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.
- Tiritibambix ( @Tiritibambix@lemmy.ml ) 47•10 months ago
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
- satan ( @satan@r.nf ) English30•10 months ago
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.
- ReversalHatchery ( @ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org ) 14•10 months ago
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?
- russjr08 ( @russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net ) English1•10 months ago
They might’ve done so out of necessity. I don’t know if the dev(s) of the Simple Tools apps were working on it full time, but if they were and just not enough contributions were coming in from it… Well everyone has to eat.
As the saying goes, “everyone has their price”. It’s easy to condemn the developers for their choice until you’re in the exact same scenario as they were. Whether that’s because they were starving, or even just offered enough money to make their lives a lot easier - not too many people would turn it down.
- birdcat ( @birdcat@lemmy.ml ) 3•10 months ago
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 🙄
- thru_dangers_untold ( @thru_dangers_untold@lemmy.ml ) English8•10 months ago
Aves Libre is a great gallery app, and Amaze is a good file manager
- Pantherina ( @Pantherina@feddit.de ) 1•10 months ago
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
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)
- maiskanzler ( @maiskanzler@feddit.de ) 28•10 months ago
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.
- Ambuj Yadav ( @itsaj26744@programming.dev ) 4•10 months ago
Same here.Also apps are completely offline with nice backups. Think like We have to switch
- maiskanzler ( @maiskanzler@feddit.de ) 1•10 months ago
Let’s hope some volunteers pick up the codebase. But it’s a vast number of apps and some will probably be left behind.
- AnActOfCreation ( @AnActOfCreation@programming.dev ) 19•10 months ago
Looks like one of the maintainers/contributors has already set up a fork.
- RickyRigatoni ( @RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml ) 7•10 months ago
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.
- AnActOfCreation ( @AnActOfCreation@programming.dev ) 13•10 months ago
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.
- RickyRigatoni ( @RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml ) 8•10 months ago
Maybe he wasn’t even aware of this until everyone else was and got blindsided too. I’m still wary but I’ll give him a shot.
- 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬 ( @Dirk@lemmy.ml ) 2•10 months ago
The linked statement is ridiculous. Fork the hell out of it before the repo gets removed!
- erAck ( @erAck@discuss.tchncs.de ) 1•10 months ago
It’s been renamed to FossifyOrg.
- verdigris ( @verdigris@lemmy.ml ) 19•10 months ago
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.
- GissaMittJobb ( @GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml ) 15•10 months ago
Not great, but it’s open source. If they try anything, just fork it and move on to the fork.
- sag ( @sag@lemm.ee ) 9•10 months ago
Who gonna maintain it? Community? Single Dev? Or You(Me)
- lntl ( @lntl@lemmy.ml ) 13•10 months ago
just fork it
- lseif ( @lseif@sopuli.xyz ) 10•10 months ago
fork you
- qyron ( @qyron@sopuli.xyz ) 10•10 months ago
Fork you too and, while we are at it, fork us all.
We all got forked with this one.
With a large barbecue one.
- lseif ( @lseif@sopuli.xyz ) 4•10 months ago
oh no! fragmentation!
- Uninvited Guest ( @uninvitedguest@lemmy.ca ) 13•10 months ago
Aves Libre is already a far better gallery that you should be using even if this wasn’t happening.
It doesn’t have a video editor AFAIK. Any FOSS video editors around?
That’s a video transcoder. Simple Gallery could crop videos, trim videos, merge them, add filters, text, music and what not. Good thing it’s forked by one of the devs who plans to maintain it.
- Uninvited Guest ( @uninvitedguest@lemmy.ca ) 1•10 months ago
It allows you to trim videos, but yes, not any other functions you mention.
- fl42v ( @fl42v@lemmy.ml ) 2•10 months ago
ffmpeg
in termux 😁
- citytree ( @citytree@lemmy.ml ) 13•10 months ago
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.
- lseif ( @lseif@sopuli.xyz ) 20•10 months ago
i would encourage you to switch to fdroid or obtainium as soon as possible, if you are able to
- Ikarus ( @Ikarus@feddit.de ) 13•10 months ago
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.
- ReversalHatchery ( @ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org ) 9•10 months ago
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
- Mikelius ( @Mikelius@lemmy.ml ) 10•10 months ago
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.
- ReversalHatchery ( @ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org ) 4•10 months ago
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
- Pantherina ( @Pantherina@feddit.de ) 10•10 months ago
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
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.
- jlow (he/him) ( @jlow@beehaw.org ) 4•10 months ago
I recently found OpenBoard as an alternative to Florisboard.
- retrolasered ( @retrolasered@lemmy.zip ) English1•10 months ago
I’ve started using thumb key because I have fat fingers, I recommend to anyone else suffering from podgy digits
- WeLoveCastingSpellz ( @WeLoveCastingSpellz@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 9•10 months ago
NOOOOOOOOO
- redd ( @redd@discuss.tchncs.de ) English3•10 months ago
Don’t Panic!
- qyron ( @qyron@sopuli.xyz ) 8•10 months ago
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.
- Uninvited Guest ( @uninvitedguest@lemmy.ca ) 8•10 months ago
Aves gallery is fantastic, far better than Simple Gallery.
- qyron ( @qyron@sopuli.xyz ) 1•10 months ago
Already installed!
- retrolasered ( @retrolasered@lemmy.zip ) English2•10 months ago
you-apps might serve to replace a few too
- qyron ( @qyron@sopuli.xyz ) 2•10 months ago
I’ve seen these but nothing I use currently
- Moonrise2473 ( @Moonrise2473@lemmy.ml ) 7•10 months ago
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…
- Mnglw ( @mnglw@beehaw.org ) 6•10 months ago
fuck
- 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬 ( @Dirk@lemmy.ml ) 6•10 months ago
Ah yes, of course.