They secretly funded projects without letting the recipients know it was them funding and then added their names and logos to their site without permission. When someone spoke out against this, they harassed them. This is in addition to a lot of behavior supporting fascists.
Comment on Futo updates their website, removing logos, clarifying micro grants
individual@toast.ooo 4 weeks ago
eli5?
Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
individual@toast.ooo 4 weeks ago
what facist projects?
TootSweet@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The article I linked in another comment explains more, but Eron Wolf, founder of FUTO, kindof pressured or hoodwinked Louis Rossmann into publicly interviewing Curtis Yarvin who happily refers to himself as a “reactionary fascist” and publicly states that black people are inherently suitable for enslavement.
isthereanydeal@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
That is not supporting fascist projects even if its a mistake
TootSweet@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
This is all in reference to this article.
FUTO is an organization that talks a lot of rhetoric about being some bastion of consumer rights in tech, but they’re doing a lot of shitty, shady, and downright evil things. Among them, FUTO has been in the practice of making small grants to FOSS projects (like ffmpeg and musl) and then plastering the FOSS project’s name and logo all over the FUTO site in a way that makes it seem as if FUTO is endorsed by said FOSS projects when that’s not the case at all.
(All this after doing everything in their power with their rhetoric to try to discredit and degrade the entire FOSS community. They wrote an “apology”, but even in the apology, they express their “disdain for OSI approved licenses”. Mind you, none of FUTO’s projects are Open Source.)
After that article came out just a couple of days ago, apparently they redid their site, I’d have to guess in an effort to address the concern that the way FUTO presented their grant program before implied endorsement by a lot of FOSS projects that didn’t endorse them in any way. I don’t think they’ve done enough, and there are tons of other reasons to think FUTO is evil assholes using consumer rights rhetoric to manipulate people in service to its (fully for-profit) bottom line.
Other concerns in the article include FUTO’s connection to explicit/proud fascists and using their platform to (even coercing Louis Rossmann into) spread fascist propaganda.
And I’ve got plenty more to say about how evil FUTO is.
frongt@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
They weren’t even grants. They just donated money and said “look we’re sponsoring them!”, implying a relationship. As mentioned in that article, musl and ffmpeg (and probably everyone) didn’t even know FUTO was doing this.
lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 4 weeks ago
My disapproval of FUTO notwithstanding, that is the dictionary definition.
I never looked at those “we sponsor/donated to” sections on organization pages as implying a relationship of reciprocal approval. Are idiots online thinking that?
Anyone should be able to assert “X gave Y money” when that’s true. Taking money from people we disagree with shouldn’t be a problem: less money for them, more for us. Do we want them to spend on shit we definitely disapprove of?
frongt@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
By that dictionary definition, yes, but there’s a connotation of scale and a relationship. For example, your local arts events are often sponsored by local businesses and philanthropists, but if you or I donate $10 I wouldn’t call that a sponsorship.
Lojcs@piefed.social 4 weeks ago
I’ve clicked through the links and the most ‘evil’ thing they did seems to be using a non-mainstream open source licence? Evil is getting contracted by Israel. Prohibiting other companies from profiting off your work isn’t evil.
extremeboredom@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Honestly getting tired of the purity tests. The alternatives are horrific. Google. Apple. Meta. So please find me the FOSS project that is perfectly free of sin which I’m allowed to support.
At this point it begins to feel as though this DDV is only here to write takedown pieces on projects not deemed pure enough for the cause.
FUTO hosted an interview once with a POS guy. Oh, the horror. Please help me understand what that has to do with the existence of a keyboard that isn’t spyware. Yeah no. I’ll keep supporting the working alternatives, you have fun using absolutely nothing because “What if one of the devs wasn’t a good person??!”
IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 4 weeks ago
I absolutely agree with your statement. Hell, even the GNU project (RMS mostly) had their own scandal a while ago, so if you really insist on being pedantic about this matter feel free on removing practically every piece of open source software from your systems.
nialv7@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I don’t get you people. The founder of FUTO literally platforming a fascist is beyond just purity test level of bad.
I can call Eron out for being a supporter of fascists, while using FUTO keyboard because it doesn’t spy on me, that’s perfectly fine. I don’t get why using their keyboard means you have to defend the horrible position held by the people behind it. Sounds like cognitive dissonance.
Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
Yeah, the keyboard is source available, that’s good enough for me.
edible_funk@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Oh don’t worry, it’s only lightly nazi affiliated. Weird that isn’t a deal breaker for you. Well not really weird these days, but it sure says a lot about you.
upsidebeet@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Lojcs@piefed.social 4 weeks ago
Are they friends? If they are friends sure, they’re evil. Although if that were the case I think the person calling them evil (and the linked blog) would have included that front and center rather than the definition of open source stuff.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Immich it licensed under AGPL 3 and the code is open - isn’t that FOSS?
I know some of their apps are licensed under a semi-open license of their own creation and that’s been touchy to say the least. But is it true to say that none of their apps are FOSS?
TootSweet@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Ah. My mistake. I’ll edit my comment.
Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
They actually reliscenced from mit (or some permissive liscence) to AGPLv3 right before getting “taken over” by FUTO (futo now pays the immich devs to work full time on the project)
timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
I’ll be honest- never even heard of futo outside the context of immich (and I don’t even run it.) Interesting to hear they have anything besides that.
linkinkampf19@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Thanks for posting this. Just uninstalled Futo keyboard and its neighboring speech to text app. Gotta hunt around for a replacement on both, tho I’ve been using Heliboard, which is okay. Still really bad at swipe predictions.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The voice recognition is honestly the best I’ve ever used. It’ll be a shame to give it up.
If I decide to switch keyboards, I’m certain I would go back to HeliBoard.
There’s been a real explosion of open source voice recognition over the past few months, and I haven’t tested a lot. Whisper+ looks like a promising one. Before using Futo, I used Sayboard, which I was pretty happy with.
extremeboredom@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Careful, I heard one of the Heliboard devs kicked a puppy once. How dare you support such Evil software?!
/s because sadly that’s needed
linkinkampf19@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I was really loving Futo keyboard, but when companies are tied to any atrocities, or in this case, plain general evil, it’s really tough to stick with. I jumped very briefly over to Sayboard before your post (saw it on F-Droid), but I’m hoping Whisper+ works better, as I think I’ll simultaneously be using it for my upcoming HA voice assistant project.
kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
Transcribro is another that looks promising.
artyom@piefed.social 4 weeks ago
Their voice recognition is just OpenAI Whisper. Transcribro uses the exact same thing. It’s just not built into a handy key on the keyboard.
yes@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
If you are comfortable using F-Droid or Obtainium I found HeliBoard to be a good keyboard replacement: github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard
Sadly anything not going through the Google Play store is currently under attack: f-droid.org/…/google-developer-registration-decre…
linkinkampf19@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Hah! That’s why I said I was using Heliboard :P As noted, not the greatest text prediction. e.g. I’ll type “in” specifically starting over the I, and it still types “on”, and it also doesn’t like shorthand wording, like “gonna” which every time gets replaced with “Gibbs”
Still better than the Google keyboard with its billion all-seeing eyes on you.
FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io 4 weeks ago
I just switched to Heliboard. I like it, but I wish it had swiping.