The Immich core team goes full-time
Interesting — the Immich photo hosting open source project is switching IP ownership, and core team employment, to a private company:
Since the beginning of this adventure, my goal has always been to create a better world for my children. Memories are priceless, and privacy should not be a luxury. However, building quality open source has its challenges. Over the past two years, it has taken significant dedication, time, and effort. Recently, a company in Austin, Texas, called FUTO contacted the team. FUTO strives to develop quality and sustainable open software. They build software alternatives that focus on giving control to users. From their mission statement: “Computers should belong to you, the people. We develop and fund technology to give them back.” FUTO loved Immich and wanted to see if we’d consider working with them to take the project to the next level. In short, FUTO offered to: Pay the core team to work on Immich full-time Let us keep full autonomy about the project’s direction and leadership Continue to license Immich under AGPL Keep Immich’s development direction with no paywalled features Keep Immich “built for the people” (no ads, data mining/selling, or alternative motives) Provide us with financial, technical, legal, and administrative support
Here are FUTO’s “three pledges”:We will never sell out. All FUTO companies and FUTO-funded projects are expected to remain fiercely independent. They will never exacerbate the monopoly problem by selling out to a monopolist. We will never abuse our customers. All FUTO companies and FUTO-funded projects are expected to maintain an honest relationship with their customers. Revenue, if it exists, comes from customers paying directly for software and services. “The users are our product” revenue models are strictly prohibited. We will always be transparently devoted to making delightful software. All FUTO-funded projects are expected to be open-source or develop a plan to eventually become so. No effort will ever be taken to hide from the people what their computers are doing, to limit how they use them, or to modify their behavior through their software.
I’m not 100% clear on how FUTO will make money, but this is a very interesting move.(tags: futo immich open-source photos agpl ip ownership work how-we-work)