What happened ?

[Golem642]

The app is no longer accessible on the @RetroMusicPlayer account, what happened to it @h4h13 ?
I really need it it's the best app for this, and a lot of people (myself included) use it everyday

[h4h13]

Hi 👋🏻 we decided to make Paisa private repository from now onwards, since to avoid copies

[Golem642]

Hi 👋🏻 we decided to make Paisa private repository from now onwards, since to avoid copies

What copies ? Everyone knows you have the real repo, you own the Play Store app.

And if by copies you mean forks, that's the whole point of GitHub but you can find the original source of a fork anytime easily.

And even then there has been no blatant copy of your app, this is very unjustified and makes me believe this account was actually hacked (why "we" ? Are multiple people using this account ?), which would explain the growth in size + the change of key + making the repo private so you can sneak in a way to exfiltrate data or something.

This isn't any type of app we're talking about, this is a "bank account transactions" type of app which requires the whole thing to be built on trust because it contains sensitive data, but your behavior lately and the weird actions you've taken are worrying some people that this might not be good intentions.

The whole point about open source is you show what you make to everyone, you give them trust about what you are making, and they can easily report problems to you and help you on some of them. Your reason for privating the repo is to avoid "copies", but there is something called a license which you can define what can people do and not do with your app without having to resort to privating the entire repo.

I really don't get it, this decision was so abrupt and left without any notice for anyone.

Please, give us more details on why you chose to private the repo other than just to avoid "copies" which doesn't make sense at all

Best regards

[chathura-de-silva]

I gonna quit using the app. Never knew the source code was made private.

[Golem642]

@h4h13 we can't even help translate now, plus you have a license as mentioned that you could change anytime if you wanted at the bottom of your readme. I really don't get it, please explain to us why this sudden decision

[h4h13]

@Golem642 I don't want Paisa app become like Retro Music Player so I don't want to be opensource anymore because, I barely get support from adding features or bug fixing from being open

we're gonna add people to repo in private who can support the project in terms of translations or any other means and gives proper credits to supporters

[h4h13]

@chathura-de-silva by all means stop using project if you trust

[Golem642]

@h4h13 said : I barely get support from adding features or bug fixing from being open

There were people willing to help you if you just looked at the issues comment, for example on the storage permissions and access for backup.

Besides, what you get from being open is the full trust from the people that uses your app, especially since this is basically a bank account transaction logging app which contains private informations.

In fact you probably gain less from being private than open, people can't help you directly now

[skj-skj]

I think the situation is @h4h13 is not making money on this project and some scums on google play publishing the app as paid and got good downloads, they didn't respected the licence.
and its unfair expectations on developers and maintainer to keep working on this project without monetory benifits.

better approach could be to change licence terms or change to source available licence or use fsl licence, so the project can have a better case when a take down notice issued.

for monetization ads can be an option but will ruin the user experience.
one way of monetization I can think of is have in app purchases on certain features like export to xlsx with charts, tags, auto completed or early access to new features etc. and keep the free app two, three features behind.
other way to monetize by themes, like dark, black or any other fancy theme can be in app purchases.

my speculation is paisa-app going to be integrated with fintech app or will become one, nothing wrong in that if user agreed to new terms and fits their use case.

I have recommended this app to various of my friends who asked me what app to use to track expenses and not sure if I am able to recommend it now.

for me I won't be comfortable, since repo is private and decision to make a closed source project is been made I don't know whether my transaction data will be used for monetary gain or not.

and I won't be updating the app in future until there is better clarity on the situation, right now I am using v6.2.3

I hope this is just a bump in the journey of paisa app and things will resolved.

[FosRexx]

If anyone is trying to switch from Paisa like I did then I have made a python script that converts the Paisa json backup into Cashew import file.

I have been using Cashew for a week now and I think it's great, and it's open source as well.

[chathura-de-silva]

If anyone is trying to switch from Paisa like I did then I have made a python script that converts the Paisa json backup into Cashew import file.

I have been using Cashew for a week now and I think it's great, and it's open source as well.

Thank you for the recommendation and the script.

[Weldarvin]

If anyone is trying to switch from Paisa like I did then I have made a python script that converts the Paisa json backup into Cashew import file.

I have been using Cashew for a week now and I think it's great, and it's open source as well.

I converted mine through excel power query and switch to Cashew 2 weeks ago.

I kinda understand the situation with paisa but still think this could have been handled differently than close-sourcing.

But hey, it's their app and they can do what they want with it.

[alba4k]

agree, It's sad that this is no longer open source. Also, no copies have ever been created so I find this quite unjustifiable

[skj-skj]

agree, It's sad that this is no longer open source. Also, no copies have ever been created so I find this quite unjustifiable

It seems that this app is a copy of the Paisa App. Since the Paisa App was under a GPLv3 License, redistribution is allowed, even with monetization. However, the terms of GPLv3 require that they also open-source their code under the same license, which hasn’t been done here.

This issue isn’t unique to the Paisa App, many popular open-source projects face similar challenges. For example, GIMP has been sold on the Microsoft Store, but not by its official maintainers.

[alba4k]

You're right, that app is indeed a clone, go report it

[chathura-de-silva]

agree, It's sad that this is no longer open source. Also, no copies have ever been created so I find this quite unjustifiable

It seems that this app is a copy of the Paisa App. Since the Paisa App was under a GPLv3 License, redistribution is allowed, even with monetization. However, the terms of GPLv3 require that they also open-source their code under the same license, which hasn’t been done here.

This issue isn’t unique to the Paisa App, many popular open-source projects face similar challenges. For example, GIMP has been sold on the Microsoft Store, but not by its official maintainers.

I did report it. They should have made the codebase available.