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Futo updates their website, removing logos, clarifying micro grants (futo.org)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Apparently in the past day, they’ve removed all the logos from the Microgrants projects and clarified that the grants are unsolicited

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[+] 47 points 1 year ago (48 children)
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  • [–] 117 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (40 children)

    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 Source most 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.

    And I've got plenty more to say about how evil FUTO is.

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  • [–] 57 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    look we’re sponsoring them

    spon·sor

    verb

    1. provide funds for (a project or activity or the person carrying it out).

    My disapproval of FUTO notwithstanding, that is the dictionary definition.

    I never looked at those "we sponsor/donated to" sections on organization pages as implying a relationship of reciprocal approval. Are idiots online thinking that?

    Anyone should be able to assert "X gave Y money" when that's true. Taking money from people we disagree with shouldn't be a problem: less money for them, more for us. Do we want them to spend on shit we definitely disapprove of?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    By that dictionary definition, yes, but there's a connotation of scale and a relationship. For example, your local arts events are often sponsored by local businesses and philanthropists, but if you or I donate $10 I wouldn't call that a sponsorship.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    your local arts events are often sponsored by local businesses and philanthropists

    Do you or they necessarily approve of those businesses? Is that implied?

    but if you or I donate $10 I wouldn’t call that a sponsorship

    Then are people getting carried away with their imaginations? When I see a "we sponsor" section with logos/names, I don't assume a substantial amount: could be token for all I know. Quibbling over that when it's true feels like arguing over inconsequential merit badges.

    Donation recipients should be able to take money from donors who should be able to declare that truth.

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  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 31 points 1 year ago* (16 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 43 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    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??!"

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Shall I assume you are still a big reiserfs user then?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Yeah, the keyboard is source available, that's good enough for me.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] -5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    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

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    🤦‍♂️ 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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I just switched to Heliboard. I like it, but I wish it had swiping.

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  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [+] 11 points 1 year ago (5 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    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.

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  • [+] -8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    That is not supporting fascist projects even if its a mistake

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