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.
Well no, it’s factual: the man very generously did invaluable work for years. And then he sold out. That’s just what happened, however grateful I am to him for the work he did for all those years.
I assume there were no other companies willing to buy Simple Mobile Tools, otherwise he wouldn’t have sold to that particularly hateful bunch of sumbitches. One doesn’t provide free tools with total abnegation for so many years and then choose the worse possible buyer this side of the law without a good reason. So I accept his choice and his reasons - whatever they may be.
But surely there were other ways to handle this. Like for example, telling the community that money has run out and he will be forced to sell to unsavory characters, and appealing to the community to fund him if they wanted to keep Simple Mobile Tools ads-free. But instead, he went about it all hush-hush and sprang it on everybody - users and contributors alike. Not cool.
Finally, remember that some people actually paid for their copies of Simple Mobile Tools, and they paid precisely to prevent this happening. They must feel pretty betrayed, and rightfully so.