'free for noncommercial use' licenses are nothing new, and we have half a century of experience showing that they're a dead end. they make it impossible to form an actual community around the software; the users remain at the beck and call of the software owner. sooner or later the owner loses interest or goes bankrupt, and the users are left high and dry, unable to fend for themselves

a commenter with more patience than i have has posted a longer explanation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40835750 which i don't wholly endorse but which you'd probably benefit from reading

(as another commenter points out, futo's license is particularly broadly written, adding additional problems on top of the usual 'free for noncommercial use' problems)

> The license (...) may not restrict the program from being used in a business

> 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

https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/latinime/-/blob/master/LICE...

That reads to me that if I type a work email using this keyboard, that would be a commercial use and against the license which makes this a total non-starter.