Gross. Fuck FUTO.
I’m going to stop using good free software because I read a blog post by a sketchy guy saying the guys that wrote the software are sketchy. 🙄
No material harm is described in the post. This is a drama blog.
Believe what you want, but Drew DeVault has more of a reputation than FUTO.
“good” is subjective but FUTO’s software is non-free. Their attempts to openwash their proprietary license is enough of a red flag.
That’s fair. Only "free as in beer "
It’s not a FOSS liscence, but saying it’s proprietary is also disingenuous, it’s source available.
There’s no third option between FOSS and proprietary (unless there are licenses that match the Free Software definition but not the Open Source definition or vice versa, I suppose, but I’m not aware of any). All software that is not FOSS is proprietary by definition, whether the source is available or not. It’s not “disingenuous” to call FUTO software proprietary. It’s simply factual.
Source availability is necessary but not sufficient for 2 of the 4 freedoms.
From a communication viewpoint, that is fair, but to my knowledge (from being a professional software developer), effectively any license that is not ‘open-source’ or ‘free’ is by definition proprietary.
Because those two terms describe licensing standards (the only established ones that I know of). Whereas I believe, “proprietary license” uses this meaning of proprietary:
Nonstandard and controlled by one particular organization.
So, they wrote that license themselves is the point. What it says in there is secondary in meaning.
This is so highly relevant because in legal disputes, there is certain license compatibilities which are known to be possible.
You can take a library licensed under the MIT license and use it in a project that uses the Apache-2.0 license and you’re perfectly fine. This is the foundation of why the open-source ecosystem exists at all.But you cannot take the source code from FUTO and use it in a differently licensed project, because no legal precedents exist to support this. (I believe, the FUTO license also actively prohibits this in some way, but that’s beside the point.)
This has massive implications. Like, yeah, you can look at the code, but it is useless. If FUTO closes shop or enshittifies, you cannot fork their projects.
And because you cannot legally re-use their source code in other projects, likely no one looks at it in depth either.
FUTO is more or less openly fascists
I had no idea. Now I have to find a new keyboard…
Heliboard
I read that as “Hellboard” which sounds like an awesome mashup between Tony Hawk Pro Skater, and Brutal Legend
How so? I’m not doubting, I just didn’t see any of that evidence in the article.
Have you read the same article?
The founder hosted a debate with an open fascist then gave him a platform on the FUTO YouTube channel.Do words mean anything anymore? That is an argument for them being fascists. But how are they “openly” fascist? Where is their statement, where they openly state “we are fascists”?
Because they might be, but I don’t think they ever openly said so.
Yeah, because thieves go around making public statements of “we are thieves!”
Exactly my point, and yet the commenter claims FUTO do that, even though they obviously aren’t, because who would.
But if your roommate says he isn’t a thief, however he always hangs around with the local gang and continuously brings used stuff that he has no way of legally acquiring since he doesn’t even have a job. I don’t know man, you have to start asking questions.
Mike is not a nazi, he just goes to the nazi bar because he likes the beer.
says he isn’t a thief
Well that’s the entire issue, isn’t it? If he says he isn’t a thief, then he’s a thief who clearly isn’t open about it. Just like Mike isn’t openly a nazi, he’s just a nazi who’s lying about not being one.
In 2025 they do
I think that’s a pretty extreme bar, but I agree 2 YouTube discussions doesn’t make a fascist. At worst it makes a Gavin newsom or Joe Rogan.
Maybe Louis Rossman will see this and beat FUTO back into shape? Maybe? Please? I just want one good outcome here!!
He’s literally in it.
He’s literally not.
Doubtful, unfortunately. FUTO seems like the sort of narcissistic assholes who won’t be swayed in any way, shape, or form
Why does every mobile keyboard developer have some controversial shit? I just want to text in peace.
quite a bunch of stem computer people are also fascists.
Just use Gboard and block any google telemetry
I know both are kinda terrible but isn’t a facist-developed GPL software better than Google software
Good luck with that on anything that has a locked boot loader or stock OS.
rethinkdns works perfectly for me
Just use wireguard and block all connections that aren’t going over VPN. Ezpz
Also if you’re on a stock device then you’re already feeding them plenty of data
Using a VPN does absolutely nothing to protect from their apps scraping up and phoning home telemetry.
It’s still YOUR phone. It’s still YOUR GPS location. It’s still YOUR data connection. A VPN is not a catch-all solution to privacy.
VPN to your box somewhere else with proper filtering.
I figured that was obvious
That’s literally not how VPNs work nor are you aware of what you’re talking about.
You literally don’t know what you are talking about.
You’re like a computer novice that is only aware of commercialized VPN products thinking you know what you’re talking about but unaware that the commercialized products are open source things that anyone can run, and you’re only paying for the company to run them on their boxes.
What
Anything on HeliBoard too?
heliboard seems cool so far
Same, I switched over yesterday and I found it actually does all the things I was hoping for!
Reducing keyboard size, removing suggestions bar, adjusting timing on holding for symbols or numbers, emoji key, theming, and swipe typing can be enabled (its just a file that they cannot or have chosen not to install with the app, as the rest is open source as far as I understood).
The only thing I dislike of heliboard is their swipe function requires Google binaries. Most FOSS keyboards either lack some feature I use or are immersed in wild controversies.
And the implementation is nowhere as good as gboard.
Futo’s keyboard isn’t much better for slide to type. I find myself switching keyboards back to gboard when I’m not using voice to text or two thumbs.
I mean, I can’t complain about HeliBoard’s swiping feature, especially considering the alternatives.
Does FlorisBoard have controversial shit too?
No, but they are forever beta. They still lack a ton of features I use.
True
fossify keyboard? extremely basic, but works
For the sadist in you there’s always https://f-droid.org/packages/se.nullable.flickboard
May I recommend Thumbkey its awesome and a bit different from other keyboards. Its concept is interesting ✨
It looks neat but what an absolutely stupid take from a keyboard author
Because it trusts you to write what you meant to write.
Butch if I didn’t let it correct me I’d have to actually mook st the keyboard and who the fuck wants to do thatm.
Phones are tiny and humans are clumsy. I absolutely never mean what I type, as you can see above.
Well, ThumbKey adapts to the limitations of a phone screen, that’s why it’s unique. So, once you are familiar with it, you’re less likely to fumble the wrong key. It takes quite some time though, at least it did for me.
I understand what they were trying to go for, but they failed…not least because they explain that below the fold.
Failed for thee perhaps, but mein hands are smol, vocab’s colloquial, n’ passwords often complex… Autocorrect is the first feature that must die when I adopt devices.
I’ve always been an outspoken skeptic of FUTO (check post history) and their bizarre campaign against free software, but I didn’t know they were this bad. Yikes
FFS
Heliboard seems decent, though I don’t know anything about the developers.
This is informative, and unfortunate.
I will be honest, I don’t really expect louis will wade into this issue at all, since he seems to be very uncomfortable with any of the “political” or partisan aspects of the issues he covers.
I can empathize with why one might be that way, but I hope I’m wrong, it would be rather disappointing.
Maybe it’s time for me to open some feature requests on the helicopter repo for futo keyboard features I’d really miss if I left it behind… It’d be good for both projects to be feature rich and competitive anyway.
On the upside, Louis left FUTO last February
Wait, he did? I had no idea
Is that what “fulu” has been about?
I wish my comment included that context for all the people who saw it but I was completely unaware
“FULU” is a consumer rights organization iirc. The name sounds like a spinoff or sister organization to FUTO, but I don’t think there’s an official relationship.
He’s not uncomfortable with it - He hates the cognitive dissonance of being a capitalist and hating the results of it
I’m gonna be really honest, to me that feels like it strays really far into reading people’s minds and headcannoning what’s going on on them. But perhaps you’ve seen more from him than I have, and you’re basing that assessment on greater familiarity.
I do think it’s worth being mindful about how much we assume we know the inner workings of random people through a screen, though.
Yarvin has proclaimed that black people are genetically predisposed to a lower IQ than white people
The second part of that is true, because the IQ test is unreliable. That’s why its banned in California schools for POC
That statement only has one part. Could you clarify what you mean here? I’m not sure I understand.
The first part says people with more melanin in their skin are inferior. This is false.
The second part says people with more melanin in their skin score lower on IQ tests. This is true (because IQ tests are terrible, and its creator said so too)
I think it would help to define the causal relationship you’re referring to. What exactly about skin color changes the outcome of the test?
It doesn’t. The test was designed for white people. It’s the same reason that facial recognition has more false positives for people with more melanin in their skin.
The problem is the test, not the skin. That’s my point.
How does the test tell the difference? Does it come with a color chart?
It’s more about cultural and socioeconomic bias. So you might have questions that have a bias towards middleclass suburban kids vs a poor innercity kid.
You can find examples online, but some can be quite subtle. “Banana is to yellow as Ruby is to ______” Someone who grew up with jewelry would be more likely to know this. This goes against the principle of an IQ test, and older tests were notorious for this.
It’s the same reason that facial recognition has more false positives for people with more melanin in their skin.
This is not the real reason. It’s because camera tech from more than 10 years ago was worse than today and had trouble with anything less than ideal lighting conditions. Darker textures reflect less light, so the darker someone’s skin the less details a camera can see.
However we’re still talking about a 0.001 FMR for white men to a 0.002 FMR for black men. That’s “2x more false matches” but it’s a 0.001 difference.
With modern cameras and recent facial recognition tech, the issue in differences of skin colour is virtually non-existent. Yes, I know of the news stories about false arrests in recent years, but no tech is perfect and you’re talking about a few instances out of billions.
No, I’m not defending the use of the tech, just pointing out facts.
I think it’s that the statement in question was proclaimed is the “first part”. Or maybe the genetic predisposition is. Unclear.
Giving tens of thousands of dollars to great orgs that have real free software licenses and ask for nothing in return? I’m glad we have futo.
Yeah I don’t understand why everyone is gate keeping open source all the sudden, there is a line to be drawn between openly changeable and open to being understood, the understanding part is all I want from things because then I can tell if its actually bad or not and that is the part we mostly care about.
Its ok to not like futo because you don’t agree with some of their peoples politics but that’s an entirely different thing.
I’ve heard it said they forced Freenet to stop focusing on anonymization, which caused a fork and name change of the original Freenet to Hyphanet.
Link or didn’t happen
Site doesn’t load. Here’s a link to the article
https://www.hyphanet.org/freenet-renamed-to-hyphanet.html
But it doesn’t say anything about futo
Here’s the toot:
@light The funding by FUTO sadly led to the forced renaming: https://www.hyphanet.org/freenet-renamed-to-hyphanet.html
That new project does not have privacy as a goal.
We (Hyphanet) are fully volunteer-driven now. #Hyphanet has been working pretty well for the past two decades and is continuing to move forward. Features:
- websites
- Microblog (Sone)
- Chat (FLIP: IRC server)
- Forums (FMS)
- decentralized database
⇒ https://www.hyphanet.org/ @caten
Great article.
Oh god dammit man.
Wolf also was spouting about how great Trump is and how “woke” shit is ruining society or whatever in January IIRC. I briefly trawled through their social media when I was investigating their keyboard, Grayjay, and Immich and promptly decided to never, ever give them money.
Note that their keyboard doesn’t require network (at least as of now), so if you don’t give them money or promote it to other people, they don’t really benefit.
In the last thread he posted in they’re already talking about the author/article in the OP.
Internet drama truly is a flat circle.
Interestingly, according to one of his recent-ish comments, he left FUTO in February.
Yeah, not sure how much he’s distancing himself from FUTO related things though. He brought up grayjay recently, but only specifically to talk about the devs comments on recent Texas app store legislation. Kind of a wash.
Given he is playing politician now, I don’t think he’s going to make a public statement about it. Not only would it hurt his influence but it would probably stall out any ongoing negotiations regarding right to repair. Shit sucks in general.
JFC can there be nothing pure in this world?
Sorry but this person is treating grapheneos’ attacks on other groups as legitimate which throws the entire article into question. If they are happy to provide a platform for graphene’s founder’s paranoid conspiracies I can’t trust the content.
Seems clear there’s some questionable shit going on, but the only evidence presented is two YouTube videos which isn’t actually a lot. I wouldn’t be surprised based on this to hear there are deeper links, but this article is written by someone who thinks tweets and YouTube comments are evidence.
grapheneos’ attacks on other groups
Where Attack? The worst Graphene ever did was say that they don’t support certain Phones like FP because they are not updating their OS to their liking
Are you gonna go to Qubes OS next and complain that they are attacking laptop manufacturers (don’t officially support Laptops because they don’t have an open source UEFI)?
They also had a culture of accusing anyone who complained about issues or asked questions about why things were done a certain way of being a shill for Calyx, and of there being a coordinated effort by Calyx and others to discredit them. I’m a GOS user, but the lead developer is without a doubt pretty paranoid at least.
Regardless, these accusations against FUTO are pretty concerning.
I’ve been forced into graphene due to calyx’ abandonment (and piss poor communication – “oh we didn’t realize people don’t regularly check our website in case the entire organization collapses overnight”) of it’s users this year, sadly. There just isn’t an alternative afaik.
On the graphene front I’ve personally been banned from their matrix chat on several accounts, none of which I actually used to post in their chat – they did a blanket ban of anyone in the calyxos channel. Not posted there, not posted in graphene, not having actually done anything, they blanket banned (he now denies this ever happened). Which honestly given how many times I went on to see him uncontrollably ranting at people was probably for the best. He and his most ardent supporters are a brigade of trolls.
Wow you’re very uninformed. May want to read up first.
