A pretty interesting take, and an interesting discussion about what it means to be open source. Is there room for a trusted space between open source and closed corporate software?
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Depends on what you mean by trust. This wasn’t made any clearer by reading the article.
“We promise not to do bad things” is not a safe long term contract. If they can change the terms at any moment and retain control, then they can break that promise and that’s final.
This is why open source matters. This is why we shouldn’t let people try to change the meaning open source. True open source is forever open, it is the author’s Ulysses pact.
FUTO keyboard is source available, and that’s final, too. Whether it is also “source first” and if that term is worth recognizing at all is a separate and entirely valid discussion. Even the worst incarnation of source available is still generally better than closed source, in my mind.
Can there be a trusted space between open and closed source? Maybe, I don’t see why not. Again, define trust, and who’s judging. Some people already trust closed source proprietary software, for some reason, while others strongly reject anything that isn’t free software—remember, we’re not talking about price, here.
I wish FUTO and Rossman all the best, as I do with the free software ecosystem and most of open source. Open source is open source, though, let’s not get it twisted.
Exactly. I use and enjoy FUTO Keyboard and Grayjay, but I’m under no illusion about them being open source, they’re source available. I think they’re great products and great alternatives to proprietary software, but until it’s released under a proper FOSS license, I will be keeping my eye out for credible alternatives.
I use it on and off. I get annoyed that the swiping constantly gives the wrong words.
I know nothing about all this licensing stuff. Way over my head… But, is it possible that “futo” is using us to train their software, then when it’s working great, change it to a paid app?
Not sure what you mean by “train.” If you mean “test” then yes, they are in alpha and anyone can submit bugs. As other users have said, we have only their word that they intend to keep the source available. If you mean “track users to train ML models,” then no. The whole point is that the software is private. All of the processing - the gesture typing, the audio processing, the LLM, etc are all performed on-device. And the source is visible for all to see, so it offers similar protections to FOSS software in this regard.
The software doesn’t “phone home” - it can’t even check itself for updates. It just sends you a little message on a predetermined schedule to manually check. (or you can use a repo/software manager)
In theory and in practice, any Open Source project could be purchased by a for profit company who takes down the source code. However, any prior code would remain under the previous open license. Apparently one of the issues with this license is that it contains no durable license for the code itself. You can’t just fork it and make your own version, although you can use any of the code with certain noncommercial and attribution requirements.
Thanks for explaining
I doubt it. All of the AI stuff is local, and I don’t think there’s any network interaction other than checking for updates (you could check that, or block it with something like RethinkDNS or NetGuard), so there wouldn’t be any way for them to get your data. The other app of theirs I use, Grayjay, doesn’t even sync between instances of their app across devices, so I think it’s fair to say they explicitly avoid touching the network whatsoever.
Thanks for responding
