FUTO Takes A New Stance On Open Source

38 thoughts on “FUTO Takes A New Stance On Open Source”

• Oh I forgot to include Louis' reply from the last video so here it is

  Some thoughts, off the top of my head. Here is a question for you, since I've tried to push the ball forward with the license thing for a year (particularly with getting the horible rugpull part removed from the dumpster fire that was the year-long "temporary" license)

  If we referred to this license as "source first" rather than "open source", how would you feel about that? I'd like to give some history as to why this was referred to the way it was, the organization's thoughts, my personal thoughts, and the direction we'd like to move in into the future.

  “Open source” has a particular meaning to the community, and suggested we call it “source available” instead. Here’s why we haven’t done that:

  “Source available” commonly means you can’t redistribute modified versions, or unmodified versions, of the software. This doesn’t apply to FUTO software.
  “Source available” commonly means you can’t create derivative works, or modified versions. This does not apply to our software.
  “Source available” commonly means that you must pay to see the source code. This does not apply to our software.
  “Source available” commonly means that software can only be used within a specific organization, but not be available outside of that organization. This does not apply to our software.

  Thus, FUTO called these projects open source. FUTO didn’t care about OSI’s definition, and thought it arrogant of an organization that has confidential charter members and Microsoft as a sponsor to define it. I also believe they haven't done much to prevent the spread of closed source, subscription based, spyware from becoming the norm. People use google apps over nextcloud, and adobe premiere over kdenlive for a reason. google calendar works, and adobe premiere allows me to use a compressor plugin that actually allows me to see a visual representation of gain reduction. While open source software runs the server world & the internet, just using the linux kernel & apache without a doubt; in the world of niche professional software, or consumer software… I think it's lost very badly.

  “Source available” is commonly understood to encompass projects with far more restrictive terms than our software.
  “Open source” is commonly understood to have no financial limitations on one’s ability to use the software commercially.

  Neither one of the community’s definitions fully fits what we’re doing. Using either of them is bad. The former is a disservice to us, and the latter is a disservice to you. A fair compromise, I think, would be making our own term.

  “Source first” would describe our software, and fit our values;
  Here’s where source first & our values align with the community’s definition of open source:
  1. Our licenses allow users to see source code of all of our software.
  2. Our licenses ensure that you can modify the source code for your own use, and redistribute it.
  3. Our licenses ensure that our software is not limited to use by a particular organization.
  4. Our principles demand that any client we release that requires a server, also releases the server software under principles as free as the client software.
  5. Our software avoids integration of crypto shitcoin scams.
  6. Our software rejects “the customer is the product” as a business model.

  Here’s where source first & our values part ways with the community’s definition of open source:
  1. We believe in a programmer’s ability to have the legal right to demand financial compensation for commercial use of their code. It's not enough for a programmer to have the ask for money politely; we want them to have the legal right to demand commercial entities pay. ffmpeg getting a few programmers for google summer of code, while the backbone of youtube is key to them bringing in 31 billion dollars a year isn't a fair exchange of value. Under all current open source licenses, they can ask for money, but they can't demand money.
  2. We believe that community ownership of software has not led to consumer-facing-software that beats closed source alternatives, and that this has not, and will not, be a winning model.

  I think the community likes what we’re doing. They like that we fund consumer-facing software projects like Immich that seek to beat google photos & iCloud. They like that we’ve donated millions to non-profits like Signal, Tor, Repair Preservation Group, GrapheneOS, MicroG, Mobility Independence Foundaiton, and many other organizations that use traditional, OSI-compliant license, that fit the community's definition of open source.

  They don’t like that we’ve used the term open source. Technically, legally, nobody “owns” that term. OSI doesn’t own that term. So we used it; but culturally, the community own that term. Frankly, as I've told my boss personally many times, you can be technically correct, and still be a complete dickhead. You're not going against OSI when you do this; you're going against the community.

  I don't have it in me to give you all some adobe crisis management blog post bullshit, so I'll put my thoughts here:

  I've had an idea of what open source meant since I first bought & installed Suse Linux professional in 2002. I had no idea what OSI was, or how they defined software, or what they even did until i started working here. While working here, I've made my stance unequivocally clear; I don't think it makes sense to have all of this good will created by having the fellowship programs we have, donating millions to open source that ARE MIT/Apache/AGPL/GPL licensed, funding projects internally that kick ass & use AGPL licenses for some; all to lose it over what you call your licenses. Being technically correct has, and always will, in the public eye, be less important than being culturally correct & taking action that does not cause the community to see us all as dickheads.

  I'd like to advocate internally for that to change, without compromising our values, or the community's.

  This is all an experiment; at the end, it comes down to this. If we create software that doesn’t abuse the public; will people pay for it? Will programmers quit working for google, apple, facebook, amazon, and microsoft; and decide to work on GOOD software instead? Because they believe they can actually make a living from it?

  We don't see people doing that right now for consumer software. For many pieces, there isn't even an option to not be abused by traditional closed souce/cloud bullshit, and that sucks. Someone has to go first and give this a shot, to even have a chance of success, prior to others giving it a go. If we fund that software to the tune of millions of dollars per year, in order to make it great under the terms we've created; will people support it financially? If we can demonstrate that they WILL, can we get more programmers to change their habits? That is FUTO's goal.

  It'll include stumbles along the way. I believe this was one of them, that can be addressed, improved, & fixed along the way.

  Thoughts, as always, appreciated.

• Futo What?Futo Pi ??

• The problem with the whole idea I feel, is that the only software that actually has a chance of getting any funding that way in the first place is user facing projects. It's all good and well if some web or application developer can charge money for their app they sells in a store, but those apps are based on a gigantic stack of libraries and maintainer work that is simply not visible to the end user because there is no direct contact.

  So in the end, even if this works, it will suffer from the very same problem all those enterprise software suffers, a well funded application that is built on a foundation of sand.

• why do they need a pre existing "name" for their Licence anyway?
  it's a licence. If you don't like what Open Sorce is, don't use it, make your own Licence, if it doesn't have fancy name, welp so what?
  There is a quote from Louis i realy like "Don't accept premise of assholes". And i fundamentally am not buying their "reasons" for why they "had" to call it Open Source, or even choose between Open Source / Source Avaible.

• Well, Free Software should protect freedom to destroy the world with your software. Freedom!

• Honestly I don't care about the OSI, I vaguely if at all heard of them before they tried to poke them. I just don't like the redefinition of known terms, it's a political tactic used too often in recent years.

  Anyways, if you say it was just a prank bro, so be it. When I said I couldn't support, that was just a prank too. All cool by me.

  Btw, if you want people to pay, what Armor Paint does comes to mind. You can get it free by building from source, but the prebuilt, easy to access version is paid, so people are more likely to go for it for convenience (along with supporting).

• I don't know how well this "Source First" concept is going to catch on. Something needs to change to pay developers, true, but this isn't it. And, agreed, I didn't see anything satirical in that first post. 🙁

• Before GitHub removed PayPal as a payment provider I donated 100-150$ monthly to open source projects but since they removed PayPal I had to stop doing so because I'm not going to provide my credit card information and get it potentially leaked. A few times I've also donated software to open source projects through other donation platforms which offer PayPal but it became much less common and it was always individual payments.
  IMHO people would be happy to pay for open source software if the payment part wouldn't be difficult, insecure, intransparent, etc.

• Morality clauses in software licenses are a REALLY bad idea. Unenforceable in most cases too, so a total waste of time.

• As predicted, while reasonable people in the open-source space continue to lose no sleep over FUTO, open-source cultists spin increasingly-elaborate yarns about how this is all just corpo doublespeak and FUTO is really just trying to let corporations in the back door to proprietize all their favorite programs. Some mfs will believe anything but the truth.

• I propose a new term.. PCVS… Public Code Visible Software…. or Source Not Closed Software.. yeah…. that'll stick!

• futa <3

• People who can afford to pay for software but download without paying are freeloaders.

• there are x competing standard. Lets create a new standard to unite everyone. Now there are x+1 competing standards

• I'm saying their lying but ……They are lying…..hahahah ooops I bent over laughing and dropped all 10 of my pencils/ pens out of my pocket protector. The slider rule is safe though.

• This is an interesting development, and I gotta think about it. The thing is, I want to find a way to pay for the work of developers without Big Tech getting a cut for doing "nothing" (yeah, I am aware that I completely have a blind eye on the infrastructure part here – we need to get rid of Big Tech Infrastructure as well).

  And hey, I am one of about 10 people who actually owns a WinRAR license… 😁

• Awesome t-shirt between.

• I think what Aseprite did was honestly pretty good. They were open source, now they're source available. If you can compile it yourself, that's great, otherwise, you need to pay to get it precompiled.

• i am a dev of 27 years of coding, and the problem is not that we are not pay, but the system it self, we got the resource and the tech now, to make the world a better place, with no money or with a UBI so high that if we want to do this full time, it is fine.
  we should fix the real problem, and make any thing else free of cost too, the open source world is not perfect, but it is a better model then 58% of American not being able to pay for a 100$ extra bill.
  but no lets put all of the resources in a few rich man, and let anyone else beg (include devs) for a little money.

  the system is broken, and we know what we should do with borken stuff.

• I'm a dev. I make software. I make free FOSS software and I distribute that software for anyone without having to pay me anything.
  However, I also consume software. I use software other people make without paying them anything for using their software. However, for larger software (which one is which I just use my own judgement) I do donate to them. Kdenlive and KDE being two of them.
  I can exchange work for work. Which skips the middleman who takes a cut for every credit card transaction.

  Everyone can contribute to gratis FOSS software non-monetarily. Some do manuals, some do code, some do design, some do user support, etc… For most software, you don't need to be a programmer to do good support to other people. For others, I do recommend providing monetary compensation. Everyone works hard to make it work.

• At least they're being less misleading. Obviously, I won't be using proprietary software that prevents forking (yes, it does prevent forks – read the license, you can't raise any funds for the community development) but maybe some people will like it

• I think there's already a license that prevents this abuses, it's the AGPLv3. It's very rare that software under this license is misused.

• I fully agree that people should be compensated for the work they do on good software. I've been using Linux mint for a long time now and I've gotten a lot of value from it, so I donated a bit of money because I want to see the project continue. I totally understand if you can't afford to pay for it but if you can, then please donate to things that you get value from

• I first thought "oh, why dont they use the term "paid ope source"" – and then i realized the acronym.

• Biggest problem with the idea behind the project is that there's nothing built in to protect against corruption. Sure Saint Louis 🙄might hold it together but if he ever leaves for whatever reason the project instantly falls to corruption. And all the projects under its umbrella are crushed to death by that corruption.

• I think they explain it pretty well why we forced them to make the wrong decision, that is going to undermine them and make their products less popular while allowing big tech to continue to exploit unsuspecting devs.

• Term 4 is my favourite one, i wish more client server software would also provide the server side

• 14:32 I really hope they can discern real crypto projects from actual shit like fake wallets and malware miners, most people nowadays are used to thinking everything is a Ponzi without really studying about the thing to begin with. I know this because I work with it – there's a lot of shit for sure, like Google Play shovelware levels (and quantities) of shit, but there's some hidden gems here and there that are worth something.

  Also really hope they themselves don't get corrupt midway, I've seen a lot of those startup firms where they begin all clean and pure and "we just want the best for everyone" and all that shit, then once they get a little taste of power and influence, they pull a "don't be evil" and the cycle repeats itself. A good example of what I'm talking about is their claim of "we want programmers to be treated in a fair way and not exploited by the tech oligopoly". Ok, honorable cause, I can see that… but that also implicitly means "come under our wings and we'll protect you". Which means after a while they might get enough people under their wings that they might feel free to go "y'know what… this shit works, we have some political weight now, how about we extract some more of it…". And then they start modifying their morals by adding vague/ambiguous phrases here and there, a little bit of footnotes that nobody reads but gives them "legal protection" or whatever, so on and so forth, and then when you see it the cancer is already in metastasis and has taken half of your body and you can't get rid of it anymore until the day you die. Basically a tech syndicate, which is just a pretty term for "tech oligopoly 2" IMO. I despise both equally, so I can't help but raise an eyebrow.

  Sure, if nobody tries this, we'll never get out of the inertia, maybe this'll be a good thing long term, but y'know… always watch the watchmen. Especially watchmen with such ambitious goals in mind. I'm still in favor of the gift economy – people should give more importance to donations directly to the author, if they did we wouldn't be in this kind of situation to begin with.

• Basically, their software license allows you to do with the code whatever you want, but if you use if for commercial purpose, you should pay FUTO (I guess via contract of some sort). That's nice. But what to do if you become pretty much a maintainer of the fork that is better supported and more valuable for users? Contact FUTO to get a paycheck from them? Relicense for yourself?

• I have the utmost respect for Louis Rossmann and for the causes he is sticking his chin out for. I would hope that anyone who believes in the right of repair and the right to own what we buy will as well.

• if os software is licenced so people are payed for the software, is that per use?. A library can be used by lots of different software. so a distro has loads of software that uses openssl, loads that use lzip libs etc. say a distro is sold on usb media, and the seller provides access to the source as per gpl/lgpl, they are making money from the sale, even if only a few dollars. what percent of the profit should go to "the developers" and how should it be distributed. glibc developers would get a lot as much software uses it, or bash developers. It is a can of worms. If the license specified companies that made more than $1M profit after tax, you still have the distribution of wealth issue. i'm a packager, and do it to make the packages available for my distro of choice, not to make money. It makes sense for companies who's business depends on a system or software to help keep it around, but that only hits the first level of software, not any of the dependencies. The reason linux is used as os of choice on internet servers is because of the (lack of) cost. change that and other things will take it's place.

• That's why I'm signed up for mints patreon. They gotta get paid if Im gonna keep using it

• It makes sense to restrict open source software from commercial businesses profiting from the work other people have done.

  Where it would get messy is if someone for example wanted to use a Linux distribution for something and dozen of pieces of software had this license, how would it work? Would the company have to pay each developer money for every project and the dependencies of a project?

  In a company like Google's case, they could do it, smaller businesses might have problems combing through all the licenses trying to figure out who to pay.

  Also will they be paying the developers for the code they use from other projects in theirs even if they don't currently have this license? Would seem a bit hypocritical if they didn't. Maybe they need to include that in the license that any money made from software that uses other peoples code that they also get a percentage of the profits.

• If someone cant pay for software, why not just make it yourself 😛 Code aint hard at all

• 18:20 To that, I say, the alternative is closing the source so you can pay your developers? Logically that is what is being stated, either <free use = free from charge> or <fully restricted = paid for>? That is nuts. Perhaps that way of thinking is more in the light of "everything should be open source and free from charge" but that is also incredibly naive.

• It is not Open Source… Non-commercial is a must… 😂😂😂

• As a developer, giving people more options is better. It does get confusing trying to think about all the legal ramifications of your license, but it's nice to see paved paths instead of feeling like you have to blaze your own trail

• I do better understand where they are coming from now, and I do think it's very good of them to not further the conflict and change the definition. Knowing their original position though, I do have one addition to it. The OSI doesn't have the goal of protecting users against exploitation, its only goal from my perspective is to provide freedom in the context of using the source code. Freedom does not rule out exploitation in all cases, these are 2 very different goals. Personally, I do care about protection against exploitation, but I do not think that this should be done in the license. I believe the freedom to access and modify the source code is more important. Protection against exploitation should primarily be a political endeavor, in my opinion.

  The idea that freedom is more important than protection, is in the end a value. The distain towards the OSI from FUTO is understandable, given their goal is explicitly at odds with the OSI. I'm not a huge fan of the OSI either. My real issue when they claim open source licenses have failed to protect consumers. Because in reality, whether sponsored by the OSI or not, open source isn't about protecting against corporate exploitation. To me it seems they were projecting their own values onto open source, then claimed that open source failed. Which isn't something they should do in my opinion. FUTO's license doesn't meet my requirements for what I think it the best license, but I certainly wouldn't describe that as failure myself.

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