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ugh.
I think a good way to avoid this for any other app in the future is to just use alternativea found on fdroid.
… And disregard the rest :D
A fork is currently being worked on, called fossify.
For now we have fossify gallery and calendar
So it begins
sigh. Most people will just accept the new default permissions without blinking an eye. They’re taking advantage of people’s ignorance.
You overestimate most peoples tech skills. They will never know because they have auto-updates activated.
“have full network access” BIG YIKES
I mean it makes sense for error reporting. Lots of apps automatically report errors so that they can be detected easily, which would require internet access.
that kinda makes me think google should to a log retrieval and storage api which can retrieve and send logs to developers.
That just allows Google full access to all logs from any application you have installed.
That service is not free either per month and those costs will be passed to the consumer in either a subscription or worse software.
i mean google would have it anyway; and the app developer would be collecting the logs any way so the cost would be there already. this would just make it so they wouldn’t need to request full network access; just enough to get the logs.
Hey op, how did u get that screenshot? My gplay didn’t have the new tags ‘new’ 😥 http://0x0.st/H0pq.png
Interesting, maybe it’s because of the phone. I’m using pixel 6a with GrapheneOS
Lol me too, I swear. Thanks for reply . I’m in the land of oz. So I assume ur in america. Different laws Im gonna assume.
Yeah, not suspicious at all.
Tibor betrayed us and sold the Simple Apps suite to a sleazy adtech company a while ago, there were multiple posts on this suggesting replacements, then one of the most active devs forked it into Fossify, removing all the branding and references to the original, work is still ongoing on this, already some of the apps have been rereleased, here’s a handy matrix of the progress on the rerelease from somebody on Github
Wow, I never heard of that before. Is there any replacement for simple gallery, before they screw with it?
Did you click on the link in the comment you replied to?
Honestly no, since it was talking about the SMS messenger. I’ll have a look then.
I’m really curious about the amount of money exchanged. It must have been an enormous amount in order to do a “I’d even sell my mom for that” and don’t feel dirty
There were multiple reports about sleazy companies reaching out to developers of popular apps and Chrome addons and offering them money for their accounts. The money is really good but there’s still a lot of devs that can say ‘no’. They will just use to track some people, it’s not a completely new business that will grow and earn them money like Instagram or something.
the developer, and this isnt exaggeration, does not understand gpl v3. he literally got confused when people told him he had no right to sell contributed code. you can see for yourself in the github discussions
You can sell GPL code. Even if you aren’t the author. What you must do is share the code with those customers though.
you cant sell othwrs ans then close source which is what they did to my knowledge
Open source can be sold/commercialised. I think you’re confusing between FOSS and open source.
FOSS and open source is the same thing
You perfectly can sell GPL code. And you can double-license yourself (provided that you are the copyright holder) as GPL and a privative license. A lot of companies do that, legally and correctly.
I’m pretty sure what he sold was not the code but access to this play store account so that the new owner can push updated version to his current users.
I’m just using the default GrapheneOS SMS app, but it’s concerning seeing the number of these FOSS apps lately adding major privacy invasive permission changes. Are there a few big companies buying them up for a quick buck, or what?
I’m just speculating here, but I’ve seen where app developers pull in a framework for a feature and it comes with all sorts of hidden gems since the framework was developed by a large corporation. The small development team now needs to consider writing their own framework (an established anti-pattern), find another (that may have the same problems or be less mature, etc) or include the privacy invading code and plan to replace it in a future release (which never happens because users want new features and the privacy concerned users have left).
Not even close. This has nothing to do with SimpleApps.
A crappy company bought them from the original creator and maintainer. This company is well known for buying mildly popular apps and inserting ads in them for monetisation.
People who downloaded them from F-Droid should be fine tho.
Well, that’s unfortunate. I’ve seen this happen way too many times.
yeah, the most shady part of this is that SimpleApps’ code was available in Github. They could have just used that and upload it to the Play Store.
why did they buy it from the developer instead? because thousands of people already had these installed, so when buying it from the developer they get to push their new, ad infested versions to the unwary users had the apps installed.
This is a very dark pattern IMO.
Yup, ZippoApps just bought this one. It’s a company that basically buys apps then pumps them full of invasive (bordering on spyware) bloat to capture the data from existing users. It’s a typical corporate strategy, where they buy a popular app, extract every single cent they can from it, then discard it once it’s a shell of its former self, for the next popular app.
That’s exactly what happened.
Did they forget to track the google maps history? someone should submit a PR
sounds like an uninstall
Wow, the new owners enshittified those apps really fast.
Play store version is already infected. There was a buyout of SMT apps.
Oh, I see. They even stopped sponsoring Linux Mint, which is how I found SMT.
Edit: They used to be a gold sponsor: https://web.archive.org/web/20220201203412/https://linuxmint.com/sponsors.php
Which means $1,000/month.how could smt afford to donaye 1000 a month???
When I saw some serious issues with Clock app (from Simple Apps), I deleted and never used it again. So many apps and so many bugs, lol.
