F-Droid

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F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform. The client makes it easy to browse, install, and keep track of updates on your device.

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Simple Mobile Tools is dead, long live FossifyX! (feddit.de)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

30 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As reported in a reddit post and confirmed in a github discussion, Simple Mobile Tools is being sold to ZippoApps which is known for shady business practices.

It is not yet clear whether they will make the app suite closed source (which would infringe the rights of all contributors since they contributed under the GPLv3 license).

In response to that situation, one of the main contributors forked the project under the name FossifyX and will continue to work on it.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

I dunno much about these licenses but is it possible the new owners could nullify the GPL rights? Like "no you can no longer fork this code that you could previously"?

Just trying to figure out exactly what their motive is here...

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

(IANAL)

Since the software is already distributed under the terms of the GPLv3 (which guarantees irrevocable rights) there is no way to forbid any distribution of the current version of the software.

It is however possible to distribute future works under a different license, but only if you aren't bound by the GPL yourself. This would be the case if you wrote the code yourself or all contributors grant you the right to do so (eg. using a Contributor License Agreement).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

There are clever ways to split software via different abstractions that allow to avoid some license features from affecting future developments too. That is to add new closed source features without relicensing the existing codebase.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Once someone exists publicly as code with an attached valid license it cannot be retroactively removed the right to use it. So only new versions could have different licenses or something.