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Comment by HiPhish | Hacker News Reader

For anyone wondering: the library uses the GPLv3 (good) while the Android keyboard uses the Futo License (shit).

- https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/swipe-library/-/blob/master...

- https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/blob/master/LIC...

To add to the license complexity, the model uses another FUTO-written license, though it at least does not seem as bad as the license for the keyboard:

https://huggingface.co/futo-org/futo-swipe/blob/main/LICENSE...

What's particularly objectionable about the Futo License?

Is it this part?

you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software related to payment to the Licensor in any copy you distribute to others.

The clause you cited as well as the "Termination" section and the non-commercial restriction make it a non-free license. Besides the direct issues with that, it also means all software covered by this license is unsuitable for FOSS-only distributions like Debian or F-Droid. It's not entirely clear to me if the license is copyleft; derivative works have similar problems if so.

As an aside, Eron Wolf, the billionaire behind FUTO, has some rather... out of touch views[0] on the meaning of open source, and seems very committed to diluting the term to mean something closer source-available by removing the most of the rights granted (as defined by FSF, OSI, DFSG and others).

[0]: https://gitlab.futo.org/eron/public/-/wikis/Thoughts-on-Open... - please keep in mind that the RMS quote at the top is taken out of context; he is arguing for more freedom, not less

FUTO also funds some actually open source projects like Immich so not everything about them is bad.

They also employ Louis Rossman, interestingly.

https://consumerrights.wiki/w/FUTO

they employed Louis Rossman, he is no longer working for them as of Feb 2025 (according to his LinkedIn)

Excellent find.

Sorry, but really when it come to open source: money dont smell. If they do give money to real projects with OSI-approved licenses it doesnt matter to me what else they do, who their sponsors are, etc. Well unless they actually do something illegal.

This is because 99.9% open source projects not targeted enterprise never ever see more than $100 of donations and being maintainer of such software is literally thankless job that will never pay you anything.

Blaming organizations for giving money or maintainers for taking money is worse you can do no matter who sponsor is: FSF, FUTO, Cloudflare, Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, DARPA or MAGA INC.

Dont like FUTO or its owner? Make a better fund, give your money to SFC, FSF or whatever open source sponsor organization is acceptible to you.

There is so little money in end-user open source software and making pie even smaller or antoganizing thankless people maintaining it is awful. Everyone doing this is either dumb, malicious or both.

eron/FUTO are not trying to dilute the term Open Source, they are trying to address a real problem that Free Software and Open Source face, and that we do need to find a solution for. their initial wording may not have been ideal, but that is because there is no defined terminology, and because the point is to be close to open source as is possible.

this is not an out of touch view. on the contrary. what is out of touch is to believe that Open Source is perfect as it is, and nothing should be changed about it.

the problem that FUTO is trying to address is the commercial exploitation by large companies (like AWS) at the expense of the original creators. a problem that several companies (redis, mongodb, elasticsearch, zerotier, terraform, vagrant, and many more...) in recent years had to face, causing them to change their license.

it's a problem that bruce perens is also trying to address: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38783500 "What comes after open source? Bruce Perens is working on it"

btw: i recently asked bruce about this and he said that AI now changes everything and he wants to wait and see how that will affect Open Source.

it is not obvious that FUTO's approach is the right one. it is an attempt at addressing the problem, and i expect that it will take more such experiments to shake out what the best approach to this problem really is.

i wrote about this before:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=em-bee%20futo&type=comment

> shit

It's just a commercial license with very mild terms.

Yeah, honestly. I love open source as much as the next guy, but I don't understand why people are so up in arms about this. The license feels pretty reasonable.

The source code is fully available, none of the features are paywalled. They only prohibit you from taking their code and reselling it.

If you take a look at the Play Store, there are thousands of instances where open source projects are lazily renamed and sold for $5 or $10. It's the definition of scummy, pathetic, worthless behavior, and I'm glad the license prevents those kinds of leeches from succeeding.

I know this isn't the only case, but it's the majority of cases. So I have no problem with their license at all.

The license doesn't prevent those leeches from succeeding. They will republish your app, whether it is fully proprietary or licensed under the GPLv3, and neither Google nor Apple will respond to takedown requests for apps. We get many reports of this behavior in an Android developer community I help moderate, it's pretty obvious there are a few known actors doing this with hundreds of apps, and the stores don't care.

So no, the license doesn't matter.

Yeah, it's pretty pathetic on Google and Apple's part.

It might be not a foolproof solution, but I think the license is better than nothing. Then you have a legal precedent that you can cite when you file a lawsuit against these rats.

Most of these people doing this probably aren't in the same country. But whatever. It's better than nothing.

It's just another proprietary software, on the lesser evil side of spectrum. The reason for people being so up in arms about it, is because voting for lesser evil makes it greater.

The reason I prefer open-source software is that I can inspect and modify the source code if I want to. With this license, I can still do that, even if it’s not technically “open-source™” by the OSI definition. Therefore, I don’t see a reason to object to it. The OSI definition is made for the benefit of big corporations, not people like me.

> They only prohibit you from taking their code and reselling it.

They prohibit you from removing the constant nags about buying a licence.

I know a way you could remove those nags.

I know two:

1. Paying and clicking “I paid”

2. Not paying and still clicking “I paid”

So it’s an honour system right now.

That said, if they ever implement e.g. license keys or some other mean of actually checking that you’ve paid, seems that you would be able to remove it and recompile, you just can’t help others do that:

> Notwithstanding the above, you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software related to payment to the Licensor in any copy you distribute to others.

(IANAL)

The nags that you could just click "I bought a license" to remove without actually buying one?

Or you know, also buy the license and click it honestly.

> Futo License (shit)

Clearly not a cuck license (https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuc...) so looks good to me.

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