I had heavily used PySimpleGUI in various work projects, and one day, when I had to run some older piece of code I had not run in a while, I get a notice that PySimpleGUI won't work, because was free, but nobody paid, and so, good luck! So I was piping mad, paid the 3-year or whatever the max license fee was, received a code, and THEN I was able to get my stuff to work, like it used to.
LESSON: N E V E R Use code that can "stop working" until you pay ransom. N E V E R.
At this point, it's irrelevant, because the LLMs can replace PySimpleGUI with PyQt etc so --- thanks but no thanks. I did like it because you could throw up something around a CLI and it looked at least presentable. Now, since 2025, nobody codes anymore, so ... seems to me, this PySimpleGUI 6 is just a bit of history.
First they made it commercial. Then they realised there were not enough people prepared to pay for the project and shut down the project. But now it is back in free form?
Great to see this back as Open Source (LGPL 3.0). However, it points out the continuous need for proper funding for Open Source. Tough in ZIRP times, exponentially more difficult in more difficult economic times.
Hmm apart from distribution (which is a pain to set up) I still don't think you can beat QtWidgets and QtCreator for simplicity of getting a professional GUI. It has a form editor that actually works. I think maybe the only one I've ever used. Then you can pretty much just click on buttons and add event handlers. Very easy to get going and it scales very far.
There are a few downsides... there are better options than C++ these days (Rust most obviously), QtWidgets is in maintenance mode, it's a bit of a pain to make an installer from your app, and it doesn't really support modern styling.
Yes, especially with AI unless the user has literally never programmed anything before, it seem actually easier to use Qt for something like this (honestly, it probably would be easier to just make a webapp if they have no experience)
I think AI coding has made these "we dumb down a real UI framework for you" libraries obsolete. Anyone can get a GTK or QT app up and running now. This isn't a criticism, they were very useful to build GUIs in the past, but now they are just obsolete and more likely to introduce bugs or limitations you can't work around than to help much.
LOL, I remember this one being a famous traitor to FOSS by starting out as a community project and then closing doors to make money from it. Guess they weren't able to make any money after all. Karma in action.
Or it's just another example of why FOSS fails - people (like you) expect free labor and never want to pay for it. They tried to make it a sustainable project, and it would probably have died even earlier if they didn't.
> For the last 5 years, PySimpleGUI offered free software with the hope of sustaining the project with donations. We appreciate the support we received, but the amount has been too small to support the project.
I don't think this is a complete characterization of what happened. From looking at a previous thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39369353), the owner curiously did not allow outside contributions to his GPL project. This is odd, especially if it seems like he was complaining about having issues with maintenance of the project. Then, after he tried to switch the license, he deleted/obfuscated the repo history. Even though it is GPL, because he had the "foresight" of not allowing outside contributions, he was able to take this action unilaterally. I suspect that the owner had his mind on commercialization from the very beginning, and was using the whole FOSS bit as a way to get free publicity before rugpulling.
LESSON: N E V E R Use code that can "stop working" until you pay ransom. N E V E R.
At this point, it's irrelevant, because the LLMs can replace PySimpleGUI with PyQt etc so --- thanks but no thanks. I did like it because you could throw up something around a CLI and it looked at least presentable. Now, since 2025, nobody codes anymore, so ... seems to me, this PySimpleGUI 6 is just a bit of history.
Every time I needed a GUI, I reached out to this library. Very beginner friendly. Good memories.
However I ended up settling on making a Web UI served via FastAPI. I'm still happy about that decision but this one sounded really nice back then.
There are a few downsides... there are better options than C++ these days (Rust most obviously), QtWidgets is in maintenance mode, it's a bit of a pain to make an installer from your app, and it doesn't really support modern styling.
But I'd still pick it over this in a heartbeat.
I.e., "too human-friendly to survive in the presence of The Great AI™".
If so, where does that lead us?
> For the last 5 years, PySimpleGUI offered free software with the hope of sustaining the project with donations. We appreciate the support we received, but the amount has been too small to support the project.