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by rkagerer 2 hours ago
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.

1 comments

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.
They also employ Louis Rossman, interestingly.

https://consumerrights.wiki/w/FUTO