Apparently in the past day, they’ve removed all the logos from the Microgrants projects and clarified that the grants are unsolicited
Apparently in the past day, they’ve removed all the logos from the Microgrants projects and clarified that the grants are unsolicited
Not at all, at least when it comes to their organization and its investments. Their donations to OSS are one thing, but FUTO controls the name and brand of their direct investments like GrayJay and Immich. This makes FUTO a brand and separating a brand from its reputation isn’t something that can be done. FUTO is a company and companies aren’t your friends. They can promise whatever they want, but they are accountable to what they do.
They themselves have put a huge emphasis on their reputation in terms of their OSS donations as well, often at the expense of transparency and the sovereignty of the projects they’re “supporting”, which is actually what the original post we’re commenting on is about. They were caught slipping donations to individual maintainers of projects and not the projects themselves in order to avoid project rules about institutional donors, and then they plastered the name and logo of these projects on their website without permission. They did this to improve their reputation and instill a sense of trust in the community. Doing so in such a shady, under the table way actively undermines trust.
FUTO is an investment company like any other, only with a mission statement of “Don’t worry, we’re one of the good ones, primarily due to INSERT BELIEFS”. Then they act in a way in flagrant contradiction of those beliefs.
Anybody who feels uneasy over this behavior is 100% justified. Anyone’s who’s lived through Apple’s “Monopoly busting underdog” or Google’s “free and open internet for all, don’t be evil” eras doubly so.
That’s fair.
I guess my point is that they’re easily replaceable. Immich is easy to fork, Grayjay is simply a client for existing services, etc. Nothing they have built or supported really locks you in, and they’ve been explicit about not wanting to have a server component.
So to me, the impact of FUTO being or becoming evil is incredibly low, unlike Apple or Google, who have a much higher ability to lock in users. The whole mission is about removing people from those types of ecosystems into one where users can more easily switch to alternatives. The software should be preferred on its own merits, not the merits of the ecosystem it’s part of.
So I guess that’s why I’m more comfortable giving FUTO a pass: I can easily change my position tomorrow if they “go evil.”