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Simple Mobile Tools suite to be acquired by Israeli adware company
41–50 of 88 posts
Re: Simple Mobile Tools suite to be acquired by Israeli adware company
#42Re: Simple Mobile Tools suite to be acquired by Israeli adware company
#43"How much does your data cost? We know the price" was posted on their blog very recently
https://www.simplemobiletools.com/blog/how-much-does-your-da...
Re: Simple Mobile Tools suite to be acquired by Israeli adware company
#44Developer 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…
For reference, he explicitly mentions it in [0][1].
[0]: https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/General-Discussion/issu... [1]: https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/General-Discussion/issu...
Re: Simple Mobile Tools suite to be acquired by Israeli adware company
#45This is unethical.
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.
Re: Simple Mobile Tools suite to be acquired by Israeli adware company
#46It hurts most because it was one of the few open source projects I regularly donated to.
Re: Simple Mobile Tools suite to be acquired by Israeli adware company
#47Ouch. 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...
Re: Simple Mobile Tools suite to be acquired by Israeli adware company
#48Cynical view emerging here; Most elites don't lose during inflation.
The small creators are the ones facing financial pressure and difficult decisions... and that's when you snap up their products.
Re: Simple Mobile Tools suite to be acquired by Israeli adware company
#49Ouch. 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.
Re: Simple Mobile Tools suite to be acquired by Israeli adware company
#50Oh, 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.
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.