FUTO License, an alternative to Closed Source
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I'm not sure how this license would foster community contributions to the codebase, assuming that was an objective. When I say "contributor" I mean both individuals as well as corporations, in the same way that both might currently contribute to the Linux kernel (GPL) today.
As written, this license grants the user a non-exclusive license for non-commercial use. But that implies that for commercial users -- like a corporation -- they'll have to negotiate a separate license, since Futo Holdings Inc would retain the copyright. So if a corporation (or nation state entity) throws enough money at Futo Holdings Inc, they can buy their way into any sort of license terms they want, and the normie user can't complain.
This is kinda like the principal-agent problem, where the userbase and individual developers now have to trust that Futo Holdings won't do something reprehensible with the copyrights, be it licensing to certain hostile countries or whatever.
Whereas in the GPL space, individual developers still own their copyright but license their code out under a compatible license. So even Linus Torvalds cannot unilaterally relicense the Linux codebase, because he would need to seek out every copyright owner for every line of code that exists, and some of those people are already dead.
I'm personally not a fan at all of forcing individual contributors from the community into signing over copyright (or major rights thereto) or other stipulations as a condition for making the codebase better, with the exception of an indemnity that the code isn't stolen or a work-product for hire. I used GPL in the comparison above, but the permissive licenses like MIT also have similar qualities.
EDIT
Thinking about it more, would corporations even want to contribute? Imagine CorpA decides to add code, having already paid for an existing commercial license from Futo Holdings. But then CorpB -- who is CorpA's arch nemesis -- pays Futo Holdings an absurd amount of money and in return gets a commercial license that's equivalent to the WTFPL. That means CorpA's contributions are available for CorpB to use, but CorpB has zero obligation to ever contribute a line of code which CorpA could later benefit from. It becomes a battle of money, and Futo Holdings sits as the kingmaker. GPL abates this partially, if CorpA is both using and distributing code. But the Source First License v1.1 has zero mitigation for this, apart from "trust me bro".
It does inherently lean into the concept of corporate forks over community forks. A byproduct of prioritizing monetary gain. I think the license is really just a foot in the door to allow for community audits. Realistically I don't see anyone wanting to contribute to something like this unless the product has slim to no real competition.
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I'm not sure how this license would foster community contributions to the codebase, assuming that was an objective. When I say "contributor" I mean both individuals as well as corporations, in the same way that both might currently contribute to the Linux kernel (GPL) today.
As written, this license grants the user a non-exclusive license for non-commercial use. But that implies that for commercial users -- like a corporation -- they'll have to negotiate a separate license, since Futo Holdings Inc would retain the copyright. So if a corporation (or nation state entity) throws enough money at Futo Holdings Inc, they can buy their way into any sort of license terms they want, and the normie user can't complain.
This is kinda like the principal-agent problem, where the userbase and individual developers now have to trust that Futo Holdings won't do something reprehensible with the copyrights, be it licensing to certain hostile countries or whatever.
Whereas in the GPL space, individual developers still own their copyright but license their code out under a compatible license. So even Linus Torvalds cannot unilaterally relicense the Linux codebase, because he would need to seek out every copyright owner for every line of code that exists, and some of those people are already dead.
I'm personally not a fan at all of forcing individual contributors from the community into signing over copyright (or major rights thereto) or other stipulations as a condition for making the codebase better, with the exception of an indemnity that the code isn't stolen or a work-product for hire. I used GPL in the comparison above, but the permissive licenses like MIT also have similar qualities.
EDIT
Thinking about it more, would corporations even want to contribute? Imagine CorpA decides to add code, having already paid for an existing commercial license from Futo Holdings. But then CorpB -- who is CorpA's arch nemesis -- pays Futo Holdings an absurd amount of money and in return gets a commercial license that's equivalent to the WTFPL. That means CorpA's contributions are available for CorpB to use, but CorpB has zero obligation to ever contribute a line of code which CorpA could later benefit from. It becomes a battle of money, and Futo Holdings sits as the kingmaker. GPL abates this partially, if CorpA is both using and distributing code. But the Source First License v1.1 has zero mitigation for this, apart from "trust me bro".
community contributions to the codebase, assuming that was an objective
I don't think that's the main objective of the FUTO license. I believe the main objective is to incentivize developers to create great software that respects individual users and fights back against the big tech oligarchy.
But that implies that for commercial users – like a corporation – they’ll have to negotiate a separate license
Yep. That's the point.
they can buy their way into any sort of license terms they want, and the normie user can’t complain.
I don't quite see the issue here. Can you explain a little more? A third-party would just get a license to sell the software, not to develop it.
trust that Futo Holdings won’t do something reprehensible with the copyrights, be it licensing to certain hostile countries or whatever.
Isn't this currently possible with Open Source
? Like the whole point of Open Source is that anyone can use the software for anything, right? ICE probably uses Linux now to manage people in internment camps in the US. If anything, wouldn't the FUTO license be better for potentially preventing this?would corporations even want to contribute? ... CorpA’s contributions are available for CorpB to use, but CorpB has zero obligation to ever contribute a line of code which CorpA could later benefit from
Isn't this exactly the case in Open Source
? Google may contribute something to Linux, but my company will never contribute anything. Seems like Google is ok with my company benefiting from their work. -
@paequ2 Ok
i want talking about Open SOuece anyaway. i was taling about free softwareAh, yep. FUTO License is neither Free
nor Open Source (nor are they trying to be). However, they still allow users to see, modify, and distribute code.You may use or modify the software only for non-commercial purposes such as personal use for research, experiment, and testing for the benefit of public knowledge, personal study, private entertainment, hobby projects, amateur pursuits, or religious observance, all without any anticipated commercial application.
You may distribute the software or provide it to others only if you do so free of charge for non-commercial purposes.But, yeah, they're aiming for something different.
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It does inherently lean into the concept of corporate forks over community forks. A byproduct of prioritizing monetary gain. I think the license is really just a foot in the door to allow for community audits. Realistically I don't see anyone wanting to contribute to something like this unless the product has slim to no real competition.
Community audits sound great on paper, but it's something which the FOSS licenses (eg GPL, MIT) also provide. As a practical matter though, auditing has a two-fold objective: 1) identify risks so they can be quantified, and 2) mitigated. For non-commercial users in the community, an audit is high-effort with low return. And further, this license disincentives mitigation even if the audit does turn up something, because of having to sign the copyright away just to submit a bug fix.
For commercial users, auditing is more palatable, being part-and-parcel to risk management. And these commercial operations have the budget to do it, but then this license means the best way to keep improvements out of their nemesis's hands is to maintain an internal fork that never returns code to the public repo. So commercial users will have to pay more to obtain that sort of license.
All this seems harder than just using MIT code (or even GPL), if such is available. And that's exactly why I can't see myself using source-available software in a personal or professional capacity, when there's any other choice available. It seems worse off for everyone except the owner of the public repo. The license stinks of vendor lock-in, and even if I'm not the one who will pay the rent, I dogmatically will not support rent-seeking like this.
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community contributions to the codebase, assuming that was an objective
I don't think that's the main objective of the FUTO license. I believe the main objective is to incentivize developers to create great software that respects individual users and fights back against the big tech oligarchy.
But that implies that for commercial users – like a corporation – they’ll have to negotiate a separate license
Yep. That's the point.
they can buy their way into any sort of license terms they want, and the normie user can’t complain.
I don't quite see the issue here. Can you explain a little more? A third-party would just get a license to sell the software, not to develop it.
trust that Futo Holdings won’t do something reprehensible with the copyrights, be it licensing to certain hostile countries or whatever.
Isn't this currently possible with Open Source
? Like the whole point of Open Source is that anyone can use the software for anything, right? ICE probably uses Linux now to manage people in internment camps in the US. If anything, wouldn't the FUTO license be better for potentially preventing this?would corporations even want to contribute? ... CorpA’s contributions are available for CorpB to use, but CorpB has zero obligation to ever contribute a line of code which CorpA could later benefit from
Isn't this exactly the case in Open Source
? Google may contribute something to Linux, but my company will never contribute anything. Seems like Google is ok with my company benefiting from their work.I don't think that's the main objective of the FUTO license
That's fair. I stated my assumption because perhaps they have different objectives. That said, history is quite clear: the greatest success of open-source software development is that it pools efforts from anyone -- truly anyone -- that is willing and able to put in the time, be it individuals or workers hired by a corporation.
When a license is heralded as an alternative to open-source -- as the title of this post does -- I think said license needs to be evaluated against the historical success story that open-source projects like Linux, BSD, Blender, etc have demonstrated. Not having the quality of attracting community contributions is a negative, but all licenses have some sort of tradeoff and ultimately that's what people evaluate when picking a license.
I believe the main objective is to incentivize developers to create great software that respects individual users and fights back against the big tech oligarchy.
This is a laudable goal, though I think the ACSL is more direct at doing the same. It too is a non-open source license, but IMO, I give credit to them for being upfront about that, rather than pointless muddying of the term "open source" that Futo attempted (and ultimately failed at).
More dogmatically, I don't see how elevating Futo Holdings Inc (or any other company that will manage software licensed under Source First v1.1) into a "benevolent dictator company for life" will fight against the tech oligarchy. It might act as a counter to FAANG specifically, but there's no guarantee that Futo Holdings doesn't end up joining their side anyway, or gets bought out by the oligopoly. Which would then put us all worse off in the end.
I don't quite see the issue here. Can you explain a little more? A third-party would just get a license to sell the software, not to develop it.
Futo Holdings Inc, as the assigned owner of copyright over a software project, reserves the right to license their software however they choose. They can absolutely issue a license to allow a company to privately develop an in-house fork. In copyright speak, the Source First license being "non exclusive" means Futo Holdings can issue someone else a different license. History shows us examples, such as Microsoft's non-exclusive license of DOS to IBM, which was quite handy since that allowed MS-DOS to be sold with non-IBM PC clones.
And for an example of licensing that allows in-house edits and recompiling, see the source code license offered by AT&T Labs to various universities, which included one UC Berkeley that eventually developed BSD Unix.
Isn't this currently possible with Open Source
? Like the whole point of Open Source is that anyone can use the software for anything, right?Use, yes. Distribute? Absolutely not with GPL. If ICE wants to create an OS designed to optimally coral unlawfully-detained people in barbaric conditions, then they -- just like you, me, the DPRK, or Facebook -- can fork Linux and do that. But if ICE then wanted to distribute that CruelOS to another country's border patrol or secret intelligence or to a private defense firm, they would be obliged by the GPL terms to also offer whatever source code they modified in the Linux kernel to produce CruelOS.
GPL is about making sure the same rights perpetuate for all of time, for all future users, always. If Linus Torvalds turned evil today, the remaining kernel devs would just fork. Whereas Futo Holdings makes no guarantees, and they themselves can turn evil one day. This isn't even a contrived example. See IBM/Hashicorp's Terraform and the FOSS OpenTofu that spawned after they tried to change the license.
Google may contribute something to Linux, but my company will never contribute anything. Seems like Google is ok with my company benefiting from their work.
If Google contributed to Linux, it would be GPL licensed. Google knows that this means the playing field will always be level: no one can built and distribute that code in a way that Google couldn't later benefit from.
Think of it like this: Google buys everyone in the tavern a beer. Everyone's happy. But part of the deal is that if anyone else buys for themselves a beer, they have to buy for everyone as well. Google is fine with this, because it means that Microsoft wearing the dark suit will also have to pony up if he wants another drink. As will Netflix in the skinny jeans sitting at the booth. As would Ericsson, the Swede dancing jovially to a tune.
With the Source First license, Google has no guarantees that Microsoft won't use his manly charisma to charm Futo Holdings into giving him a better deal than what Google got. Google is bitter at that prospect, and decides not to buy everyone a beer after all. You, me, and Bob who fell asleep in the corner now need to pay for our own beers, but the bartender won't give us a group discount anymore. We are now all worse off.
In closing, I had this to say in an earlier post:
Using the tools of the capitalist (copyright and licenses) to wage a battle against a corporation is neither an even fight, nor is it even winnable. Instead, strong communities build up their skills and ties to one another to fight in meaningful ways.
If you're not building (software) communities, the struggle will not succeed.
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Source First License 1.1: https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay/-/blob/master/LICENSE.md
This is a non-open source license. They were claiming to be open source at one point, but they've listened to the community and stopped claiming they were open source. They are not trying to be Open Source
.They call themselves "source first". https://sourcefirst.com/
They're trying to create a world where developers can make money from writing source first software, where the big tech oligarchy can't just suck them dry.
There's no derivative licence that makes the source free to use but forces you to contribute (work or money), if you make money from it?
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Source First License 1.1: https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay/-/blob/master/LICENSE.md
This is a non-open source license. They were claiming to be open source at one point, but they've listened to the community and stopped claiming they were open source. They are not trying to be Open Source
.They call themselves "source first". https://sourcefirst.com/
They're trying to create a world where developers can make money from writing source first software, where the big tech oligarchy can't just suck them dry.
i will never understand what people hope to accomplish with these licenses, when even the fucking GPL isn't particularly reliable.
a license is only useful if it can actually be enforced and people are willing to interact with it, if a license isn't robustly worded and thought out or it's simply not backed by a trusted group, it's basically entirely pointless.
I maintain that the GPL is the best license purely because it has the FSF behind it and it has been used since time immemorial, it's one of few open source licenses that has seen repeated stress testing in courts and stood up to it.
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Source First License 1.1: https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay/-/blob/master/LICENSE.md
This is a non-open source license. They were claiming to be open source at one point, but they've listened to the community and stopped claiming they were open source. They are not trying to be Open Source
.They call themselves "source first". https://sourcefirst.com/
They're trying to create a world where developers can make money from writing source first software, where the big tech oligarchy can't just suck them dry.
That framework laptop tho
Edit: the comments on here really show that 1) people just read headlines and 2) many people cannot think for themselves and will just quote or regurgitate from whichever text they were indoctrinated without second thought. The "but it's not free as in freedom" and "it's not opensource because it's not OSI" comments show up on every single post about this topic. It's like people referring to the bible and screaming "blasphemy" when someone says something that doesn't fit. Or like people losing their minds because a non-white actor is "not canon".
I wish people had to answer multiple choice questions before being allowed to comment. Maybe it would make them actually think instead of just spew their religious bile all over the comment section.
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i will never understand what people hope to accomplish with these licenses, when even the fucking GPL isn't particularly reliable.
a license is only useful if it can actually be enforced and people are willing to interact with it, if a license isn't robustly worded and thought out or it's simply not backed by a trusted group, it's basically entirely pointless.
I maintain that the GPL is the best license purely because it has the FSF behind it and it has been used since time immemorial, it's one of few open source licenses that has seen repeated stress testing in courts and stood up to it.
You did not watch the video, I see. Because if you had, you'd know what they are trying to accomplish. He says it 3 minutes into the video. Probably shorter than it took you to type out that uninformed comment.
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That framework laptop tho
Edit: the comments on here really show that 1) people just read headlines and 2) many people cannot think for themselves and will just quote or regurgitate from whichever text they were indoctrinated without second thought. The "but it's not free as in freedom" and "it's not opensource because it's not OSI" comments show up on every single post about this topic. It's like people referring to the bible and screaming "blasphemy" when someone says something that doesn't fit. Or like people losing their minds because a non-white actor is "not canon".
I wish people had to answer multiple choice questions before being allowed to comment. Maybe it would make them actually think instead of just spew their religious bile all over the comment section.
Oh yeah. People believing in community built and owned software, that runs the entire internet, is totally the same thing as racism.
Just because you don't agree with the views of open source, doesn't make them brainwashed.
Because here, you come off as deranged calling others religious fanatics.
EDIT but what's really fucking funny to me is you call other people religious fanatics and racists. Or at least like them. While you fanatically paste the anti commercial linecse thing like it's 2012 Facebook again.
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I'm not sure how this license would foster community contributions to the codebase, assuming that was an objective. When I say "contributor" I mean both individuals as well as corporations, in the same way that both might currently contribute to the Linux kernel (GPL) today.
As written, this license grants the user a non-exclusive license for non-commercial use. But that implies that for commercial users -- like a corporation -- they'll have to negotiate a separate license, since Futo Holdings Inc would retain the copyright. So if a corporation (or nation state entity) throws enough money at Futo Holdings Inc, they can buy their way into any sort of license terms they want, and the normie user can't complain.
This is kinda like the principal-agent problem, where the userbase and individual developers now have to trust that Futo Holdings won't do something reprehensible with the copyrights, be it licensing to certain hostile countries or whatever.
Whereas in the GPL space, individual developers still own their copyright but license their code out under a compatible license. So even Linus Torvalds cannot unilaterally relicense the Linux codebase, because he would need to seek out every copyright owner for every line of code that exists, and some of those people are already dead.
I'm personally not a fan at all of forcing individual contributors from the community into signing over copyright (or major rights thereto) or other stipulations as a condition for making the codebase better, with the exception of an indemnity that the code isn't stolen or a work-product for hire. I used GPL in the comparison above, but the permissive licenses like MIT also have similar qualities.
EDIT
Thinking about it more, would corporations even want to contribute? Imagine CorpA decides to add code, having already paid for an existing commercial license from Futo Holdings. But then CorpB -- who is CorpA's arch nemesis -- pays Futo Holdings an absurd amount of money and in return gets a commercial license that's equivalent to the WTFPL. That means CorpA's contributions are available for CorpB to use, but CorpB has zero obligation to ever contribute a line of code which CorpA could later benefit from. It becomes a battle of money, and Futo Holdings sits as the kingmaker. GPL abates this partially, if CorpA is both using and distributing code. But the Source First License v1.1 has zero mitigation for this, apart from "trust me bro".
Im pretty sure the objective is not to get contributions. You talk like contributions could actually replace actual full time maintainers of the software. They cannot.
If a payment of corpB is large enough to completely buy out the software, then the objective is completed in the sense that this should provide enough money to maintain the software by paying maintainers or even hiring new ones, there is no need to beg for corpo contributions then.The objective is not to make the most community friendly licence, it is to pay the people who do the actual work.
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Source First License 1.1: https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay/-/blob/master/LICENSE.md
This is a non-open source license. They were claiming to be open source at one point, but they've listened to the community and stopped claiming they were open source. They are not trying to be Open Source
.They call themselves "source first". https://sourcefirst.com/
They're trying to create a world where developers can make money from writing source first software, where the big tech oligarchy can't just suck them dry.
Every time this licenses comes up I have to repeat myself: It's source-available proprietary (free)ware; "source first" is "open source washing" at it's finest
From an old comment of mine:
[...] It strips you of the options the four essential freedoms provide.
IMO ["but protecting muh devs and making it financially viable as a for-profit"] is not rly an argument. Libre software is free as in freedom and not necessarily free as in beer. You could license it under the (A)GPL, charge for downloads in the Play store or for compiled binaries on ur website and ask for donations on F-Droid.
You could even do a freemium version where some features are locked in the binaries you distribute and need a license from ur website or smth (for those who don't want to use Google Play). (iirc SD Maid 2/SE does this)
E.g.: AFAIK the QT Framework (which I don't particularly like) is dual licensed, making it both Foss that ppl have to contribute back to and viable as a for-profit
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That framework laptop tho
Edit: the comments on here really show that 1) people just read headlines and 2) many people cannot think for themselves and will just quote or regurgitate from whichever text they were indoctrinated without second thought. The "but it's not free as in freedom" and "it's not opensource because it's not OSI" comments show up on every single post about this topic. It's like people referring to the bible and screaming "blasphemy" when someone says something that doesn't fit. Or like people losing their minds because a non-white actor is "not canon".
I wish people had to answer multiple choice questions before being allowed to comment. Maybe it would make them actually think instead of just spew their religious bile all over the comment section.
sure, keep insulting people with principles while buying into proprietary software being "open source washed" (for the lack of a better word)
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Every time this licenses comes up I have to repeat myself: It's source-available proprietary (free)ware; "source first" is "open source washing" at it's finest
From an old comment of mine:
[...] It strips you of the options the four essential freedoms provide.
IMO ["but protecting muh devs and making it financially viable as a for-profit"] is not rly an argument. Libre software is free as in freedom and not necessarily free as in beer. You could license it under the (A)GPL, charge for downloads in the Play store or for compiled binaries on ur website and ask for donations on F-Droid.
You could even do a freemium version where some features are locked in the binaries you distribute and need a license from ur website or smth (for those who don't want to use Google Play). (iirc SD Maid 2/SE does this)
E.g.: AFAIK the QT Framework (which I don't particularly like) is dual licensed, making it both Foss that ppl have to contribute back to and viable as a for-profit
You could license it under the (A)GPL, charge for downloads in the Play store or for compiled binaries on ur website and ask for donations on F-Droid.
You could even do a freemium version where some features are locked in the binaries you distribute and need a license from ur website or smth (for those who don't want to use Google Play). (iirc SD Maid 2/SE does this)
Someone else could just compile the app themselves, unlock all premium features and distribute it to play store without violating the license?
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Oh yeah. People believing in community built and owned software, that runs the entire internet, is totally the same thing as racism.
Just because you don't agree with the views of open source, doesn't make them brainwashed.
Because here, you come off as deranged calling others religious fanatics.
EDIT but what's really fucking funny to me is you call other people religious fanatics and racists. Or at least like them. While you fanatically paste the anti commercial linecse thing like it's 2012 Facebook again.
People believing in community built and owned software
Btw, I'm not arguing against this. I believe Open Source
is valuable and has its place. This post isn't about Open Source, despite most people on this thread trying to label the FUTO license as Open Source and then getting mad because it's not actually Open Source even though FUTO isn't claiming to be Open Source. This is something else.The main thing I'm thinking about is how to prevent Google, Facebook, etc from extracting huge amounts of wealth from small devs who get nothing in return. The obvious answer has been to release an app as closed source. That blocks out Big Tech AND users. Source Available licenses might be a third option to block out Big Tech, but not regular users.
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People believing in community built and owned software
Btw, I'm not arguing against this. I believe Open Source
is valuable and has its place. This post isn't about Open Source, despite most people on this thread trying to label the FUTO license as Open Source and then getting mad because it's not actually Open Source even though FUTO isn't claiming to be Open Source. This is something else.The main thing I'm thinking about is how to prevent Google, Facebook, etc from extracting huge amounts of wealth from small devs who get nothing in return. The obvious answer has been to release an app as closed source. That blocks out Big Tech AND users. Source Available licenses might be a third option to block out Big Tech, but not regular users.
I never said anything about you or your arguments. I was talking about the analogies the person used to antagonize everyone. And I love how you glossed over all of that to get a little bit hurt at me.
But while your here, your fighting the wrong battles.
Because we are much stronger doing things in the open than we will trying to pick and choose who gets to do what. Even small utilities can contribute to people learning and adapting.
So what if google also benefits? They benefit off of using TCP, SSL, and thousands of standard technology. Should those be charged as well? It's such a boogy man at the cost of other people learning and benefiting from what you've done the same way you benfit from others. It's not about gatekeeping, it's about being community.
I'm gonna draw another place I think too much effort is being given to making sure the "correct" people benefit and that's selective welfare programs. It's costs shit tons of money to administer programs like food stamps. When if we gave everyone UBI, it wouldn't matter. Because everyone gets it.
EDIT: In a copy left license, I still own the copyright to my work. So there's that as well.
But all that on a shelf. I don't give a fuck what you do with your software. I just don't want to be called a racists for whatever reason because I believe in community owned software.
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Source First License 1.1: https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay/-/blob/master/LICENSE.md
This is a non-open source license. They were claiming to be open source at one point, but they've listened to the community and stopped claiming they were open source. They are not trying to be Open Source
.They call themselves "source first". https://sourcefirst.com/
They're trying to create a world where developers can make money from writing source first software, where the big tech oligarchy can't just suck them dry.
I am using Futo Keyboard. Downloaded it when it was marketed as open source. Unfortunately found out a few days ago it isn't actually open source. It's still a damn good keyboard, but it's still unfortunate. AGPL exists for a reason. Oh well.
