PySimpleGUI is now closed-source
PySimpleGUI is now closed-source
Python GUIs for Humans! PySimpleGUI is the top-rated Python application development environment. Launched in 2018 and actively developed, maintained, and supported in 2024. Transforms tkinter, Qt, ...
Previously LGPL, now re-licensed as closed-source/commercial. Previous code taken down.
Commercial users pay $99/year, free for personal use but each user has to make a free account after a trial period.
If this project has other contributors, imagine how betrayed they must be.
Opening the project as FOSS until it becomes popular and then closing it to make money is such a scummy tactic
Fork the last commit with a LGPL commit?
GPL mentions explicitly that it is irrevocable, where as LGPL doesn't mention anything about it. IANAL, but it looks like there is a case for irrevocable without violation of clauses by default https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4012/are-licenses-irrevocable-by-default#4013
For people considering contributing to FOSS in the future, maybe check for irrevocable clauses? I wish licenses selectors https://choosealicense.com highlighted this part more clearly.
Also depends on the contributions terms.
If they were a traditional FOSS, they can't change the terms without all contributors agreeing or removing/modifying the contributed code so that they no longer have ownership of their authored sections.
Either way, it's a dick move.
Never sign over copyright. If they didn't, they can sue.
I've had to sign specific paperwork regarding copyright for just big projects, many smaller ones take contributions without paperwork, which would leave the rights with each contributor. They be better dot their i's and cross their t's, it just the legal fees could isnk them before making any money from the commercial license.
IANAL, just in case.
If any contributors haven't signed a contract letting them close the source, this opens them up to lawsuits.
Does the LGPL really allow that or did they make all the contributors agree to allow their code to be relicensed?
Previous versions licensed under LGPL will remain licensed as such. The current maintainers have no obligation to contribute distributing the older versions, but they aren't permitted to prevent others from distributing it or modifying or doing anything else that was permitted by the license.
And, yes, to change from GPL/LGPL to another license you would need all of the contributors to consent, or to rewrite the parts that were contributed by anyone who doesn't agree with the license change. Since it looks like there only one contributor according to the GitHub page, this probably wasn't too difficult.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39369886 outlines the (non) PR history. Expand the whole HN post to get links of (unrelated) people who cloned the LGPL v4 tree/tag/branch before they (PySimpleSoft) scrubbed/deleted the entire Github repo of pre-v5 content the past few days.
@ebits21 #PySimpleGUI #python #opensource
🎶 Another bites the dust. 🎶
Moves like this are a bit... strange? It was on github. There are 1.8k forks, with intact LGPL. What is happening here? Is their dev work worth 99$/year ? Not saying people don't deserve to get paid for their work. I'm just not seeing the business case for this.
They claim that not enough people donated, hence the change in licensing. But yeah, I don’t see the business case. I imagine commercial devs will just move on to something else.
It’s just a wrapper for other GUI libraries.
That and I’m sure it’ll be forked.
Yeah, if people didn't think it was worth donating to before, they sure as shit aren't going to pay for it now that it's also closed source. What's their value prop even supposed to be here?
How else do you expect their time to be paid for?
Donations?
Hey, A lot of people spent their precious free time to look at your project, test it out, and talking about it to their colleagues. How are you going to pay us for wasting however many minutes or hours of time spent on your supposedly open source project before you did the bait-and-switch?
(By "you" I meant the developer.)
@HKayn This may sound cold hearted and I swear I'm not:
There is no obligation for the world in general to pay someone for open source software. (right now)
Everyone should think long hard about writing software and donating time and effort because of this.
I don't like this state of things, I would prefer some kind of "general usefulness" tax financed grant thing.
Donations can give you hobby money. Not "multi-millionaire, going to retire" money. If people who start FOSS projects don't want to admit that, then they are just looking for free popularity/shortcut to success. They can stop abusing the FLOSS community just so they can make a quick buck.
This set of actions (making non Foss and deleting Foss code) will essentially blacklist it from any company that has used it in the past.
Last place I was at the process for getting legal to review and sign off on specific versions of a Foss was about 6 months, with one of the fields on the form being alternatives.
Mine does this and it’s arduous. Easier to find something else. And if the country of origin is on their exclude list it won’t even be considered no matter how good it is.
Whether you are a Hobbyist User or Commercial User, you can start using PySimpleGUI at no cost. To get started with a 30-day trial period, first install Python and then
python -m pip install pysimplegui
...
You can try PySimpleGUI for 30 days, after which you will need to Sign Up. Hobbyist users sign up at no cost, and Commercial Users subscribe at $99/year. For more details, see PySimpleGUI.com/pricing.
How is this trial enforced?
How is this trial enforced?
Since it's now closed source and they distribute what is possibly/probably/presumably a binary blob, the same way all the others are enforced. With some kind of DRM date checking whatever.
They injected some binary code to make a code object (and in doing so inject some obfuscation).. if someone wants to violate the new license, they can easily work around it via installing through pip, commenting out that license check... Not that I endorse library license violations.
I put up packages on pypi with the last LGPL code versions for my own usage. I don't plan on updating them much, but they work for me.
PySimpleGUI-4-foss And psgtray-foss.
The user has to have a key to use the software, no free account then no key after 30 days unless the developer paid for the key.
Although rug-pulls like this are dubious to say the least, neither should FOSS contributors be hauled over the coals simply because, to justify continuing to commit more and more time to a project. they need to generate some kind of revenue. If more FOSS advocates donated reasonable amounts of money to the projects they use, this kind of bollocks would be much less frequent, and the long term stability of projects would increase dramatically. Sadly, way to many people donate nothing. And way too many companies, as well.
This is so sad. I'm especially bothered about the force push to change history. This was a great library. Now I guess it's time to either use the fork or find something else.
The history change was probably to avoid violating the LGPL. If any contributors don't agree with the change (or you don't want to do the onerous task of getting consensus as required) you should remove their contributions from the work you make closed source as the contributions still come under LGPL until the original author consents to the change.
Or at least that's what people said here.
That's incorrect in that you have to remove the contributions from source code or get permission. Rewriting git history doesn't get permission or remove history. It just hides it.
Can anyone recommend a good alternative?
PyQt.
Ah yes, the complete opposite of "simple" with 20x the boilerplate. Pysimplegui was alternative to pyqt for a good reason.
@ebits21 Here's the last LGPL licensed PySimpleGUI v4:
I hear mojo a callin
Booo
If previous code was lgpl then anyone with a git repo can simply reupload it to git and continue the project under a different name.
To whomever owns this project: fuck you for taking the work of multiple people and just taking it for yourself.
Bruh. This is why I hate all the open source license that are not GPL. Are not free software. I am not bother to pay for it. But I am bother to not see the code :(
Only to a certain extent.
The problem is that a lot of software is very complex and requires full-time development/maintenance. It's simply not possible to work on stuff for free unless this is just a hobby and you can sustain yourself with a main job.
The main thing I have a problem with this instance is the following sequence of events
- The developer licensed it as LGPL.
- They did not accept ANY contributions to the code.
- The project became popular enough for people to post about in the fediverse (quite popular then, I guess)
- They got donations for their work, but apparently it was not enough.
- They removed the project from being accessible and moved to a paid only model.
This tells me:
- Their intention all along was to abuse FOSS community for popularity, traction, clout and free testing by people who are also doing this stuff in their free time.
- They got donations, but for whatever reason it was not enough for them. => Were they expecting to make retirement level income from their project which is in a crowded segment?
The amount of people who feel like they're entitled to the previous code and are calling the license change scummy make me sick.
This developer put their own free time into this project, they made sure to not accept anyone else's code, and they understandably felt they deserve to be paid for their time. Whether this was a smart move is another matter entirely.
The one case where I can understand being upset is if you donated shortly before this happened. But otherwise, you should really reflect on how you're giving back to the people who make the tools you feel oh so entitled to.
I wonder if you typed that with a straight face. If so then you are wildly out of touch with how FOSS and the democratization of FOSS development works.
You use words like “entitled” as a derogatory term when you clearly don’t understand that yes, the community is entitled because that’s how these FOSS licenses work. And people have every right to be upset when the status quo changes for a project they have also helped develop and helped get popular.
So either you are trolling, or you are clueless. Either way you should be ignored and this is as much time I’m going to waste writing this comment.
The amount of people who feel like they’re entitled to the previous code and are calling the license change scummy make me sick.
But you're not sick at the fact that they licensed it as LGPL just to get their product popular and then said "I got the eyeballs I wanted, time to milk this!"
This developer put their own free time into this project
When your code is open source the expectation is that you are sharing code with people for free so that the community can enjoy the work and hopefully you gain respect and popularity as your product matures and a lot of people utilize it. People might even fund you for your hard work if you become popular enough. Maybe a whole new product gets developed on top of your product and you become important. That's how a lot of successful open source projects work.
If you are entitled to quick success, we are entitled to our ideology around FLOSS.
they made sure to not accept anyone else’s code.
So they just wanted people to test their product and market them for free? Who's entitled here?
(Also that argument is not going to work in court when people sue them for violating LGPL terms)
and they understandably felt they deserve to be paid for their time
What about the compensation for people who beta-tested this product for free and recommended them to others?
But otherwise, you should really reflect on how you’re giving back to the people who make the tools you feel oh so entitled to.
The giving back part is increasing respect, popularity, and a community of contributors who will grow YOUR product for free. Don't act like this small project is a gift from God.
Also, the author literally didn't accept contributions. That just means they were looking for free marketing and eyeballs. As soon as it was convenient for them to pull the rug they did so without even thinking about the community. Who's the scumbag, you tell me?
they licensed it as LGPL just to get their product popular and then said "I got the eyeballs I wanted, time to milk this!"
Show us where the dev said exactly that.
we are entitled to our ideology around FLOSS.
You are not entitled to anything. The dev simply released their work with a license that allows others to use it freely. Nothing more, nothing less.
So they just wanted people to test their product and market them for free?
Again, show us where they vocalized exactly that.
What about the compensation for people who beta-tested this product for free and recommended them to others?
What compensation were they expecting?
That just means they were looking for free marketing and eyeballs.
So far you've done nothing but put a whole bunch of malicious words into this developer's mouth.
Do you know if there were any other contributors to the project? I've always held the view that the tail of contributors should prevent relicensing under incompatible terms.
It's a shame you are being downvoted, although I don't (mostly) agree with you, I feel your opinion contributes positively to the discussion.
The previous code was released under lgpl so…. Yeah if you can find a copy of it you are entitled to it. That was the developer’s choice.
Taking all the old code down with a force push to GitHub suddenly is a bit futile since obviously there are ways to get the old source.
I’m not against developers getting paid, but there’s definitely a ‘rug-pulling’ aspect to this situation that leaves a bad taste.