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.
“good” is subjective but FUTO’s software is non-free. Their attempts to openwash their proprietary license is enough of a red flag.
Wait so FUTO is authored by the guy who started all this clippy movement (Louis Rossmann)?
No, he was just a talking head that they hired a while ago. According to some in this thread he’s no longer with them today, but I don’t have a source for that.
Wait is Louis still attached to the project? I thought he left to focus on a new company.
WHY. GODDAMN WHY is it lately that any organization behind products i like turn out to be extreme assholes? we’re on a streak atm i feel like
capitalism and the profit motive, probably.
I’ll take a look at the interviews later tonight.
A few minor items stuck out as a bit disingenuous to me:
The donation page that FUTO used includes this explanation: “This offer is for individuals, and may be available to small organizations on request. Commercial entities wishing to be listed as sponsors should inquire by email.” It’s pretty clear that there are special instructions for institutional donors who wish to receive musl’s endorsement as thanks for their contribution.
It DOES say that, but literally only for the "monthly contribution > 150 section. For a one time grant of 1000 dollars, it doesn’t appear to say anything.
FUTO appears to list efforts it has donated to (and use their name/logo), under the title, “Our sponsored grant programs”. Which to me seems more of a semantic argument of whether they can say they’ve donated to something or not.
The inclusion of a logo without permission is a good critique, nonetheless. Likewise, if they are lying about donating to some of these projects, that is a problem.
- The author makes a point of complaining about a video posted to odysee. There are not many great options for posting videos outside of Youtube. That FUTO would post videos to multiple other youtube alternatives, including odysee and peertube does not seem like a surprise to me. Not saying anything about the video though, until I’ve sat and watched.
So, I’ll start by saying that I think FUTO may have changed their messaging on their website TODAY Regarding this. They now have three split sections,
- what they develop/fund
- “sponsored grants” (logos used)
- “donations, ~60K” (logos not used)
That seems more sensible if they have small donations to OSS efforts or individuals who maintain them. It would be excellent for every group listed to review if they or any developer received donations from FUTO and publically decry falsity (as the 3 in the article mentioned)
Videos:
I don’t know Yarvin, don’t know shit about him. But wikipedia entry on him is not heartwarming. It does seem an odd choice to have the two videos posted by FUTO. The one is fairly mundane, but the interview with Rossman is just strange as hell in general, and disconcerting. rossman mostly just seems uncomfortable as heck. And Yarvin seems like an insufferable know it all who wants to explain everything and not give anybody the chance to complete their thought.
So I’d say endorsing this video is a dark side to FUTO. It should have been easy to stay mostly apolitical and focus on ownership and software. Not conversations about the efficacy of monarchy.
FUTO manifesto/open source:
I can at least palate that a group could think that open source is not working. There are successes and failures. Linux is a great success. Android is becoming less so as it is dominated more by vendors & Google. Talent, resources, time is continually sunk into would-be inferior software at companies. Those softwares that have closed source, harvest our data, and ultimately don’t have our interests in mind - are often more polished, and attractive to the majority of users out there. One or two people primarily heading an open source repo can often make an awesome competitive software, but perhaps not as polished and with the threat of losing time to maintain it, archive the repo, etc. In that regard, offering optional licenses to pay base wages to attract talent while still letting you verify the code you execute - could still be appealing if successful.
I believe in FOSS, and will embrace & use it til I die, but I’m willing to entertain they have a difference in opinion on what will most advance our interests.
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
I always thought they seemed shady
Son of a BITCH! I’m so fucking tired of this… Everywhere you look you gotta examine EVERYTHING about a company/group because they might be fascists now…I love Grayjay, it was working so great and I loved the proclaimed mission…I was even trying to get FCast to work since I lost casting ability when I moved to Linux…
I’m just gonna take a break over here for a bit.
I’m with you. It’s so goddamn hard not to be black pilled these days. Everyone is either greedy and looking to take you for all you are worth, a misogynist, a rapist, a fascist, or some combination of all 4 and some other horrible 5th and 6th thing that I can’t think of right now. Lies and disinformation are so prevalent and there are so few consequences that it feels like nothing is what it seems.
If you care about some random issue “A”, there is an entire industry ready to take your money in exchange for the lie that your contribution or patronage is helping “A” when it’s just lining someone’s pockets.
Want to make sure you can buy a thing that isn’t made with child slave labor? I hope you did your research because of the 8 companies “certified” as child-slave-labor free, 3 still use child-slave-labor and just paid for certification, 3 use a supplier that uses it, 1 only uses it part time, and one is legitimately what it claims to be… oh no, wait, they were just bought out by a pro-child-slave-labor corp… I hate everything.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think it’s that the statement in question was proclaimed is the “first part”. Or maybe the genetic predisposition is. Unclear.
Somehow all Video recommandations in GrayJay are from (extreme) right wing channels.
In fairness, this is an issue with YouTube itself. It seems to take any opportunity it can to push you down a right-wing pipeline.
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.
Aw man I knew there was something wrong here. I gave them money for the keyboard and the voice talk and immich bcz I was a Rossman fan. They played him and me. Fuck these fascists.
FUTO is more or less openly fascists
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!”
In 2025 they do
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.
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.
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
