Fossify Gallery on the official F-Droid repo
The removal isn’t directly related to the buyout/fork. Simple Gallery was taken off of F-Droid due to a dependency on the nonfree Google VR being discovered by IzzySoft¹ ². Fossify’s fork has removed the dependent features to be compliant³.
The whole Simple apps suite should be removed because they are never going to get another update again in the F-Droid repository.
F-Droid doesn’t usually remove apps that aren’t maintained, as far as I can tell. There are apps that haven’t been updated in over a decade (Quill). Since F-Droid sorts by recency of release, they tend to just sink to the bottom of searches anyway.
They may end up in the F-Droid Archive repo over time.
Not getting updates doesn’t make any app inherently bad. Possible bugs just won’t get fixed. If an app is feature complete and everything works as they should there’s no need to update it.
While I agree the apps shouldn’t be removed, updates aren’t just about features. Updates fix bugs, security holes, and improve performance. I’m notsaying these apps in particular have issues, though what app doesnt, just pointing it out in general.
Why?
If it ain’t broke, why does it need an update?
I have apps that are 10 years old and work fine. This “continual update” thing is just so weird.
I have 20 year old apps on Windows that still work just fine.
Some of my Android apps’ newer versions have issues that I don’t care for, so I run the older version (e.g. Foldersync, Tasks.org).
The last version of SMT apps before the buyout should work indefinitely…they are simple after all.
The SMT apps after the buyout, are not necessarily bad either, it’s up to the new owners whether they want to keep a FOSS version as advertisement, or not.
Aren’t there outside contributors? How can they relicense it without their permission?
They can’t relicense it without permission, what they’ve done right now is fully allowed under the GPL: they’ve started charging a fee for the binary.
The GPL allows anyone to:
- Offer the source for free to anyone.
- Charge a fee for a copy of the source.
- Charge a fee for a binary, while offering free, or for a nominal fee, access to the source.
- Not offer the source to anyone who hasn’t paid.
So they’ve switched from case 1, to case 3 (and maybe 4).
At any moment they can keep any part of the apps, or any of the apps, back in case 1, while asking for a fee to access the other versions (like the “Pro” ones). If they did so, then anyone who paid for a version, could ask for the source and decide to publish it for free as in case 1… or not, it’s the buyer’s choice now.
The “kind of dick move” effect, is that F-Droid was carrying a “Simple Gallery” version which now shows a popup requiring people to pay.
Going forward, F-Droid is carrying the Fossify Gallery, which is the same source with changed branding and no popup. SMT could still play nice and offer a “non-Pro” version of the apps that could get carried by F-Droid, which could lead someone to pay for the “Pro” version. Equally, random people could pay for the “Pro” version and make the source available to Fossify for free so they can port the changes, then have the resulting app carried by F-Droid.
So it’s up to the new SMT owners whether they want to play ball, play hard to get, or get forked away.
“or get forked anyway”
I see what you did there…
Yeah I know that’s allowed under the GPL, but you mentioned them “choosing to keep a FOSS version”, which if they didn’t do that would mean relicensing. It’s still FOSS here.
I meant it in the sense they could discontinue the FOSS version and roll their own privative one in its place. They’re “simple” apps after all, wouldn’t be too hard to make a simple clone. What they’ve really bought is a trademark/placeholder (along or not with a company, I haven’t looked much into the details).
they don’t care and as long as no court ruled, they do what they want, which will probably work out for them
Simple Calendar Pro got an update in October, that’s not too far back
Edit: Just saw the news of the purchase was from Dec.
This is one of the reasons Privacy Guides does not recommend F-Droid.
Ref: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/android/#verifying-apk-fingerprints
Solution: use Obtainium and point it to their GitHub repo.
Their point regarding old and unmaintained apps seems a bit silly. Getting the same old and unmaintained app from the app’s website isn’t going to make it any safer. You’re still going to need to switch to a different app/fork to get updates.
Thank you for this! Gonna download it ASAP.
Were the other simple apps forked as well, or just Gallery?
Everything was forked and should eventually end up on F-Droid, but most things haven’t had a release yet. My understanding is that they’re hoping to do everything right immediately, including having proper new branding and all the shared functionality from Simple Thank You.
The F-Droid versions of SMT apps are perfectly safe and shouldn’t be going anywhere. (But if you have Google Play versions, I wouldn’t trust those anymore, those are owned by ZipoApps now.)
Cool, thanks for the info! All of mine are f-droid and figured they’d be okay for now. Definitely looking to switch though but I’m lazy and prefer to do things through f-droid lol
They were, no new releases yet though except calendar