"we specialize in acquiring under-optimized apps in an industry that is highly fragmented. We use our optimizing operations, deploy its technology, and generate cash flow from the apps. "

“we developed an AI technology that knows how” “to monetize the right user at the right stage of their app experience”

(https://everything-pr.com/zipoapps-tech-talk-with-the-entrepreneur-co-founder-and-ceo-gal-avidor/)

Sounds like they just keep the apps around and try to squeeze as much money out of the users they have bought.

The only restriction is that they have to keep their modifications open source

And since it’s GPL that any additions are compatible with the GPL, which the ad / tracking stuff they’re likely to add likely isn’t.

And if all development effort moves to the fork, Zipo can still take that fork and redistribute it under the “Simple Mobile Tools” name.

Only if they don’t add their own proprietary shit, and if they don’t, how would their “bully users to pay for features” business model work?

According to https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/General-Discussion/issues/241#issuecomment-1837837729 “like 99% of the current code has been written by me and other paid devs, so no need to overreact the licensing thing” it seems like the remaining 1% is going to be ignored or possibly even removed if they think that leaving that in might open them up to DMCA claims by disgruntled contributors - which taking code from an open source fork would definitely do.

IIRC the proposal includes some crypto-handshake verification to make sure the attestor is who it claims to be, so no, apps can’t just fake it. Or, if some of those secret keys leak and apps use it, sites won’t accept it anymore.

It still doesn’t matter. A website can choose which attestors to trust (if they had to trust all of them the whole thing would be useless), so Youtube can just deny access to the video streams to anything that isn’t a trusted browser environment, and anything third party like Invidious, Piped, Newpipe, Freetube… won’t be able to work anymore.

eventually there will probably ba a certificate authority alternative to Google

Which won’t matter (for access from third-party apps), because to be accepted by websites they need to prove their trustworthiness, so you can’t just use a different one to circumvent it.

Unless people mass-migrate away from Chrome-based browsers (basically everything expect Firefox) Google will at one point enable their Web Environment Integrity thing, force all other browsers to enable it too because otherwise a lot of websites will stop working in them, and no alternative frontend will have access to the video streams anymore.