F-Droid.
> Oh, no. I liked those tools, but I don't let them update since they started having "premium versions".
Expecting project maintainers to solely fund the development of open source projects used by millions of people is the leopard that keeps eating our faces.
I wonder how much universal basic income, or at least a stronger economy, could spur FOSS development. I feel like the 2008 crisis and the rise of the precariat put a permanent dent in the phenomenon of non-professional devs maintaining free-software projects as a hobby.
A universal basic income, that is an income which is _universal_ and _fixed_ in its amount, will only create inflation: everyone gets equal additional money, everyone gets additional purchasing power, everyone creates more demand, prices go up.
A stronger economy is always better, but politicians usually manage to screw that one up, also.
But I don't think all of that is a major issue here. Microsoft and IBM are taking open-source projects and closing them up. Google is offering FLOSS projects to get users, then poisoning the well. I don't know what's happened to Mozilla, but it's destroying itself.
Lots of individuals are still writing FLOSS projects, but hobbies get picked up and dropped often -- for something to last, you usually need an organization (even if it's just 3 people) and it can easily become a _job_, even if it's a non-paying job. Even if their finances are fine and they still have spare time, most folks don't want a second job with a second source of deadlines and stress etc. And if a for-profit giant sees their project and offers them a LOT of money to stop working on it, most folks will say yes -- even if they were making decent money already.
> A universal basic income, that is an income which is _universal_ and _fixed_ in its amount, will only create inflation: everyone gets equal additional money, everyone gets additional purchasing power, everyone creates more demand, prices go up.
Not really, it will also redistribute wealth.
Let's say I have $1000 and you have $100. If we get additional $100 each, your purchasing power would now be 2/11 of mine instead of 1/10, even with prices adjusted for inflation.
I'm not advocating for UBI though – stronger economy is the more sustainable solution here.
And then you as a business owner charge $10 more for the items you sell at your store in order to offdet the fact that the government is forcefully taking momey from you to distribute it.
Do you really see it going another way? Taking money from people through force just distributes it back to the people that get the handouts.. eg. Inflation.
Somehow this leopard only exists on systems like Android and Google Play Store or web browser extension stores, but notably not in places like F-Droid or the repos of any common GNU/Linux distribution.
"Leopard eats face" is a dumb reddit thought-terminating cliche. I invite you to actually think about the problem and ask yourself why developers of FOSS tools selling out happens in some domains but not others, and effects some users without warning but not others.
Some of the largest projects on F-Droid are all funded either by having a paid version on Google Play, accepting donations, or a company funding their development by hiring the maintainers. Most of the software you can install from a distro repository are also developed in large part by people that are compensated in some form, if the project requires continued development.
Money always ends up in the equation when you have to invest years of your life maintaining and supporting a project. And that's perfectly fine and healthy, because it means you can find a path that does not result in either side being exploited.
As for your last point, I was not responding to developers selling out their users, which is unfortunate, but to the expectation to not have a premium/paid version of a software project distributed. I think the developer even shared the pro version for free on F-Droid (OsmAnd does the same), yet the existence of a paid version was regarded as something negative by the user above.
If you're uncomfortable with the taught of you or at least someone else funding the development of the software you use, you're only setting yourself up to be exploited.
You're missing a big part of the equation: the leopard exists in places where developers can push updates directly to users with minimal if any oversight from commercially independent reviewers. Debian and F-Droid build packages from source given to them by the developers, they don't trust developer builds. Therefore even though these Simple apps have sold to a malware company, that company won't be able to push updates to users. On platforms where this leopard is common, there may be some lip service paid to review but it's almost always completely automated or performed by low-skill contract labor who have no personal commitment to the process.
Another aspect of leopard territory is API churn. On Android and to a lesser extent browser extensions, regular rebuilds are necessary to keep the application up to date. This sometimes necessitates reworking parts of the application, not just rebuilding it. This recurring chore places a constant burden on developers, they can't "finish" an application then forget about it and move on with their lives; doing so would see their work vanish. On the other hand, on GNU/Linux desktops it's perfectly feasible to "finish" an application and leave it unmaintained for 15 years, people will still be able to use it. And on Android with F-Droid, most of the burden of rebuilding applications to keep them running is taken on by F-Droid volunteers, reducing the burnout pressure on application developers.
The conclusion is simple: Strict separation of the developer and packager/distributor roles keeps the leopard away.
> On the other hand, on GNU/Linux desktops it's perfectly feasible to "finish" an application and leave it unmaintained for 15 years, people will still be able to use it.
Oh no, only if it buildable from source. Binary compitability in Desktop Linux is non-existant, even Linus Tovarldis has ranted about this in the past. Even source is not immune to rot, if no maintainer steps up, nobody will package it, and god forbid the application uses something like QT4, while the distro decides to drop QT4 altogether...
I assume your time also has value. Open source software does not have to be shared free of charge, especially not when you need to invest your time and money to package and distribute the software and offer support for the project. The kind of puritan definition of open source that you're alluding to is only playing into the hands of the megacorps that are exploiting their users.
People deserve to be compensated for their work, especially when their work finds an active audience, even if they maintain an open source project.
So again, how many man-hours does it take, monthly, to maintain those apps? Note that I’m a programmer myself and so I’m not asking about the usual enterprise-level fake numbers.
Also, while open source definitely needs some funding, it can become badly harmed by too much of it, when code becomes developed purely for money and not for the usual ESR’s open source incentives.
Maybe it's not your intention, but from your comments it comes across like you're putting very little value on other people's work. It was probably a substantial effort that took years to bring these projects to the usability and popularity that they achieved. Again, i'm not sure why did the user above find it problematic to have a paid version of the app on Google Play, and the same version with the same features distributed for free on F-Droid.
Oh, I'm sure writing those apps was an effort. But I was asking about something quite different - the cost of maintaining them. You do need time or money or people to keep an Open Source project alive; but you don't need to pay the authors for the work they've done previously.
As for the problem with a paid version - it's because when it happens, shortly afterwards the free version starts to rot. Monetisation might be good for the owner, but it's almost always terrible to user experience.
From a quick look on GitHub the projects were not just an initial effort with little time invested in after release, but were actively developed for years. This year alone there are several releases which contain new features.
If I'm not mistaken, they were publishing the exact same version on both app stores, and the apps could be purchased or some of the features were put behind in-app purchases on Google Play. This is a reasonable funding model that has allowed many open source apps to thrive, though in this developer's case maybe it did not meet their needs.
Simple Mobile makes apps like file managers and image galleries. Just how much work is required to maintain this besides keeping the file access API up to date? Not sure if that's even had any breaking changes on Android in the past several years.
I'm not familiar with these projects, so I'm not sure how much time it would take to just keep them afloat, but I've seen they are popular and beloved apps. Looking at the GitHub activity, they have been actively developed for years, and several releases a year also contain new features. This was more than likely a full-time job for the developer.
It's regrettable that the funding model of these projects did not work out, and that the developer sold these apps without informing users about the change of ownership.
Though it feels like at this point we are bargaining for the amount of free work we are expected to get from this person, while sneering at the prospect of there being a paid version of the app published on Google Play as part of the original funding model that was in place long before the sale.
There's something fishy with this company, people report getting charged without asking, however all the positive reviews of said company is from specifically app devs who sold their app to this company![0]
Many moons ago, an acquaintance sold his app account ( with apps like battery saver apps etc ) to an Israeli company. As i recall, in that case, the acquisition was for data-harvesting purposes.
Simple gallery of all apps on my phone were ones which always worked, from f droid, without any hitch, handled like 20k photos like a champ and had "hidden folder" thing. I love this thing.
Glad their is a fork. I don't use other apps, they are either feature incomplete or not intuitive but gallery is solid 10.
Developer mentions the abysmal state of Android development and where it's headed as one cause in a comment. That's honestly relatable. Some of those apps are the best available on the platform (the pro gallery especially so), I'm sure the fork will do fine even in maintenance mode as it's mostly feature complete. F-Droid may be slow with releases and have a few annoyances but it remains the best and most trustworthy store—on Google's you'd never see this coming until the incoming ad/spyware is installed on your phone, those acquisitions are predatory with user data.
Ouch. I sponsored the developer on GitHub for a few months precisely because I realized that we need to support independent developers who are in the trenches building un-sexy software like SMS, Gallery, Calendar, etc. I don't blame them for selling, but it does leave a bad taste in my mouth...
We need a Mozilla-type organization that is a nonprofit and focuses on open-source computing tools and apps. Operating system, file managers, galleries, email clients, the works.
The sad reality is that Mozilla once did all these things, but lack of funding meant that many efforts were eventually discontinued. As great as Mozilla is, they too are effectively 'captured' due to their reliance on Google funding. Firefox is the only browser that doesn't support installing PWAs, which is unbelievable, and almost certainly a move made to please Google.
How would you create a Mozilla-type (and presumably size) organisation, without getting into the same funding-related issues?
From my perspective, the FOSS funding does not scale with the effort required, unless a for-profit funds it. Government grants are also used, but they cannot be viewed as a steady source of income.
Have fun trying to sue an Israeli malware company into compliance. The reason so many malware companies operate out of Israel is because the Israeli government shields them from consequences.
The packages from F-Droid are signed with F-Droid's keys, so AFAIK the Play Store can't overwrite them without prompting the user to remove and replace the F-Droid versions. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this point.
Keep a copy of the APK and block automatic updates. Don't support anything that doesn't work without phoning home. That's what I'd do in today's economy.
F-Droid works like the Debian repos: F-Droid builds are not built by the developer, they are built by F-Droid volunteers from source. They don't accept pre-built applications.
I don't necessarily blame the developer for selling: I understand that some offers are difficult to refuse. But I absolutely do blame him for being dishonest to his users and contributors.
No one was told about this. People only found out about the sale by chance, because someone noticed that the Play Store listing details were changed and made a post on Reddit.
When confronted on GitHub, the developer gave evasive answers, citing vague and unrelated issues, such as "the quality of the Android ecosystem dropping".
I assume a lot of users bought these apps with the expectation that they were not infested with ads, data mining, dark patterns, etc. Most people have automatic updates enabled, and they will get all of the above shoved into their face before they can prevent it.
The value of these acquisitions is determined almost entirely by the userbase. The developer was only able to get this deal because of his users. At the very least, they deserved to be treated with some basic amount of respect.