6 ms·

I think this is a cool idea, and is something I would pay for, but I'm concerned about the (lack of) openness. It's a lot harder than I would prefer to figure

I think this is a cool idea, and is something I would pay for, but I'm concerned about the (lack of) openness. It's a lot harder than I would prefer to figure out these factoids for example: 1. FUTO Keyboard is licensed "FUTO Source First License 1.0" 2. FUTO Keyboard is a fork of the AOSP keyboard (called LatinIME). LatinIME is open source, Apache licensed. 3. The source code is here: https://gitlab.futo.org/alex/latinime/ https://gitlab.futo.org/alex/latinime/ I'm not an open source purist, but the more central/fundamental the project is to my life/workflow, the more important that becomes to me. A keyboard is pretty fundamental. I'd love to have an open source keyboard that is good, especially with good speech to text (it drives me crazy how Google continually changes the behavior of STT on the Pixel 8. I get the philosophy behind incremental improvement, but it's a continual stream of two steps forward, one step backward, one forward, two backward, three forward, etc. Just as I learn the quirks and how to work around them, it all changes and there's all new quirks to learn and workaround. Maddening). It's still early days, but this an interesting project to keep an eye on!

sleepycatgirl 2y ago
Oh yea, anything FUTO is not open source. Its merely source available.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  That's what open source is. I have the application and I have the source code.
  - sleepycatgirl 2y ago
    Nope. It restricts modifications one can do, and how to distribute it. There is quite a stark difference between source available, and open source.
    - praveenperera 2y ago
      You can modify however you want, you just can't turn around and sell it.
      - josephcsible 2y ago
        No you can't. You're banned from removing their payment nag.
        skeledrew 2y ago
        Why would you want to remove it? Do you reasonably see yourself digging into the code to remove that bit, rebuilding and reinstalling, compared to tapping "I have paid" once to dismiss (ideally after you actually have paid)?
  - kvdveer 2y ago
    You're missing "and I can use the source". Without that freedom, you really don't have the benefits of open source. This is commonly referred to as "source available".
  - Onawa 2y ago
    Nope, that's 'source available'. Open source usually means a non-restrictive license, ala https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd.
    - lowkey 2y ago
      Why is the OSI definition considered canonical? I mean the OSI: - didn’t invent the term open-source, they co-opted it from Christine Peterson who is not even a member of OSI - was founded by secret charter members and is funded by closed-source tech giants like Google, Apple, and Microsoft who make billions exploiting open-source software while giving virtually nothing back in return - is heavily influenced by these same corporate giants who steer decisions such as the definition of open-source for their personal profit above the needs of society
      - thesuperbigfrog 2y ago
        >> Why is the OSI definition considered canonical? 'The introduction of the term "open source software" was a deliberate effort to make this field of endeavor more understandable to newcomers and to business, which was viewed as necessary to its spread to a broader community of users. The problem with the main earlier label, "free software," was not its political connotations, but that—to newcomers—its seeming focus on price is distracting. A term was needed that focuses on the key issue of source code and that does not immediately confuse those new to the concept. The first term that came along at the right time and fulfilled these requirements was rapidly adopted: open source.' Source: https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source-software https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source... This is from Christine Peterson's published account of how the term 'open source' came into popular usage. The term 'open source' in popular usage as defined by the Open Source Definition (https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd) has been in use for more than 25 years now. Let FUTO keep their "source first" license and use it to forward their goals, but do not create confusion by trying to co-opt the well-known and broadly understood meaning of "open source".
      - lowkey 2y ago
        The inventor of the term "open source software” defined it as software which includes the freedom to view, modify, and distribute the software's source code. She made no mention of the ability to commercialize without compensation. Those terms were only added in the OSI’s Open Source Definition (OSD)
  - card_zero 2y ago
    You might think so, I might think so, but apparently there's some gatekeeping about the term dating back to its invention in the 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-source_software_licenses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-so... "This article may be confusing or unclear to readers." Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source - Richard Stallman argues the "obvious meaning" of term "open source" is that the source code is public/accessible for inspection, without necessarily any other rights granted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_terms_for_free_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_terms_for_free_sof... - In a 1998 strategy session in California, "open-source software" was selected by Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Christine Peterson, and Eric S. Raymond. Richard Stallman had not been invited. I'm getting downvoted now for dissenting. :D
    - prophesi 2y ago
      I would also agree that the common sense definition of open source should be public/accessible code. But FOSS is a well-established movement and anyone involved with software development should be well-acquainted with Free vs Open.
      - card_zero 2y ago
        So you mean the actual definition should not be the common sense one? That's probably pragmatic, yes.
        Brian_K_White 2y ago
        Almost every word has some special meaning depending on the context it's used in. This is not controvercial. This is a silly argument to try to make a thing out of.
        2y ago
- vdfs 2y ago
  The trick is to star fully open source until you get popular then pull a licence change, aka Elastic/Redis/HashiCorp model
  - wmf 2y ago
    Note that FUTO is not really doing that.
  - okanat 2y ago
    I cannot understand purists TBH. Betting on big open source projects that has a broken financing structure and then getting surprised when the original company takes reins is not a good strategy neither for sustained open development of software nor the users of it. Yes the open core projects can be forked but almost none of the forks are successful in adoption. Terraform, Elasticsearch, MongoDB etc. kept almost all of their users. That's because the people who write the source and maintain that software (and them having a better livelihood) is more important than the actual source code. An unmaintained open-source software is (going to become) useless and expecting donations will not fix it. You can see the other examples that resulted in more open structures like LibreOffice. It continued to live and exist because its original developers forked it not because the license they chose.
- cvwright 2y ago
  Not true at all. We do use the "Source First" license for a lot of things, but all of my projects are OSI Certified (TM) Open Source. For example: * https://github.com/futo-org/circles-android https://github.com/futo-org/circles-android (AGPL) * https://github.com/futo-org/circles-ios https://github.com/futo-org/circles-ios (AGPL) * https://github.com/futo-org/matrix.swift https://github.com/futo-org/matrix.swift (Apache 2.0) There are a few other little things here and there, mostly Apache 2.0, but the above are the bigger ones. Edit: There is also Alex's Whisper finetuning repo https://github.com/futo-org/whisper-acft https://github.com/futo-org/whisper-acft (MIT)
  - sleepycatgirl 2y ago
    I stand corrected, I am sorry. My mistake.I really should have checked it better...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - lowkey 2y ago
    Hey @cvwright, On a side note could you share the best way to provide feedback on Circles? I am a new user as I downloaded the app just today. It looks beautiful and I love that it runs Matrix but I ran into a number of usability issues that prevent me from adopting it as a first time user and I suspect it may affect others as well so I would love to share feedback.
    - cvwright 2y ago
      Hey, thanks for trying Circles. We are doing a lot of work on improving the usability this summer, so yes please send us any feedback. If you’re a Matrix user, come chat in #circles:futo.org. Otherwise the Github repos all have issues enabled so please feel free to file things there.
- lowkey 2y ago
  “Oh yea, anything FUTO is not open source. It’s merely source available” I disagree and so does FUTO but in the interest of making nice with the community, they now call their software license “source first.” Personally, I think of their license as open-source for humans, but not the for-profit legal fictions we call corporations. I am ok with that. Why does the OSI get to dictate the one true definition of open source? OSI didn’t invent the term. It was invented by Christine Peterson in 1998 and notably she is not even a member of OSI. They just co-opted the term from her. OSI was founded by still secret charter members and large corporate sponsors such as Google, Apple and Microsoft who make Billions off the back of free open source software while giving back almost nothing. FUTO was founded as an alternative to the tech oligopolies and their software is licensed as open-source except that they require separate licensing for commercial use, specifically to protect against exploitation by tech giants.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Is FUTO an acronym? https://www.futo.org/about/what-is-futo/ https://www.futo.org/about/what-is-futo/ doesn't say.
    - cvwright 2y ago
      You can backronym all kinds of things into it. But in reality it’s four letters that sound good together. (And for which a domain name was available, I assume.)
      - card_zero 2y ago
        It's also a Nigerian university. But I'll go with "FU Tech Oligopoly".
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    They don't dictate. It's an interesting reaction to suggest that. They developed a definition as a service and gave it to everyone to use just like one does with software or art. Other people have decided that they agree that this definition correctly describes a bag of concepts and principles they need some sungle convenient collective term for. They "dictate" the definition only in the same way you "dictate" the contents of anything you wrote, or the way you "dictate" what your own name is. If I say "Foo is not an OSI approved license." I am the one "dictating" something. I am using a definition that was written down so that it's available for me to use as a reference when I want to say the entire bag of principles without having to spell them all out each time in a tweet or something. All the OSI did is write down some ideals and principles the same as a wikipedia page. They have no power to "dictate" that you exhibit those values. If you don't hold those principles, then don't. What, you want to be able to call yourself a saint and enjoy the admiration due to saints, without having to actually live up to the annoying things that actually make a saint worthy of that admiration? Ok.
ohmyiv 2y ago
>FUTO Keyboard is licensed "FUTO Source First License 1.0" FUTO posted an explainer about its "source first" licensing. https://futo.org/about/futo-statement-on-opensource/ https://futo.org/about/futo-statement-on-opensource/
- threwawasy1228 2y ago
  They also have: https://sourcefirst.com https://sourcefirst.com
  - ohmyiv 2y ago
    Thanks! That's a much better explanation.
- grobbyy 2y ago
  This is very, very confused. It comes off as dishonest, but isn't; it's just the case that the developer doesn't get it. It seems well-meaning, but badly done. Developer: I am, in all honesty, glad for the experimentation. However, you should understand that critical issues include the ability to remix. I cannot use your code in my project. Ergo, it is not open, free, libre, or similar. You're better off underselling and overdelivering. The term should also convey what this does. I like "source-auditable" or similar. "Source-first" says nothing. You should also think about longevity. How do I know the license won't change next week?
  - chill_throw 2y ago
    I think that the stuff they are putting out on sourcefirst.com is more of a formal treatment of their licensing terms and how they work. The stuff there is versioned iterations of something. They also bought the trademark for the term. They clearly want to lock it in as a set of standards.
doctorpangloss 2y ago
@dang is it possible to apply a filter to block out all conversations that are debates about whether or not something is an open source whatever? There is only a narrow set of situations where this is done in good faith for curiosity, and maybe this is sort of one of them, but I also don’t really care about weird licenses being nerd sniping marketing schemes either. This isn’t Reddit so it’s understandable if no such rule exists, but you exclude non technical political stuff which is good, so maybe this is a good line to draw.
- skeaker 2y ago
  Easier fix would be to click the little [-] button next to the comment to hide it so you don't read it, or even just scroll past it.
cvwright 2y ago
I think, rather than looking at the Source First license as something that’s “a replacement for OSI Open Source but less free” it’s more useful to see it as “a replacement for closed source commercial licenses but radically more open”. Open source has created some really great backend software and developer tooling, but somehow it’s not great at making nice consumer-friendly client side apps. When you look at the best apps, even the ones like Chrome that use open licenses, they are created by a relatively closed group of developers funded by a for-profit company. The Source First movement is aiming to provide a way for that kind of closed focused team to be more open with their users. I don’t imagine that many Source First projects are going to be looking for lots of community contributions, and that’s ok - the closed source apps don’t do this either and they seem to get along fine.
- grobbyy 2y ago
  My gut reaction to the license was exactly OP's -- it felt shady and sleazy. Then my logic kicked in and I came to the same conclusion you did -- it's not open source, but source-available means people can audit that it's honest. That's a huge win over closed-source, especially for something privacy-focused. I think the gut feeling comes from a long history of projects using source-available licenses in shady ways. The brain pattern-matches. That would be good to address upfront. Simply stating "not open source, but source-auditable" might help address this. Another good thing would be to post the price upfront. Right now, it requires an email to get to which is an antipattern. These issues are cosmetic (but important). This looks like a really good project.

sleepycatgirl 2y ago

Oh yea, anything FUTO is not open source. Its merely source available.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
That's what open source is. I have the application and I have the source code.
- sleepycatgirl 2y ago
  Nope. It restricts modifications one can do, and how to distribute it. There is quite a stark difference between source available, and open source.
  - praveenperera 2y ago
    You can modify however you want, you just can't turn around and sell it.
    - josephcsible 2y ago
      No you can't. You're banned from removing their payment nag.
      - skeledrew 2y ago
        Why would you want to remove it? Do you reasonably see yourself digging into the code to remove that bit, rebuilding and reinstalling, compared to tapping "I have paid" once to dismiss (ideally after you actually have paid)?
- kvdveer 2y ago
  You're missing "and I can use the source". Without that freedom, you really don't have the benefits of open source. This is commonly referred to as "source available".
- Onawa 2y ago
  Nope, that's 'source available'. Open source usually means a non-restrictive license, ala https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd.
  - lowkey 2y ago
    Why is the OSI definition considered canonical? I mean the OSI: - didn’t invent the term open-source, they co-opted it from Christine Peterson who is not even a member of OSI - was founded by secret charter members and is funded by closed-source tech giants like Google, Apple, and Microsoft who make billions exploiting open-source software while giving virtually nothing back in return - is heavily influenced by these same corporate giants who steer decisions such as the definition of open-source for their personal profit above the needs of society
    - thesuperbigfrog 2y ago
      >> Why is the OSI definition considered canonical? 'The introduction of the term "open source software" was a deliberate effort to make this field of endeavor more understandable to newcomers and to business, which was viewed as necessary to its spread to a broader community of users. The problem with the main earlier label, "free software," was not its political connotations, but that—to newcomers—its seeming focus on price is distracting. A term was needed that focuses on the key issue of source code and that does not immediately confuse those new to the concept. The first term that came along at the right time and fulfilled these requirements was rapidly adopted: open source.' Source: https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source-software https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source... This is from Christine Peterson's published account of how the term 'open source' came into popular usage. The term 'open source' in popular usage as defined by the Open Source Definition (https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd) has been in use for more than 25 years now. Let FUTO keep their "source first" license and use it to forward their goals, but do not create confusion by trying to co-opt the well-known and broadly understood meaning of "open source".
    - lowkey 2y ago
      The inventor of the term "open source software” defined it as software which includes the freedom to view, modify, and distribute the software's source code. She made no mention of the ability to commercialize without compensation. Those terms were only added in the OSI’s Open Source Definition (OSD)
- card_zero 2y ago
  You might think so, I might think so, but apparently there's some gatekeeping about the term dating back to its invention in the 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-source_software_licenses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-so... "This article may be confusing or unclear to readers." Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source - Richard Stallman argues the "obvious meaning" of term "open source" is that the source code is public/accessible for inspection, without necessarily any other rights granted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_terms_for_free_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_terms_for_free_sof... - In a 1998 strategy session in California, "open-source software" was selected by Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Christine Peterson, and Eric S. Raymond. Richard Stallman had not been invited. I'm getting downvoted now for dissenting. :D
  - prophesi 2y ago
    I would also agree that the common sense definition of open source should be public/accessible code. But FOSS is a well-established movement and anyone involved with software development should be well-acquainted with Free vs Open.
    - card_zero 2y ago
      So you mean the actual definition should not be the common sense one? That's probably pragmatic, yes.
      - Brian_K_White 2y ago
        Almost every word has some special meaning depending on the context it's used in. This is not controvercial. This is a silly argument to try to make a thing out of.
        2y ago
vdfs 2y ago
The trick is to star fully open source until you get popular then pull a licence change, aka Elastic/Redis/HashiCorp model
- wmf 2y ago
  Note that FUTO is not really doing that.
- okanat 2y ago
  I cannot understand purists TBH. Betting on big open source projects that has a broken financing structure and then getting surprised when the original company takes reins is not a good strategy neither for sustained open development of software nor the users of it. Yes the open core projects can be forked but almost none of the forks are successful in adoption. Terraform, Elasticsearch, MongoDB etc. kept almost all of their users. That's because the people who write the source and maintain that software (and them having a better livelihood) is more important than the actual source code. An unmaintained open-source software is (going to become) useless and expecting donations will not fix it. You can see the other examples that resulted in more open structures like LibreOffice. It continued to live and exist because its original developers forked it not because the license they chose.
cvwright 2y ago
Not true at all. We do use the "Source First" license for a lot of things, but all of my projects are OSI Certified (TM) Open Source. For example: * https://github.com/futo-org/circles-android https://github.com/futo-org/circles-android (AGPL) * https://github.com/futo-org/circles-ios https://github.com/futo-org/circles-ios (AGPL) * https://github.com/futo-org/matrix.swift https://github.com/futo-org/matrix.swift (Apache 2.0) There are a few other little things here and there, mostly Apache 2.0, but the above are the bigger ones. Edit: There is also Alex's Whisper finetuning repo https://github.com/futo-org/whisper-acft https://github.com/futo-org/whisper-acft (MIT)
- sleepycatgirl 2y ago
  I stand corrected, I am sorry. My mistake.I really should have checked it better...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- lowkey 2y ago
  Hey @cvwright, On a side note could you share the best way to provide feedback on Circles? I am a new user as I downloaded the app just today. It looks beautiful and I love that it runs Matrix but I ran into a number of usability issues that prevent me from adopting it as a first time user and I suspect it may affect others as well so I would love to share feedback.
  - cvwright 2y ago
    Hey, thanks for trying Circles. We are doing a lot of work on improving the usability this summer, so yes please send us any feedback. If you’re a Matrix user, come chat in #circles:futo.org. Otherwise the Github repos all have issues enabled so please feel free to file things there.
lowkey 2y ago
“Oh yea, anything FUTO is not open source. It’s merely source available” I disagree and so does FUTO but in the interest of making nice with the community, they now call their software license “source first.” Personally, I think of their license as open-source for humans, but not the for-profit legal fictions we call corporations. I am ok with that. Why does the OSI get to dictate the one true definition of open source? OSI didn’t invent the term. It was invented by Christine Peterson in 1998 and notably she is not even a member of OSI. They just co-opted the term from her. OSI was founded by still secret charter members and large corporate sponsors such as Google, Apple and Microsoft who make Billions off the back of free open source software while giving back almost nothing. FUTO was founded as an alternative to the tech oligopolies and their software is licensed as open-source except that they require separate licensing for commercial use, specifically to protect against exploitation by tech giants.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Is FUTO an acronym? https://www.futo.org/about/what-is-futo/ https://www.futo.org/about/what-is-futo/ doesn't say.
  - cvwright 2y ago
    You can backronym all kinds of things into it. But in reality it’s four letters that sound good together. (And for which a domain name was available, I assume.)
    - card_zero 2y ago
      It's also a Nigerian university. But I'll go with "FU Tech Oligopoly".
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  They don't dictate. It's an interesting reaction to suggest that. They developed a definition as a service and gave it to everyone to use just like one does with software or art. Other people have decided that they agree that this definition correctly describes a bag of concepts and principles they need some sungle convenient collective term for. They "dictate" the definition only in the same way you "dictate" the contents of anything you wrote, or the way you "dictate" what your own name is. If I say "Foo is not an OSI approved license." I am the one "dictating" something. I am using a definition that was written down so that it's available for me to use as a reference when I want to say the entire bag of principles without having to spell them all out each time in a tweet or something. All the OSI did is write down some ideals and principles the same as a wikipedia page. They have no power to "dictate" that you exhibit those values. If you don't hold those principles, then don't. What, you want to be able to call yourself a saint and enjoy the admiration due to saints, without having to actually live up to the annoying things that actually make a saint worthy of that admiration? Ok.

ohmyiv 2y ago

>FUTO Keyboard is licensed "FUTO Source First License 1.0" FUTO posted an explainer about its "source first" licensing. https://futo.org/about/futo-statement-on-opensource/ https://futo.org/about/futo-statement-on-opensource/

threwawasy1228 2y ago
They also have: https://sourcefirst.com https://sourcefirst.com
- ohmyiv 2y ago
  Thanks! That's a much better explanation.
grobbyy 2y ago
This is very, very confused. It comes off as dishonest, but isn't; it's just the case that the developer doesn't get it. It seems well-meaning, but badly done. Developer: I am, in all honesty, glad for the experimentation. However, you should understand that critical issues include the ability to remix. I cannot use your code in my project. Ergo, it is not open, free, libre, or similar. You're better off underselling and overdelivering. The term should also convey what this does. I like "source-auditable" or similar. "Source-first" says nothing. You should also think about longevity. How do I know the license won't change next week?
- chill_throw 2y ago
  I think that the stuff they are putting out on sourcefirst.com is more of a formal treatment of their licensing terms and how they work. The stuff there is versioned iterations of something. They also bought the trademark for the term. They clearly want to lock it in as a set of standards.

doctorpangloss 2y ago

@dang is it possible to apply a filter to block out all conversations that are debates about whether or not something is an open source whatever? There is only a narrow set of situations where this is done in good faith for curiosity, and maybe this is sort of one of them, but I also don’t really care about weird licenses being nerd sniping marketing schemes either. This isn’t Reddit so it’s understandable if no such rule exists, but you exclude non technical political stuff which is good, so maybe this is a good line to draw.

skeaker 2y ago
Easier fix would be to click the little [-] button next to the comment to hide it so you don't read it, or even just scroll past it.

cvwright 2y ago

I think, rather than looking at the Source First license as something that’s “a replacement for OSI Open Source but less free” it’s more useful to see it as “a replacement for closed source commercial licenses but radically more open”. Open source has created some really great backend software and developer tooling, but somehow it’s not great at making nice consumer-friendly client side apps. When you look at the best apps, even the ones like Chrome that use open licenses, they are created by a relatively closed group of developers funded by a for-profit company. The Source First movement is aiming to provide a way for that kind of closed focused team to be more open with their users. I don’t imagine that many Source First projects are going to be looking for lots of community contributions, and that’s ok - the closed source apps don’t do this either and they seem to get along fine.

grobbyy 2y ago
My gut reaction to the license was exactly OP's -- it felt shady and sleazy. Then my logic kicked in and I came to the same conclusion you did -- it's not open source, but source-available means people can audit that it's honest. That's a huge win over closed-source, especially for something privacy-focused. I think the gut feeling comes from a long history of projects using source-available licenses in shady ways. The brain pattern-matches. That would be good to address upfront. Simply stating "not open source, but source-auditable" might help address this. Another good thing would be to post the price upfront. Right now, it requires an email to get to which is an antipattern. These issues are cosmetic (but important). This looks like a really good project.