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One of the best pieces of self-hosted software ever to exist.
Edit: This is Immich! for the folks who don't know.
So wait, we hate FUTO but love Immich?
I don’t hate FUTO, but I distrust them.
On one hand, their operation is creepy and suspicious.
On the other, I like the idea of licenses that allow unrestricted private use and modification but forbid commercial exploitation. Those two situations are not equivalent. I realize this is an unpopular opinion in many FOSS circles, but we are already being exploited to death by the rich and powerful and they must not be entitled to the value of our collective free and voluntary labor. If we ever realize a society in which wealth and power is effectively capped for such entities, then I would change my tune. Until then, fuck them. Our collective software is for the collective, not for wealth hoarders and despots.
Immich is actually open source.
May I ask why do we hate FUTO?
they're wearing the clothes of "open source" but they run like a proverbial nazi bar: https://drewdevault.com/2025/10/22/2025-10-22-Whats-up-with-FUTO.html
Except the person who wrote that, regardless of the actual issues with FUTO, cannot be trusted and is an unreliable source.
I really would encourage people to not treat that guy as a real source, but use it as a starting point for evaluating his sources, such as they are, on their own merits.
The above post isn't the first I've heard bad about FUTO. GrapheneOS has also spoken out against them
I think there could be more to it. Louis Rossmann had personal issues with the lead dev there a year or two ago due to how they interact in their forum, and I think he had some great reasons to be concerned. Since then the lead dev has stepped away as project lead, but I doubt the bad blood is completely gone.
I think it's a bit suspicious that they don't mention what feature(s) FUTO wanted. Given their interaction with other projects, I'm guessing they wanted a "supporter" badge for people who have bought the software (no change in functionality other than the badge). I'm guessing also that due to their interaction with Rossmann, they're uninterested in clarifying, esp. if it would put FUTO in a better light if they did.
Then again, maybe FUTO is a bunch of scumbags. It just seems the slant against them is so much stronger than the actual negative impact from a handful of repos having source-available licenses instead of FOSS licenses.
There is 5+ more years to it than that
Thank you for linking this.
Why do you say they're unreliable and can't be trusted?
Yeah, I read this article twice now, and the only identifiable wrongdoing on FUTO's part is donating to FOSS projects without using their "institutional practice"... Which is a bizarre complaint.
The article is rife with "something ain't right at FUTO", but fails to wrap words around that statement.
They've been featuring projects on their page that they display their donations on, projects that did not know or outright refused, without their consent or understanding.
https://lemmy.ml/post/37910334
https://lemmy.zip/post/51673470
May I ask what the fuck FUTO is?
The company that employed the core Immich devs about a year ago to give them a full-time salary to keep working on Immich. Founded and funded by a millionaire whose stated goal is to try and make a viable business model out of software that doesn't abuse its users
I find it wild in this day and age how questions like ("why do WE hate" such and such) are being asked in the first place, then answered through one person's opinion piece mindlessly linked from all angles. Please, for gawd sake, stop listening to random fedditors/redditors about what opinions you should adopt!
IMHO (<- there's a novel approach), the criticisms of FUTO are just as biased and political as FUTO themselves, and everyone should be sceptical of bias from all sides. Apparently, focusing on 'privacy, decentralization, and right to repair' - is being too political, and they're not allowed to have a philosophical take on what they imagine successful open source to be. (Incidentally, I'm not necessarily on FUTOs side, just pissed off at the nature of social media to obviate the need of critical thinking and make everything black or white.)
I mean sure but... did you read the piece linked? It backs up it's claims. Not gonna sit here and act like I verified every single thing linked in the piece but I checked a good handful and it seems pretty straightforward. FUTO is pretty sketchy at the very least, and there's good reason to consider them a fascist org
Yes I read it when it first came out, and again after a recent update. It's very opinionated and I remain unconvinced the criticisms amounts to very much. At the least, certainly not to the point where words like nazi and fascist should be thrown around!
For example, I dislike Yarin's and Lunduke's politics but I did at least watched Yarin's interview. (Did you? It was boring, and entirely tech-oriented, nothing controversial at all.) But... trial by association I guess. And anyway, it's not the article itself I have a problem with - it's the borrowing of second-hand opinions as if they should be your own. Sometimes, it's prudent to reserve judgement (until 'verifying every single thing'), or criticise specific ideas, without leaping to ad hominem per consortium.
As far as I can tell the worst thing they did was call their source available license open source, which isn't even that bad.
My read is that FUTO as a software movement is totally fine, it does what it claims on the tin. The people behind FUTO are a different story, and the main person bankrolling it seems to have friends with odd views (I think they're blown out of proportion, but they're still concerning).
You'll never find a perfect movement. Here's what FUTO seems to prioritize:
That sounds pretty good to me! I'd prefer it to be FOSS, but allowing me to distribute modifications for non-commercial use is probably good enough for most things.
I probably disagree with their founder politically, and I'd run FUTO differently, but I think their software is good and I could maintain it myself if needed, and at the end of the day, that's what matters to me.
FUTO doesn't seem interested in getting involved in politics, they're merely musing philosophically, and their products aren't profitable, so it doesn't really matter to me what their political positions are.
Software can't be fascist, it's just software. The makers or users can be fascist though. If that statement was true, Lemmy would be tankie.
No, that's not fascist. Facial recognition software can be used for a variety of reasons, like unlocking a phone or laptop, gaining access to secure areas, or home automation stuff.
It's only fascist if used by a government to oppress minorities. The software itself cannot be fascist, but it can be used by fascists.
The fault lies with the makers and users of the softeware. Software doesn't have political opinions, it's software.
It's like saying Panzer tanks were fascist because they were built by the Nazis. Tanks cannot be fascist, they're tanks. So despite being made and used by fascists, they're not fascist, they're tanks.
That's the same exact thing here. Facial recognition software can be used by fascists, but that doesn't make the software itself fascist.
The other person deleted their comment so I can't really know what the argument was, but I would like to make a distinction:
While tools cannot be political themselves, tools can lend themselves to specific political purposes.
A tank cannot itself be fascist, but it can make fascism more viable. Surveillance software cannot be political, but it is easily abused by fascists to destroy political opposition.
What matters is the harm and benefits. Is the harm caused by the tool justified by it's benefits? Or are the primary use cases for the tool to prop up fascism?
(I suspect that "authoritarianism" would be a better term to use here, but I'm continuing the theme of the thread)
Their argument was that software can, in itself, be fascist, and that's what we went around and around on. The example given was facial recognition software that can determine race (and later, country of origin).
Essentially, I said exactly what you're saying, while they argued the opposite. I wish I quoted them, but I did only directly address their claims, if you'll take my word for it.
I don't want the government to have and use facial recognition software (their example) and extensive security camera systems (my example, such as Flock), not because those solutions are fascist in and of themselves, but that they can be used by fascists to accomplish their goals. Even if the current regime uses them purely for good (i.e. completely opt in facial recognition, cameras inaccessible to police until there's a warrant with no passive collection) the next regime may not.
The extension of the argument I'm making (and maybe them kinda?) is that it's functionally the same as if the software were political.
You can make software that nearly exclusively benefits a particular political belief for family of beliefs.
So even if it's not actually technically political, it can be functionally political, at which point the argument is splitting hairs.
I think those are important hairs to split.
Let's say there's a camera system built due to a direct public vote and rolled out by a political party all agree defends democracy. The stated goal is catching red light violations and speeders, and it's a popular system. As part of the functionality it reads license plates, and that is verified by a human every time, and no footage is stored if there's no violation.
Is that system fascist? Most would say no, and it exists in many states, like California and Washington.
Then the next election, a fascist is elected, and one of the first moves is to repurpose that system to track undesirables, and now it stores a ton of footage.
Is that system now fascist? It's the same exact system as in the previous example, it's just being used for fascist ends, such as tracking vehicles with certain plates (e.g. Illegal immigrants, minorities, etc) Nothing has changed in the capabilities or programming of the system, the only change was when to capture footage, what people use it for, and how long to store it.
Yes, it's theoretically possible to design a fascist system, such as an LLM that only gives fascist answers, but that's an incredibly narrow definition.
Just because a product has a plausibly deniable use case doesn't really mean that it's not functionally political.
If someone creates a super invasive surveillance system and initially uses it for a seemingly benign purpose, that doesn't mean the intention all along wasn't more nefarious, especially if the system was practically irresistible for power structures and it's use directly lead to authoritarianism. Like giving someone their first hit for free.
In a case like that, I would discount the benign use as a red herring, and say that the software is functionally political.
The intention can be fascist, sure, but that doesn't mean the solution is fascist.
For example, I think it's pretty clear that Lemmy was designed by tankies to create a safe space for tankies (why would the instances the main devs maintain be overly protective of China and Russia if it weren't?), but that doesn't make Lemmy "tankie," it's a software project that can be used by fascists, tankies, commies, anarchists, statists, etc, because it's just a software program.
Likewise, a surveillance system can be used by a fascist government, private company to protect company secrets, government agency like the Pentagon for internal use, or even private individuals to ID who is at the door. It's only fascist of it's used to further fascist goals, like identifying minorities or protestors. But then, it's still not the software that's fascist, but the whole system, meaning how people use it and the policies in place.
The chance of a given piece of software being "fascist" is incredibly low, since it would need to act in a fascist way and only a fascist way, or only be useful for fascist ends. Like the fascist LLM example I gave, or a training simulator that is hard-coded to only present fascist ideology.
Right. That's what we're talking about.
But I think the bar is a little lower. I think it's enough to be primarily useful for (eg) fascist goals. If it happens to have minor non-fascist uses, I don't think that materially changes anything.
I don't think that Lemmy is primarily useful for furthering tankie goals.
I think that privacy invading surveillance systems are primarily useful for furthering authoritarian goals, by intention or not. There are some nice alternative uses, but I think that the use case of primary importance is in service to authoritarianism, which makes it authoritarian software.
And I disagree. I think this all started when we allowed things like traffic light cameras, speed cameras, and toll cameras to automatically bill based on license plate. I don't think most would consider those to be "primarily useful for furthering authoritarian goals," they're merely there for routine law enforcement with specific goals.
Flock cameras are basically that same exact system, but instead of only being used when something tangible is triggered (red light, radar, or toll booth motion sensor), they passively collect information. Flock is a private company that sells its surveillance services to cities (and private orgs) to assist with tracking down license plates or alerting when there's a gunshot detection. This is allegedly legal because you don't have any expectation of privacy when you're in public (hence why Ring doorbells are legal), and private companies don't have to follow the same rules as law enforcement. I personally don't think Flock's founders are fascist, they seem to genuinely want to help reduce crime. I worked for a similar company that mostly did perimeter security (i.e. generally only operated on private property), and the founder was absolutely not fascist, but they did want to help reduce crime.
I personally don't consider either of those systems fascist by nature, but they can be used to achieve fascist goals. Tracking burglars across neighborhoods doesn't sound especially fascist to me, but tracking protestors certainly does. These are very dangerous technologies that can easily be used for fascist purposes, so I think we shouldn't allow them to be used at all, not because they are fascist, but because they can easily be used for fascist ends just by changing conventions around its use.
I don't think we need to label a system as authoritarian or fascist to oppose them, we just need to point out how easily they can be misused.
Again, it's not the software itself that's fascist, it's what it's being used for that's fascist. Facial recognition for determining citizenship could absolutely be used for non-fascist purposes, like simplifying border crossings to not require documentation (i.e. completely opt-in). Likewise, surveillance systems can also not be used until there's an actual warrant (i.e. no passive recording), which can help in catching dangerous criminals.
The technology itself isn't fascist, it's how it's applied that's fascist. The mass data collection is fascist, the tools used to collect that data isn't fascist in the same way that guns and tanks aren't fascist, but they can certainly be used by fascists.
If anyone is refusing to engage, it's you. You provided no argument for your position, whereas I've explained as best I can in detail, with examples of similar things. Me not agreeing with you isn't "refusing to engage," it's a good faith debate.
If there's some point you've made that I've failed to address, I apologize, I tried to be thorough to not waste any time going back and forth.
Hahah you mean like Lemmy itself?
I'm not sure what "piece linked" you're talking about, since none of the parent comments of this comment actually have a link in them.
This is the first time I've ever heard of FUTO, but I did read their statement about open source and it sounds pretty good to me. I actually think they're capitulating a little bit too much by deciding not to call it open source anymore. As far as I'm concerned, if the source is available and anyone can contribute, that's open source. I don't particularly care whether or not it's free for Google to incorporate it into their increasingly-enshitified products or not.
Creative Commons (an org to which FUTO says they have donated) doesn't like their licences being used for software, presumably for finicky technical legal reasons. But if you imagine the broad spirit of their licences applying to software, all the main CC licences would be open source in my opinion. All combinations of Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike, and No Derivatives, as well as CC0 respect the important elements of open source.
oh so you're STUPID stupid
Fantastic rebuttal kindergartener, you convinced everyone.
The duality of man.