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.
Funny because that describes pretty much exactly "cloud-first" software architecture, and people jumping on it in troves, unexplainably.
Even if that worked, I’d also want hashes to avoid file modification, although that’s less of a concern for anything on Maven Central where the releases are immutable.
Every time I needed a GUI, I reached out to this library. Very beginner friendly. Good memories.
They kinda assume everyone knows it. Maybe the same thought process led to commercialization…
- Microsoft killed it: "let's rewrite the entire thing as VB.NET and make it completely different"
- The UIs designed in the RAD weren't particularly responsive in the sense of "responsive design" - generally you couldn't resize a window and have all the elements resize correctly. When I learned Java Swing and elements were defined programmatically as percentages of their container that was kind of eye opening to me.
- The small-time apps that were being developed with VB6 in the 90s are basically all web apps now.
I know you asked for "the language", but Object Pascal really ain't that bad to get around. If you were proficient in VB6, you should be fine adapting. :-)
What changed was the level of popularity and acceptance of those tools.
I think it comes down to trends and programmers psychologically subconsciously not wanting to be mistaken for users.
Because unfortunately what subconsciously is accepted as programming must involve colorful cryptic text. And if you are just dragging things around and setting parameters, you are not doing that, and someone might accuse you of being a user.
Not saying it makes sense, but that seems to be the explanation.
But look at WordPress, VB.NET, n8n, LabView, Unreal Engine, Houdini, Unity, etc.
- VB apps weren't great from the point of view of internationalization, accessibility. Nor were they easy to adapt to multiple screen sizes. Hard to retrofit the ecosystem to make that right it seemed.
- Microsoft decided to solve that problem by attacking a different one (symptomatic of their internal politics), by pushing .Net. That smelled to me of the victors of an internal battle (VB vs .Net) taking over the real estate of the VB ecosystem. However, the developers of VB apps got a vote, and they bailed.
Microsoft's timing was also not great in that the web and mobile revolution arrived just as they were wrangling with all this and made a lot of the discussion irrelevant. No one starting a new app today is going to reach for VB.Net, they're going to default to a web app. If desktop perf is the target, they'll grit their teeth and try to figure out what desktop tookit (WinForms, XAML, MAUI etc) they should be using...yet more friction compared to webapps.
It's a tragedy that scratch-your-own-itch desktop apps went away, but I can't say I am at all surprised.
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.
> 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.
> with the hope of sustaining the project with donations.. the amount has been too small to support the project
So shut it down, lock the repo, invite new maintainers indefinitely. It's only non-sustainable for the price the author is asking. It'll still be FOSS even if no longer maintainer by the original author, whether a new maintainer steps in or not.
And if they want to fork it an create a commercial alt, no problem - anyone can!
The problem arises, IMHO, when they develop (accept contributions) or propagate (lock-in) a FOSS project in good-will, then somehow leverage their position as a FOSS maintainer transform it to non-FOSS.