Apparently in the past day, they’ve removed all the logos from the Microgrants projects and clarified that the grants are unsolicited
I think Louis Rossmann’s heart is in the right place, his work for right for repair is genuine, his disdain for New York’s intolerable bureaucracy is completely understandable and justified, but it is leading him in bad directions and has been ever since he linked up with FUTO. Never trust a billionaire and never let them delude you into thinking they care about you or anyone. He is being used for his reputation and his audience and when they are done consuming those things for the billionaire’s cause’s benefit he will be left with neither one and the billionaire will move on without slowing down or shedding a tear.
What else do you expect him to do that will make an ACTUAL change? You HAVE to make some concessions when collaborating with large entities, and I think we are lucky that Louis can stay true to all of his beliefs with a large backing like FUTO, even if they aren’t perfect.
I feel like I’ve seen stories like this before, how a popular YouTuber, or advocate isn’t “perfect”. People in the comments provide a “perfect” alternative, they are usually super niche and super underground. Certainly someone that hasn’t yet had the chance to come under the same amount of scrutiny.
We need to be a little compromising to avoid cannibalizing our movement to achieve “purity” of our ideals, while corps continue to take ground. My two cents. Stop the bleeding first, before you worry about scars.
Exactly!
FUTO is a force for good IMO, even though I disagree with their approach. I use:
- Grayjay - way nicer than NewPipe and works with a bunch of services
- FUTO Keyboard - best keyboard alternative for swipe typing IMO
- Polycentric - I’ve posted a bit through Grayjay and want it to catch on
I wish their software was FOSS, but at least it’s source available and I think they fixed it to allow noncommercial redistribution of modifications. It’s not perfect, but it’s a force for a good.
He’s always been more than a little petite bourgeoisie. Among all his spats with the city of New York, I’m sure you can find something where he was at fault, but we generally only get his side of things. Still, I think he’s been mostly a good advocate. FUTO is not the right place to do that.
While I can’t say I agree with everything Rossmann, the guy seems very genuine, regardless of where I think he may be wrong or right. Also, I’ve seen him pedal back and retract plenty of times when he is shown (with evidence) that he was wrong.
Can you name one other personality with a large following that comes even close to Louis Rossmann in bringing stuff to light and fighting back against enshittification?
As for Futo, yeah, I’m pretty sure that billionaire that owns it is just using Rossmann for his following. But who knows, maybe Rossmann is also taking advantage of him to advance what we all want to see as well.
Can you name one other personality with a large following that comes even close to Louis Rossmann in bringing stuff to light and fighting back against enshittification?
Well, there’s Corey Doctorow, of course. He literally wrote the book on Enshittification.
There are definitely more “behind the scenes” folks doing a lot for that particular cause who don’t so much have a following of anywhere near the same size, but nonetheless do fight enshittification in big ways. Bradley Kuhn comes to mind.
I know about Corey Doctorow and his coining of the term and his book. I appreciate there are people like him, they do make a difference. I’ve never heard of Bradley Kuhn, thanks for pointing him out. I’ll look him up.
This is exactly what I’m talking about. People like these are doing what they can to further knowledge about how shit is extremely wrong and needs to change.
Louis Rossmann uses the following he has built up over the years to carry the word on the extreme enshittification we live in, and pushes for changes that will be beneficial for us at the legislative level as much as at the operating level.
I do believe that Futo and it’s owner are just trying to benefit from him, but that does not remove the fact that Rossmann has also taken advantage of Futo to improve our situation as much as he can without making a penny out of it for himself.
Honor where honor’s due, that’s my thing.
Are they sitting through hours of legislature meetings just to have a 60 sec chance to speak? Are they meeting with legislators and city councils to discuss causes they care about? Are they making YouTube content going over lengthy legal documents to show people the problem?
Or are they mostly writing books and speaking at paid conferences?
IDK about you, but the former sounds a lot less bougie than the latter.
I’m not a fan of that argument. Basically, that article goes: I don’t like their definition of open source (fair) and it’s weird that the founder platforms a far right person (also fair), so you shouldn’t trust FUTO (weird conclusion).
I don’t like how we find some reason to discredit an org who does otherwise good things. Look at the reaction to Framework donating to projects run by unsavory prior people. None of the discussion is about the technical merits of the projects, but the association with people who have certain political ideas.
You’re not going to find the perfect mix of popular, ethical, and the “right” political ideology. As long as a project can be audited and forked, that’s good enough for me. Forking seems possible with FUTO projects, with the weird caveat that payment code can’t be removed. It’s not perfect, but at least their products are privacy respecting and largely drop in replacements for non-privacy respecting first party apps.
Could FUTO be better? Yeah, absolutely. Is the founder’s relationship with a far right activist concerning? Again, yes. Do either of those stop me from enjoying their software? No, I believe in enough of their mission that I think supporting them sends the right message: software source should be available and devs should be paid. The rest of the nonsense doesn’t really impact that.
I feel the same about Framework. Could they do a better job selecting projects to donate to? Yes. Does that change the fact that their hardware is easily repairable in a market dominated by unrepairable slop? No.
At the end of the day, I have no problem supporting projects that align 90% with my priorities, even if the last 10% is lightyears away.
The problem isn’t that FUTO platforms an out and proud self proclaimed fascist in a vacuum.
The problem is the close association FUTO has with an out and proud self-proclaimed fascist while selling itself with a libertarian mission statement. Fascism and libertarianism are fundamentally incompatible ideologies on the far opposite ends of the spectrum. The idea that this contradiction doesn’t hurt the reputability of the organization is absurd.
If you think I’m worried about the ethical purity of the founders of an investment firm, you are mistaken.
Fascism and libertarianism are fundamentally incompatible ideologies on the far opposite ends of the spectrum.
Thank you! So many I talk to seem to argue that they’re related.
related rant
There is a libertarian -> fascist pipeline, but it’s mostly because both are fringe and fascists seem to start of thinking they’re merely fringe, but then quickly realize their true colors when they disagree so much with libertarians. This mostly seems to be from anarcho-capitalists who believe their socially conservative views should be enforced, moving them up the authoritarian spectrum.
Case in point, Trump was booed at the Libertarian Party convention, Penn Jillette was outspoken against Trump on Bill Maher in the first term, and “libertarian” conservatives Rand Paul and Thomas Massie criticizing Trump.
The idea that this contradiction doesn’t hurt the reputability of the organization is absurd.
Isn’t part of their mission that the reputation shouldn’t matter?
FUTO is all about disrupting centralization. You can dislike FUTO but like the work they do and the projects they support. The goal isn’t to make good versions of existing apps, but to make credible alternatives to existing apps, thus helping break the monopoly.
Isn’t part of their mission that the reputation shouldn’t matter?
Not at all, at least when it comes to their organization and its investments. Their donations to OSS are one thing, but FUTO controls the name and brand of their direct investments like GrayJay and Immich. This makes FUTO a brand and separating a brand from its reputation isn’t something that can be done. FUTO is a company and companies aren’t your friends. They can promise whatever they want, but they are accountable to what they do.
They themselves have put a huge emphasis on their reputation in terms of their OSS donations as well, often at the expense of transparency and the sovereignty of the projects they’re “supporting”, which is actually what the original post we’re commenting on is about. They were caught slipping donations to individual maintainers of projects and not the projects themselves in order to avoid project rules about institutional donors, and then they plastered the name and logo of these projects on their website without permission. They did this to improve their reputation and instill a sense of trust in the community. Doing so in such a shady, under the table way actively undermines trust.
FUTO is an investment company like any other, only with a mission statement of “Don’t worry, we’re one of the good ones, primarily due to INSERT BELIEFS”. Then they act in a way in flagrant contradiction of those beliefs.
Anybody who feels uneasy over this behavior is 100% justified. Anyone’s who’s lived through Apple’s “Monopoly busting underdog” or Google’s “free and open internet for all, don’t be evil” eras doubly so.
Anybody who feels uneasy over this behavior is 100% justified. Anyone’s who’s lived through Apple’s “Monopoly busting underdog” or Google’s “free and open internet for all, don’t be evil” eras doubly so.
That’s fair.
I guess my point is that they’re easily replaceable. Immich is easy to fork, Grayjay is simply a client for existing services, etc. Nothing they have built or supported really locks you in, and they’ve been explicit about not wanting to have a server component.
So to me, the impact of FUTO being or becoming evil is incredibly low, unlike Apple or Google, who have a much higher ability to lock in users. The whole mission is about removing people from those types of ecosystems into one where users can more easily switch to alternatives. The software should be preferred on its own merits, not the merits of the ecosystem it’s part of.
So I guess that’s why I’m more comfortable giving FUTO a pass: I can easily change my position tomorrow if they “go evil.”
eli5?
This is all in reference to this article.
FUTO is an organization that talks a lot of rhetoric about being some bastion of consumer rights in tech, but they’re doing a lot of shitty, shady, and downright evil things. Among them, FUTO has been in the practice of making small grants to FOSS projects (like ffmpeg and musl) and then plastering the FOSS project’s name and logo all over the FUTO site in a way that makes it seem as if FUTO is endorsed by said FOSS projects when that’s not the case at all.
(All this after doing everything in their power with their rhetoric to try to discredit and degrade the entire FOSS community. They wrote an “apology”, but even in the apology, they express their “disdain for OSI approved licenses”. Mind you,
none of FUTO’s projects are Open Sourcemost of their projects are proprietary.)After that article came out just a couple of days ago, apparently they redid their site, I’d have to guess in an effort to address the concern that the way FUTO presented their grant program before implied endorsement by a lot of FOSS projects that didn’t endorse them in any way. I don’t think they’ve done enough, and there are tons of other reasons to think FUTO is evil assholes using consumer rights rhetoric to manipulate people in service to its (fully for-profit) bottom line.
Other concerns in the article include FUTO’s connection to explicit/proud fascists and using their platform to (even coercing Louis Rossmann into) spread fascist propaganda.
I’ve clicked through the links and the most ‘evil’ thing they did seems to be using a non-mainstream open source licence? Evil is getting contracted by Israel. Prohibiting other companies from profiting off your work isn’t evil.
Edit: And they hosted an interview with Curtis Yarvin. That’s bad, but still doesn’t warrant calling them evil.
Honestly getting tired of the purity tests. The alternatives are horrific. Google. Apple. Meta. So please find me the FOSS project that is perfectly free of sin which I’m allowed to support.
At this point it begins to feel as though this DDV is only here to write takedown pieces on projects not deemed pure enough for the cause.
FUTO hosted an interview once with a POS guy. Oh, the horror. Please help me understand what that has to do with the existence of a keyboard that isn’t spyware. Yeah no. I’ll keep supporting the working alternatives, you have fun using absolutely nothing because “What if one of the devs wasn’t a good person??!”
I absolutely agree with your statement. Hell, even the GNU project (RMS mostly) had their own scandal a while ago, so if you really insist on being pedantic about this matter feel free on removing practically every piece of open source software from your systems.
Shall I assume you are still a big reiserfs user then?
Why not try someone a bit more relevant than Hans Reiser, there’s plenty to choose from. Like Eric Raymond whose work, at least indirectly, influences more or less everyone using a computer on a daily basis.
They are just saying “why don’t we all just start murdering people”. This is a common trick when you do not have strong arguments for your moral position. You just switch to defending the most extreme position and act like any move away from the point you have chosen is a vote for murder.
You don’t agree with me? Well, I guess it is safe to assume you are an enthusiastic murderer.
Oh don’t worry, it’s only lightly nazi affiliated. Weird that isn’t a deal breaker for you. Well not really weird these days, but it sure says a lot about you.
Yep you’re right, I’m a Nazi because I use a keyboard developed by a foundation funded by a guy who hosted someone for an interview who is a bad person with bad ideas.
Doesn’t matter who I vote for. Doesn’t matter what I advocate for. The work I do to organize in my community doesn’t matter. All of that is invalidated because of the keyboard I use. I’m a secret Nazi! And I’d have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for that meddling Edible Funk.
You’re the hero we all need here on the Left.
Stand for nothing, fall for everything.
Stand for everything, achieve nothing.
Yeah, the keyboard is source available, that’s good enough for me.
Everyone acting like they’ve never heard of “Free as in Freedom not as in Free Beer”
They give you the source. They let you modify it and use it, just don’t make billions off someone else’s freely available work.
How that translates to “most of their stuff is proprietary” and the one smartass that thinks it’s a good argument to say “ffmpeg doesn’t mind their code being used in YouTube, why should you?”
Until we collapse capitalism the billionaires will take our hard work and make billions off of it until they force kill our projects and replace them with proprietary closed source shit. A license that prohibits corporations from making profit off our work is A-OK.
You say the open source line, and then apply it to a project that doesn’t value those values.
Free as in freedom comes without restrictions like commercial use.
If that low bar of source avaialble (last I checked you have to request the source). That’s fine.
But for a lot of FOSS people its not because it means you can never learn from the code, and apply it in your paying job. Or in your own project that suddenly gets big. Then suddenly someone is knocking demanding money.
Its about the community as much about the code.
last I checked you have to request the source)
So you haven’t checked… Good to know you don’t know what you’re making a strong statement about.
Then suddenly someone is knocking demanding money.
No, they don’t come knocking, because you wouldn’t be using the code in your commercial product in the first place, regardless of how small it is.
Donations are not the same thing as paid licenses, and FUTO’s license is bad because it prevents you from funding your fork. But funding doesn’t mean exploitation for profit, which is what corporations like Google do with copyleft code.
Its about the community as much about the code.
Right, community != business.
I want my code to be freely used by all in the community, and I explicitly do not want a corporation to exploit my work for their profit. That’s antithetical to the concept of community.
I’m a fan of the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0. In an ideal world, the GPL would be sufficient, but we don’t live in an ideal world, we live in an exploitative capitalist run world and they will do everything they can to profit off the labor of and destroy the community that develops open source software.
Fund the development of the code you spin with donations and foundations and whatever you want, but don’t charge for and make profit off others’ labor.
I don’t get you people. The founder of FUTO literally platforming a fascist is beyond just purity test level of bad.
I can call Eron out for being a supporter of fascists, while using FUTO keyboard because it doesn’t spy on me, that’s perfectly fine. I don’t get why using their keyboard means you have to defend the horrible position held by the people behind it. Sounds like cognitive dissonance.
The founder of the organization being buddies with a neonazi isn’t evil in your book?
Are they friends? If they are friends sure, they’re evil. Although if that were the case I think the person calling them evil (and the linked blog) would have included that front and center rather than the definition of open source stuff.
They weren’t even grants. They just donated money and said “look we’re sponsoring them!”, implying a relationship. As mentioned in that article, musl and ffmpeg (and probably everyone) didn’t even know FUTO was doing this.
Immich it licensed under AGPL 3 and the code is open - isn’t that FOSS?
I know some of their apps are licensed under a semi-open license of their own creation and that’s been touchy to say the least. But is it true to say that none of their apps are FOSS?
Ah. My mistake. I’ll edit my comment.
Edit: According to another comment in this post, FUTO “took over” Immich. Seems like maybe Immich was AGPLv3 before FUTO got hold of it. Still qualifies as “one of FUTO’s projects”, and your point is still well made, but it does still add a bit of context, and honestly I have to wonder whether future versions of Immich will remain FOSS.
They actually reliscenced from mit (or some permissive liscence) to AGPLv3 right before getting “taken over” by FUTO (futo now pays the immich devs to work full time on the project)
I’ll be honest- never even heard of futo outside the context of immich (and I don’t even run it.) Interesting to hear they have anything besides that.
Thanks for posting this. Just uninstalled Futo keyboard and its neighboring speech to text app. Gotta hunt around for a replacement on both, tho I’ve been using Heliboard, which is okay. Still really bad at swipe predictions.
If you are comfortable using F-Droid or Obtainium I found HeliBoard to be a good keyboard replacement: https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard
Sadly anything not going through the Google Play store is currently under attack: https://f-droid.org/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html
Hah! That’s why I said I was using Heliboard :P As noted, not the greatest text prediction. e.g. I’ll type “in” specifically starting over the I, and it still types “on”, and it also doesn’t like shorthand wording, like “gonna” which every time gets replaced with “Gibbs”
Still better than the Google keyboard with its billion all-seeing eyes on you.
🤦♂️ Sometimes I wonder who those people are who immediately jump to conclusions because they can’t be bothered to read a simple paragraph of text. Me. The answer is - it’s me!
Hopefully something good still came out of it. Maybe as someone else recommended adding your frequently used words to your dictionary will help with word sugggestions.
Hah, well if you posted at the time you did and you’re in my timezone (EST), I can see glancing over it being an ish :P
Can’t you just put the shorthand words you want in a personal dictionary? That worked for me. Able to type words not in the default dictionary without autocorrecting.
I suppose I could have, but I’m still somewhat babystepping in Heliboard. I think if I give it a bit more time, it’ll click better. I guess I was just so used to the seemingly solid prediction options for Google Keyboard way back. But having less of my info passing over to them, the better.
I just switched to Heliboard. I like it, but I wish it had swiping.
It does, if you are willing to use the google binaries. It’s on their github page.
Oh damn, guess I should’ve like, read the documentation or something. Thanks!
The voice recognition is honestly the best I’ve ever used. It’ll be a shame to give it up.
If I decide to switch keyboards, I’m certain I would go back to HeliBoard.
There’s been a real explosion of open source voice recognition over the past few months, and I haven’t tested a lot. Whisper+ looks like a promising one. Before using Futo, I used Sayboard, which I was pretty happy with.
Careful, I heard one of the Heliboard devs kicked a puppy once. How dare you support such Evil software?!
/s because sadly that’s needed
Transcribro is another that looks promising.
Their voice recognition is just OpenAI Whisper. Transcribro uses the exact same thing. It’s just not built into a handy key on the keyboard.
I was really loving Futo keyboard, but when companies are tied to any atrocities, or in this case, plain general evil, it’s really tough to stick with. I jumped very briefly over to Sayboard before your post (saw it on F-Droid), but I’m hoping Whisper+ works better, as I think I’ll simultaneously be using it for my upcoming HA voice assistant project.
They secretly funded projects without letting the recipients know it was them funding and then added their names and logos to their site without permission. When someone spoke out against this, they harassed them. This is in addition to a lot of behavior supporting fascists.
what facist projects?
The article I linked in another comment explains more, but Eron Wolf, founder of FUTO, kindof pressured or hoodwinked Louis Rossmann into publicly interviewing Curtis Yarvin who happily refers to himself as a “reactionary fascist” and publicly states that black people are inherently suitable for enslavement.
I don’t know that it’s so much that they support “fascist projects” as much as they go out of their way to be a platform for spreading fascist propaganda, and particularly promoting the fascist Curtis Yarvin.
That is not supporting fascist projects even if its a mistake
Even the very mention of Yarvin should have your skin crawling.
He didn’t say “supporting fascist projects” he said “supporting fascists”
That is not supporting fascist projects
Literally what I just said in the comment you responded to.
Such a bummer that they took over Immich
Why? Idk about you, but I like it when FOSS projects I like get a bunch of funding, especially since they retained their same license.
What exactly is the issue? Do you not like Linux either because they’re largely funded and developed by Google, Intel, etc?
Immich is fine… full FOSS and alive. I just dont get you people.
What keeps them from changing the Immich license from AGPL to FUTO?
Copyright.
AGPL says that the original author of any chunk of code owns the copyright to it.
Meaning to change the license you have to get every copyright holder (read every developer who has contributed code) to agree to the license change and give over the copy right.
Edit: to be clear, I don’t like FUTO either. As a visible minority, I know libertarians are not my friends. But a copyright rug pull is hard to do in immich.
As a visible minority, I know libertarians are not my friends
I keep seeing this and don’t understand it. Do people lump all the right wing crazies in with libertarians or something?
I get that libertarianism is a big tent, but it’s not a tent that covers intolerance. The foundation of libertarianism is simple:
The non-aggression principle[a] (NAP) is a concept in which “aggression” – defined as initiating or threatening any forceful interference with an individual, their property or their agreements (contracts) – is illegitimate and should be prohibited.
If someone thinks it’s okay to hurt or disparage someone based on their skin color or country of origin, that’s a violation of the NAP and definitionally they’re not libertarian. A lot of people hide behind the libertarian label because they’ve been thoroughly rejected by the major parties, but that doesn’t make them libertarian.
Libertarians disagree on a lot of things, like the role of government, whether property rights exist, and what is “aggression,” but they are very consistent in rejecting hate. Libertarians were supporting LGBT folks before it was cool, and the 2024 candidate for the Libertarian Party was a gay man in complete defiance of the candidate chosen by the Mises caucus, the far right caucus that took over the party. Libertarians are about as extreme left as you’ll get on social issues, and about as extreme right as you’ll get on fiscal issues, generally speaking.
I guess I genuinely don’t understand what people see as libertarian. I consider myself libertarian, but I take my roots from Penn Jillette, and add in stuff like UBI. Here’s a great snippet from him, and my (poor) summary:
How can we solve problems with more freedom instead of less?
…
The government should should only use violence for things I am willing to use violence for. I would use violence to stop a murder or stop a rape. I wouldn’t use violence to build a library.
I think a social safety net crosses that threshold. I would use violence to feed my family, and I would defend someone else who does so as well, so I think it’s fair for force everyone to pay into a social safety net that ensures everyone has enough to survive using the excess of others.
My SO is a visible minority as well, and they have no issues being with me. So I guess I’m missing something about the public perception of libertarianism.
Because libertarians are the first to remove legal protections in the name of small government. This isnt a blanket rule, more anecdotal than anything. But the ones I’ve managed to find and interact with all want to remove all sorts of legal protections.
The party doesn’t seem to represent those that I’ve interacted with. I get what your saying, but that just doesn’t match with who I’ve interacted with.
Okay so here’s where I interject more opnion than above.
libritarians miss the forest for the trees. From your opinion above you say fiscal responsibility. But you deney the help that social programs provide, and actually benift the economy. Poor people spend stimuls checks locally more than higher income brackets for example. Government serves people, not commerce.
The party doesn’t seem to represent those that I’ve interacted with
That’s kinda true for everything, no? Parties just represent whatever is popular at the moment.
Look at the GOP in the US, in 2016, they were pretty universally on board with hating Trump, and now they’re trying to suck up to him. Likewise with Dems, they used to love unions, and recently they barely give them a nod. The parties of today look very different from even 10 years ago.
On the other hand, typically it’s the extreme fringes of movement that will tell you specifically what they believe, and the quiet majority in the middle keep to themselves. Sometimes Dems think I’m a Dem too, and sometimes they think I’m a Republican. Likewise for Republicans, it really depemds on the subject. Many people who would otherwise label themselves “libertarian” don’t because they play the lesser of two evils game depending on where they lean.
libritarians miss the forest for the trees
If anything, it’s the opposite. If libertarians miss nuance, it’s because they’re focused on big picture principles instead of exceptions and details.
Any change based on principles should be gradual and its impact carefully measured.
But you deney the help that social programs provide, and actually benift the economy.
When did I claim that? I explicitly said I support a social safety net. In fact, I’m left of many Dems on that, since I believe in UBI (or my preference NIT). I think we should repurpose SS for this and maybe expand it a bit.
I believe in a banced budget and to eliminate any part of government that isn’t carrying its weight. I want to closely examine:
- Dept of Education - esp. student loans, which I believe contribute to high tuition; increase Pell grants if needed
- TSA - should be converted to a security auditing org w/ seccarefullydled by airports; maybe add that duty to the Marshals service
- NSA - should be shuttered and duties handed to the CIA and FBI as appropriate
Basically, go agency by agency and determine what it’s value is, what it’s cost is in terms of freedom, and what options we have to accomplish similar goals with more freedom. The goal isn’t to gut the government, but to trim anything that isn’t providing sufficient value.
AFAIK, no libertarian has an ideal size of government except perhaps “zero,” but instead just knows we need to trim what we have to cut waste and trampling of freedoms.
From what I’m seeing, you’re right. If there was a contributor assignment policy (some official policy associated with Immich saying that by submitting a PR, you agree to assign copyright on your code changes go the Immich project), FUTO could change the license on future versions as they wished. But it doesn’t look like there’s any contributor assignment or contributor license agreement on Immich.
To be pedantic, Immich did change from MIT to AGPLv3 a while ago. FUTO could technically scrap the current version, grab the last MIT version of the code, relicense it under their “source-first” license (or any other license they like, pretty much), and declare “this is now the official development version of Immich from which new releases will come.” That would be drastic even for FUTO, though (I don’t think that’s likely any time soon), and the community could then fork the latest AGPLv3 version with a different name and carry on with development.
FUTO could technically scrap the current version, grab the last MIT version of the code, relicense it under their “source-first” license (or any other license they like, pretty much), and declare “this is now the official development version of Immich from which new releases will come.”
If they pulled that off, a community spinoff from that same version would become the new immich killer. Not the first time it’s happened, and the current maintainers aren’t the only ones capable of maintaining it.
Once you go copy left, you need everyone’s consent to change the license.
The MIT license is the creator owns the copyright, and any changes you contribute are licesned under the sam MIT as the project.
So to go from MIt -> anything only requires the consent of the project onwer.
Any copy left (like AGPL) license -> anything requires every contributors consent.
It is possible, but practically infeasible at scale.
I’d have to read more about AGPL, but IIRC GPLv2 says you must license any derived code as the same license.
IANAL, just someone whose looked into this before.
GPLv2 says you must license any derived code as the same license
True, unless the license is “GPLv2 or later”. Then anyone can upgrade it to GPLv3.
As far as I’m aware, contributor license agreements can include a clause stating that you agree to hand over copyright on submission of code. If every contributor has signed the CLA, there is only only one copyright holder, making relicensing easy.
However, successfully using this to relicense to something less open is extremely rare, and this isn’t a concern anyway as they don’t have a CLA.
Yes, however those aren’t “copy left” licenses like AGPL whose defining feature is the owner not holding copyright
What did they do to immich?!
Funded a team of devs to work on it full time.
Also made it shareware.
Pls explain. I cannot see how it is shareware with an AGPL licence behind it and full code published. Or is it just fud ?
fud, it’s “shareware” in the sense that there’s a dismissable popup that asks you to pretty please pay 100$, but it’s AGPLv3 and no features are locked behind the paywall.
Huh. So anyone could maintain a fork or patchset and distribute builds that were feature-for-feature identical to Immich but with no nag screens. Just an interesting thought.
I don’t know about Immich, but in other FUTO projects you click the “I’ve paid” botton and it’s disabled, even if you didn’t pay. FUTO licensed code says you can’t remove the pay button in derivative works, but Immich is AGPL so that doesn’t apply.
You can already do this with their custom css. I did it for about 5 minutes and then realized paying $99 was the right thing to do. It’s a reasonable ask on their part.
So we need to make a patch then. Not great but fine.
Sorry, that’s what I grew up calling paid software that was free to use in practice. That effectively how Immich is presented now. There is a button to buy a license which changes to an (optional) supporter badge once purchased.
For the record, I am very happy with the software and paid for a license. I can see why people are bothered with Futo’s language but I personally can’t complain with how they’ve handled the project itself.
I love FUTO’s “license” policy. Basically, the license only shows you’ve paid, and in many cases, you can click the botton without paying and get the same badge. They’re basically encouraging donations through guilt.
People should donate to projects they use, and I think FUTO’s nudge is a good idea that more projects should adopt.
deleted by creator
So immch is dead before it even matured enough to be reliable? Sad.
Still struggling to understand what makes it “dead.”
