Yeah, I read this article twice now, and the only identifiable wrongdoing on FUTO’s part is donating to FOSS projects without using their “institutional practice”… Which is a bizarre complaint.
The article is rife with “something ain’t right at FUTO”, but fails to wrap words around that statement.
Except the person who wrote that, regardless of the actual issues with FUTO, cannot be trusted and is an unreliable source.
I really would encourage people to not treat that guy as a real source, but use it as a starting point for evaluating his sources, such as they are, on their own merits.
The founder and frontman of graphene, the person who “stepped away” but did no such thing, the man who insisted for years he wasn’t the only face of graphene but very very clearly was based on his social media posts, has had a long history of abusing both individuals and organizations within the broader privacy enthusiast community. You, like the article, need to stop looking at “he said and she said so they both seem bad” and look at what actually happened and judge for yourself. Graphene has post after post after post of circular logic pointing back at mythical attackers with no actual proof to show for it. People who want daniel @ graphene to get the help he needs have post after post after post of recorded abuse and several videos exist documenting that abuse. So it’s his word and circular logic vs a long record of incident after incident after incident of abuse.
Tldr graphene is run by someone who appears to be brilliant but also appears to suffer from undiagnosed mental health issues and nobody has been able to convince him to get the help he needs. In the meantime, he has spent large portions of the last 5 years ranting and abusing people on the internet. I have the advantage of having watched it play out in real time, but records and archives exist.
I think there could be more to it. Louis Rossmann had personal issues with the lead dev there a year or two ago due to how they interact in their forum, and I think he had some great reasons to be concerned. Since then the lead dev has stepped away as project lead, but I doubt the bad blood is completely gone.
I think it’s a bit suspicious that they don’t mention what feature(s) FUTO wanted. Given their interaction with other projects, I’m guessing they wanted a “supporter” badge for people who have bought the software (no change in functionality other than the badge). I’m guessing also that due to their interaction with Rossmann, they’re uninterested in clarifying, esp. if it would put FUTO in a better light if they did.
Then again, maybe FUTO is a bunch of scumbags. It just seems the slant against them is so much stronger than the actual negative impact from a handful of repos having source-available licenses instead of FOSS licenses.
The short version is they take grapheneos’ abuse of others at face value and appear to take grapheneos’ side. Graphene is by all outward appearances a good product, but their founder has a great deal of untreated mental issues related to paranoia and has a long history of abusing other groups and encouraging his most loyal followers to do the same. As far as I’m aware I am not exaggerating this in any way and I hope the founder eventually admits he needs help.
So if one of your items is someone with paranoid delusions, and you don’t question that in any way and make it clear by your words you’ve taken that person’s side, I cannot take any other argument seriously without doing my own checking (which I have not done yet, hence my original phrasing).
They’ve been featuring projects on their page that they display their donations on, projects that did not know or outright refused, without their consent or understanding.
The company that employed the core Immich devs about a year ago to give them a full-time salary to keep working on Immich. Founded and funded by a millionaire whose stated goal is to try and make a viable business model out of software that doesn’t abuse its users
May I ask why do we hate FUTO?
they’re wearing the clothes of “open source” but they run like a proverbial nazi bar: https://drewdevault.com/2025/10/22/2025-10-22-Whats-up-with-FUTO.html
Yeah, I read this article twice now, and the only identifiable wrongdoing on FUTO’s part is donating to FOSS projects without using their “institutional practice”… Which is a bizarre complaint.
The article is rife with “something ain’t right at FUTO”, but fails to wrap words around that statement.
Except the person who wrote that, regardless of the actual issues with FUTO, cannot be trusted and is an unreliable source.
I really would encourage people to not treat that guy as a real source, but use it as a starting point for evaluating his sources, such as they are, on their own merits.
The above post isn’t the first I’ve heard bad about FUTO. GrapheneOS has also spoken out against them
The founder and frontman of graphene, the person who “stepped away” but did no such thing, the man who insisted for years he wasn’t the only face of graphene but very very clearly was based on his social media posts, has had a long history of abusing both individuals and organizations within the broader privacy enthusiast community. You, like the article, need to stop looking at “he said and she said so they both seem bad” and look at what actually happened and judge for yourself. Graphene has post after post after post of circular logic pointing back at mythical attackers with no actual proof to show for it. People who want daniel @ graphene to get the help he needs have post after post after post of recorded abuse and several videos exist documenting that abuse. So it’s his word and circular logic vs a long record of incident after incident after incident of abuse.
Tldr graphene is run by someone who appears to be brilliant but also appears to suffer from undiagnosed mental health issues and nobody has been able to convince him to get the help he needs. In the meantime, he has spent large portions of the last 5 years ranting and abusing people on the internet. I have the advantage of having watched it play out in real time, but records and archives exist.
I think there could be more to it. Louis Rossmann had personal issues with the lead dev there a year or two ago due to how they interact in their forum, and I think he had some great reasons to be concerned. Since then the lead dev has stepped away as project lead, but I doubt the bad blood is completely gone.
I think it’s a bit suspicious that they don’t mention what feature(s) FUTO wanted. Given their interaction with other projects, I’m guessing they wanted a “supporter” badge for people who have bought the software (no change in functionality other than the badge). I’m guessing also that due to their interaction with Rossmann, they’re uninterested in clarifying, esp. if it would put FUTO in a better light if they did.
Then again, maybe FUTO is a bunch of scumbags. It just seems the slant against them is so much stronger than the actual negative impact from a handful of repos having source-available licenses instead of FOSS licenses.
There is 5+ more years to it than that
Thank you for linking this.
Why do you say they’re unreliable and can’t be trusted?
The short version is they take grapheneos’ abuse of others at face value and appear to take grapheneos’ side. Graphene is by all outward appearances a good product, but their founder has a great deal of untreated mental issues related to paranoia and has a long history of abusing other groups and encouraging his most loyal followers to do the same. As far as I’m aware I am not exaggerating this in any way and I hope the founder eventually admits he needs help.
So if one of your items is someone with paranoid delusions, and you don’t question that in any way and make it clear by your words you’ve taken that person’s side, I cannot take any other argument seriously without doing my own checking (which I have not done yet, hence my original phrasing).
They’ve been featuring projects on their page that they display their donations on, projects that did not know or outright refused, without their consent or understanding.
https://lemmy.ml/post/37910334
https://lemmy.zip/post/51673470
May I ask what the fuck FUTO is?
The company that employed the core Immich devs about a year ago to give them a full-time salary to keep working on Immich. Founded and funded by a millionaire whose stated goal is to try and make a viable business model out of software that doesn’t abuse its users