Will the license change?
No. Immich will continue to be licensed under AGPL without a CLA.
this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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I hate that it needs to be said but love that they said it so plainly
Isn't a huge part of the point of copy left licences that an author can't change the license without rewriting the code entirely?
For the license to be changed every team member needs to submit a written agreement that he agrees to the change, otherwise their contributions must be removed as they were written under a different license, the only exception is usually permissive licenses such as MIT/BSD 3 clause.
Usually, to rugpull FOSS contributors, companies who maintain FOSS software ask contributors to sign a CLA which waives their rights and lets the control their contributions. Immich isn’t doing any of that, and it will likely remain AGPL forever because changing the license will be a big hassle for them with the amount of contributors.
What's a CLA?
Contribution/contributor license agreement. It's a document that transfers the copyright from the original author - developer submitting a patch or PR - to the project owner, e.g. FUTO. If FUTO required CLA for all Immich contributions, then FUTO would own the copyright for all the source code of Immich. This allows FUTO to relicense Immich under a different license, other than GPL, for whatever purpose, without asking anyone. For example they could make modified Immich versions for sale, or sell the Immich source code to third parties under EULA or any other license. Without a CLA, FUTO would have to get written agreement from every Immich source code contributor to change the Immich license, which would happen in 2000 and never, at least not without ponying up cash.
Even then there would be at least that someone that would refuse it or would only sell out for (example) 1 billion €.
Thanks!
I'm happy for them. Immich, along with Nextcloud, was the driving force behind my getting in to self hosting - getting away from the ridiculous and increasing subscription prices associated with keeping family photos and documents.
It has come an incredibly long way in the time I've been using it. I've kicked them a donation or two, a first for me with OSS, because it continued to provide so much value for me.
I had read earlier that Alex was hoping to transition to working on this full time and I am happy he has been able to see that realized in - what appears to be - a positive manner.
Immich was my first donation too. It's grown so much, implemented features from user suggestions, and is quite polished.
It started as a Picasa/google photos copy, but is so much more now.
Can't wait to see where they are headed.
Loved immich. But the fact I can't filter on specific folders / collections that are uploaded from my phone makes it unusable for me. I don't want one timeline full with meme images.
This only works when manually uploading using the CLI with a flag, but that breaks the whole point of the app. So I went back to Google photos
I am not sure I understand the issue, are you or are you not wanting to backup those memes? Because in the immich app you can select the folder to backup from, e.g. camera, and in the timeline on my phone in the immich app I only see my camera timeline plus backed up images, but not other folders on my phone.
If you mean they all get backed up from different folders into the same timeline, then yes, that's a bit stupid. I have a situation like that and what I did was to make a separate account on my immich server just for art I find online I am collecting. Then I don't upload through the app, although with switching account you maybe could, but instead move those images into that accounts external library. Then share the whole library of that account with my actual account. Then it appears in the shared tab. But I understand that might get too cumbersome.
Exactly the second situation. And I'm not doing all that. To 'fix' I just periodically upload using the cli to different collections or whatever they're called. But probably not going to continue using it ngl.
That’s awesome. Immich is one of the most professional self hosted solutions I’ve used, so I love to see this.
Whoah, isn’t FUTO the non-profit that Louis Rossmann works for? This is great news!!
Funded by a (somewhat controversial) tech billionair, see a recent interview with him here: https://youtu.be/5UHF84gyVWg
This is some naive stuff right here.
Elite programmers make most of the important stuff
This is false. Not even gonna elaborate.
Competition is the solution
No. Competition is inefficient and the best software we have is built cooperatively. Linux, most open source software. We dislike duplication for a reason and seek to avoid it when possible. We try to avoid forking, instead we try to work together as much as possible. Corporations also run things cooperatively internally instead of duplicating effort. Competition is only needed when you a profit driven market is what determines what's offered and used and it comes with tremendous inefficiency.
I'm a big fan of free market capitalism. When there's a lot of churn...
Yeah. See above.
If you have an individual in charge of a company, that's better than having a mob
Oh Jesus... He doesn't realize that most of the problems that developers face which they can't fix, including himself when he was at Yahoo, are exactly because there's a guy or few in charge and the developers have no decision power.
Quit your job ...
Nope. I won't quit my job to join another place where I have no vote. As long as you're creating companies that aren't democratic by design, I'm changing one guy profiting from me for another. If the other guy is marginally more ethical, that's only gonna last as long as the push for profit knocks on the door. We can't all be CEOs so the only way to build sustainably ethical companies is for them to be ruled by the mob. One person, one vote. Otherwise I'm better off creating democracy by working to unionize the existing corporations.
If the guy wants to fund FOSS, great. But unfortunately this FUTO venture is unlikely to be the organization that dramatically changes the status quo. We need another billi that has read and understood a bit about class analysis and democracy to do that.
Watched this talk as well. These folks are clueless. I'm glad the Immich devs are getting money from them but that's not gonna last. Eron himself went about if they don't have X users in Y time, then they'll have problems (they not being Immich specifically).
Does it matter? At the end of the day it's still money put in to open source.
How is he controversial? the only negative thing I've seen about FUTO is the proprietary license grayjay is under.
Some of the views he expressed in the past sounded a lot like Elon Musk before he went full bonkers recently. But I guess it could be worse.
I know nothing about this person, but on multiple occasions I’ve had the thought that if I was a gazillionaire, I’d sponsor a bunch of open source. Maybe this is that? I’ll choose to stay hopeful (though I’m kinda dumb about this sorta stuff)
The other partner in FUTO is Louis Rossman. Maybe one cancels out the other?
I'm pretty sure Louis is just another recipient of FUTO's funding, not "the" other partner to this dude.
Why does it matter? The devs make the program not the investor.
The only reason I would refuse the tech was if the investor would try to change the direction of development or is giving out money from questionable sources...
If you fund, you influence.
You can alao invest without influencing?
The very fact that the developer's livelihood now depends on the investor is enough to influence development significantly.
Don’t Abuse the People We expect FUTO companies to have an honest relationship with their customers. Ideally revenue comes from customers paying directly for the services provided by company.
https://futo.org/what-does-futo-believe/
Good for the Immich guys, but I fear incoming enshittification or a subscription model.
Your quoted paragraph is the only sane alternative to the ad supported internet. Think Fastmail vs gmail - both are run for a profit, but fastmail’s business model is to simply sell subscriptions. Their incentives are better aligned with the consumer, and while nobody’s going to become a billionaire off the company I have to imagine that they have a very reliable customer base.
Good software should be paid for, devs gotta eat
I don't mind if they are going to charge for it. But since it is selfhosted I hope a fixed price option with maybe still getting some important updates is on the table. If this goes subscription I am out.
That’s fair, but I’ll point out that eating is sort of a subscription model.
Yeah, but I am not paying for their food, I am paying for the software that I selfhost on my system. With that analogy you can justify subscription for everything in life, since in the end, people gotta eat.
It is a bit weird. They're doing the Winrar business model of "pay if you want to, but don't have to". I don't get how such a niche product can support multiple salaries.
Scale. Look at a programming language like Zig … tiny, but managing to have three people full time.
Very cool! You made it :)
Who gets the payment? Immich or futo? Does futo own immich now?
FUTO receives the money and pays people to work on various FOSS projects (listed on their website).
Nobody "owns" Immich. It's still a FOSS project licensed under AGPL and very unlikely to change license ever again (not impossible, but getting harder all the time since copyright is now shared among all contributors and any license change would have to either get permission from all contributors or remove their code).
I love it. The only thing keeping me from switching is two-way sync. Or at least make apps updates edited photos.
I keep photos of the current year on my phone and all photos on my computer. That's because I want to edit them or use. Unfortunetly Immich currently is typical black hole, where I am expected to download file from cloud manually, then edit, then delete original, then patch creation date and then upload it again.
What does it mean?
That the developers have more time to develop it.
Thanks, that's great!