- cross-posted to:
- android
- cross-posted to:
- android
cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/6710937
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.
Not necessarily Linux related, but figured this was important information to pass along, given the popularity of these FOSS apps on Android.
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Very disappointing. Moreover I’m not even sure if they’re allowed to do this with GPL and other contributors. If they sell I think it would need to stay GPL? Regardless I’m removing these either way.
You can sell GPL software as long as you include the licence (and follow through with sending the source code to any customer who asks for it).
Yeah GPL doesn’t mean ‘no profit allowed’
But it DOES mean that, as pointed out in the thread, even if they do modify the code to put ads or whatever - Ultimately people can still fork the code and make their own ‘clean’ versions.
As for myself I have those apps from F-Droid. Something tells me any evil modifications (if any at all happen) will happen to the Google Play version, and worst case scenario the F-Droid versions get abandoned.
The fact that you can fork the code and make your own clean version, either for personal use or for distribution, is part of why most companies don’t usually bother with open source licenses to begin with - it’s just too hard to make the kind of monster-profits corporations and shareholders alike expect without inevitably provoking someone into forking their code and distributing a free, unmonetized version of the product. I’d be surprised if ZipoApps goes full-on monetization if they want people to keep using their versions of the apps, but if they do, it’s going to be a short-lived inconvenience until someone inevitably distributes a fork.
Yeah, it has to stay GPL. So Simple Mobile Tools selling to a for-profit company doesn’t really change all that much. Worst case scenario, the original apps get screwed over but someone releases forks of them. Best case scenario, ZipoApps doesn’t actually change anything and just acts as a host for the projects.
Can’t help wondering if Zipo Apps just got scammed here?
Sell your GPL licensed codebase to a company, donate that money to a charity or whatever, make a fork, and convince everyone to move over to that version. Everyone’s inconvenienced for a bit, but otherwise it’s business as usual.
They’re almost certainly buying them for the brand name, market penetration and high Google Play reputation. But I imagine anyone willing to replace the default Google apps isn’t going to put up with a new privacy policy and/or ads.
