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.
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.
Related reading: https://drewdevault.com/blog/Whats-up-with-FUTO/
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.
Excellent find.
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)