[HN Gopher] FUTO Keyboard
___________________________________________________________________
FUTO Keyboard
Author : richardboegli
Score : 91 points
Date : 2024-06-29 15:59 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (keyboard.futo.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (keyboard.futo.org)
| thih9 wrote:
| > Your contribution ensures FUTO Keyboard remains ad-free and
| fully functional.
|
| I would prefer an upfront cost and one that makes the product
| sustainable - instead of a free product with the danger of
| enshitification.
| zvmaz wrote:
| I did not read it as a "threat".
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| With other FUTO products they ask that you buy them, but also
| give away the source. Perhaps they could use that model here as
| well.
| logicprog wrote:
| They do, they keyboard's source is available from their
| gitlab and you're allowed to copy, modify, and redistribute
| it, as long as you don't remove the section in the app that
| lets people pay them and don't sell your derivative works.
| Sort of a CC-BY-SA-NC deal. Seems fair enough to me -- not
| ideally FOSS, but something I can live with. There are few
| things I use anymore that aren't totally FOSS but I do
| compromise sometimes if _all of_ quality, ease of use,
| security, and privacy gain and the loss in perfect freedom is
| small enough.
| wmf wrote:
| If nobody pays they won't introduce ads; they'll more likely
| just go out of business.
| vdfs wrote:
| Why an offline keyboard would go out of business? They can
| just stop development or keep it at bare minimum at worst
| cases. It's more likely this would be sold to an other
| company if it get popular.
| skeledrew wrote:
| Go out of business as in no more updates, as tends to
| happen to quite a few open source projects. Devs need to
| earn a living somehow.
| josephcsible wrote:
| The license:
| https://gitlab.futo.org/alex/latinime/-/blob/master/LICENSE....
|
| Concerning parts:
|
| > You may use [...] the software only for non-commercial purposes
|
| > You may distribute the software or provide it to others only if
| you do so free of charge
|
| > you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software
| related to payment to the Licensor
|
| ----
|
| Also, the button that says "Download from F-Droid" is super
| misleading. It's actually downloading it from a third-party repo
| that happens to be compatible with the F-Droid app, but it sure
| makes it sound like you're going to download it from F-Droid's
| repo.
| bogwog wrote:
| What point are you trying to make by quoting the license?
| josephcsible wrote:
| That it's not even close to FOSS, and that you're not allowed
| to make it stop harassing you for money.
| logicprog wrote:
| It doesn't harass you for money, what? The option to pay
| just lives in a section tucked away in the settings page,
| and the "yes I've already paid" button works on the honor
| system anyway.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > It doesn't harass you for money, what? The option to
| pay just lives in a section tucked away in the settings
| page,
|
| Are you sure? https://gitlab.futo.org/alex/latinime/-/blo
| b/9f70a84dc85830d... seems to indicate otherwise.
|
| > and the "yes I've already paid" button works on the
| honor system anyway.
|
| Then what's the license key for that you get when you
| pay?
| threwawasy1228 wrote:
| As a paying customer the answer is that you don't get any
| features other than a thing saying that you paid. It is
| similar to donating to Signal Foundation where you don't
| get some 'new feature' within the Signal app for having
| paid, you just get a little thing next to your user icon
| showing that you did. It is a support badge.
| alex-futo wrote:
| Hi, I'm the person who wrote that code. We're not trying
| to harass people for money and it's been designed in a
| way I think is fair.
|
| The unpaid reminder appears in the settings screen after
| the app is installed for 30 days, and once it appears
| there's a button that lets you postpone the reminder for
| up to infinity days. Of course nothing stops you from
| also just tapping "I already paid".
|
| We don't validate license keys in FUTO Keyboard, we just
| have a payment system that issues them. The app can't
| connect to the internet, so it's not like there's an easy
| way to verify them anyway or stop people from just
| posting their key online.
| card_zero wrote:
| I use Hacker's Keyboard for its arrow keys and ctrl (for
| copy and paste). I can't see useful keys like that
| mentioned as features of FUTO keyboard.
| logicprog wrote:
| I'm running the keyboard right now and it has a text
| editor mode that gives you arrow keys, a capslock key,
| and clipboard keys, but I don't see a control or alt key.
| threePointFive wrote:
| How does precedent about how commercial is interpeted here
| apply? If I use this to fire off a work email, is that
| commercial? Or does this only apply if I'm selling a product
| built around this?
| josephcsible wrote:
| My reading of the license is that if you use it to type any
| text for work, you're in violation.
| threwawasy1228 wrote:
| I think that is a ridiculously incorrect and bad faith
| interpretation of the license clauses.
| josephcsible wrote:
| How so? Given that the license says you can't "use" it
| for commercial purposes, as opposed to just that you
| can't modify or distribute it for commercial purposes,
| what else would that mean?
| ohmyiv wrote:
| It means you can't sell it/make a profit from it. There's
| a legal definition of "commercial purposes":
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=
| 840...
| alex-futo wrote:
| I'm the person responsible for this project and this is
| absolutely not correct. The clause was not written to
| restrict this kind of use of the keyboard, and it would be
| ridiculous if we ever pursued anyone over this. You can
| type anything you want with our keyboard. You can type out
| a million-dollar app that competes with us. It's not like
| we would have any way of knowing, because the keyboard
| doesn't connect to the internet.
|
| That clause is more intended for a situation where, for
| example, a phone manufacturer wants to include our app as a
| default option. That is the kind of commercial use we would
| prefer to negotiate and sign a special agreement for.
| borgbean wrote:
| I believe you, but the text seems pretty unambiguous:
|
| > You may use or modify the software only for non-
| commercial purposes
|
| When one speaks of 'using' software, only one thing
| really comes to mind. Seems like an easy fix.
| MatthiasPortzel wrote:
| You better pay a lawyer for a consultation to answer that
| question in accordance with your risk tolerance.
| logicprog wrote:
| > Concerning parts:
|
| > > You may use [...] the software only for non-commercial
| purposes
|
| > > You may distribute the software or provide it to others
| only if you do so free of charge
|
| > > you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the
| software related to payment to the Licensor
|
| This definitely isn't ideal (I'm a big GPL fan) but honestly,
| as long as it still allows copying, modification, and
| redistribution for non-commercial purposes (which it does) this
| doesn't concern me that much. I'm not too worried about the
| potential prospects of other businesses that might want to base
| their work off of this business's work as long as the community
| would still be able to create forks and derivative versions. It
| certainly isn't the ideal of free software that I prefer
| everything to adhere to, but it's acceptable to me at least.
| It's sort of as I say elsewhere, a CC-BY-SA-NC type deal.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I dunno, I think it's worth five bucks. We get too wrapped
| around the axle on licenses. I can do whatever I want with
| the source except rip off FUTO which sounds fine by me.
|
| What are y'all planning to do with the source that the
| license prevents you from doing?
| logicprog wrote:
| I mean, in my personal opinion, it's totally possible to
| use GPL licensing on software that you then build a
| business around. You just have to be a little bit more
| creative and offer more than just rent-seeking on past
| labor. Some examples of perfectly feasible ways to build a
| business around GPL or AGPL software without going
| bankrupt:
|
| 1. Providing all of the source and documentation and build
| tools needed to build something but only providing pre-
| built binaries or packages for the program if someone pays.
| That way they aren't really paying for the software but for
| the human labor that goes into packaging up the software
| and making it easy and the computer time and hosting
| storage that that takes up and all of that.
|
| 2. requiring people to pay a discounted amount to get the
| pre-built binaries or packages of New versions of your
| software, so that your ongoing revenue is tied to
| continually making improvements to your product that will
| actually make people want to move to the new improved
| version, instead of simply charging a recurring
| subscription, whether or not people actually like the
| improvements the subscription is making or actually want to
| upgrade and then forcing them to upgrade or charging a
| recurring fee to even maintain access to an old version of
| the software.
|
| 3. providing AGPL containerized versions of your server
| software, but charging a monthly subscription to access the
| version of that software that you host for your customers,
| since obviously servers have recurring fees associated with
| them, that most people wouldn't want to Self-host, simply
| because it's a lot of work, but those who do want to do
| that work still can.
|
| 4. Providing good customer support
|
| 5. Prioritizing working on bugs or features that a lot of
| people donate a small amount of money to, sort of like
| crowdfunding individual components of your application.
|
| 6. associating your software business with a hardware
| business, like System76 does
|
| 7. Just operating based on donations, but making it very
| quick and easy and convenient to donate, and the donation
| system available from somewhere within your software that's
| unobtrusive but easy to access like Mozilla Thunderbird
| does. (This is sort of what FUTO Keyboard seems to do).
|
| 8. Subsusting on donations but using an indie game style
| "pay what you can" interface like elementaryOS does.
|
| In general, the trick is just to provide services that
| actually require ongoing money in compensation for ongoing
| labor and actually add value to just the bare source code.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > as long as it still allows copying, modification, and
| redistribution for non-commercial purposes (which it does)
|
| I'd argue it doesn't do that, because of the third part I
| listed. There are antifeatures that you're not allowed to
| remove.
| logicprog wrote:
| I'm not sure if having a section asking for donations,
| tucked away in the settings, and a one-time reminder 30
| days into an unlimited trial, that goes away permanently if
| you say you paid whether you did or not, is that much of an
| anti-feature? In fact, I would prefer more of my open
| source apps to have built-in ways to donate. I'll grant you
| not being able to remove it is something I'm not happy
| with, but since they allow any other kind of modification,
| I don't know how substantially that really limits software
| freedom in practice. Honestly, it's just up to personal
| discretion, and I'm going to have to sit and think about it
| for a bit -- I might well end up going back to my GPL
| licensed keyboard, but I don't know.
| lye wrote:
| Yeah, just be careful never to respond to your work emails
| whilst using this keyboard. "Sorry boss, I can't be bothered
| right now because my keyboard prohibits me from using it for
| commercial activity." That will fly well.
| logicprog wrote:
| That's pretty clearly not what they mean, and I'm sure you
| know it. You pretty clearly mean using the software as in
| taking the code and repurposing it or modifying it, not
| using the software products itself.
| kstrauser wrote:
| On that note, looks like the license use to be Apache 2. From
| commit 5b85311a in the repo (which is forked from another
| project):
|
| >commit 5b85311ab09ed4d8d3dacb235de77f7de8253b1b
|
| > Author: Yohei Yukawa <yukawa@google.com>
|
| > Date: Mon Nov 19 12:11:31 2018 -0800
|
| > Move MODULE_LICENSE_APACHE2 to the project top dir
|
| > In general files in LatinIME project should be Apache 2
| license (unless some exceptional note is there). This is not
| limited to Java source files.
|
| At first glance, this looks like someone took a FOSS project
| and illegally changed its license. Am I reading that wrong?
| josephcsible wrote:
| Apache 2 is a permissive (think "pushover") license that
| allows proprietary forks. If the original were GPL or another
| copyleft license, then this would indeed have been illegal.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Can you? The relevant bit from the license seems to be:
|
| > You may add Your own copyright statement to Your
| modifications and may provide additional or different
| license terms and conditions for use, reproduction, or
| distribution of Your modifications, or for _any such
| Derivative Works as a whole_ , provided Your use,
| reproduction, and distribution of the Work otherwise
| complies with the conditions stated in this License.
|
| I'm not clear how to interpret that "as a whole" bit
| combined with "otherwise complies".
| skeledrew wrote:
| Essentially the most that is really required by
| permissive licenses (Apache, BSD, MIT and their ilk) is a
| preservation of the license text, if even that. Anything
| else beyond that is open to change. So anyone can take
| any project licensed as such, and relicense with
| something more or less business-friendly, regardless of
| whether all contributors agree or not. That's what it
| means to be permissive.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's not my understanding at all. You can't just
| relicense BSD code. You can incorporate it and distribute
| it with your own code that's under another license, but
| you couldn't just clone the FreeBSD source tree, 'sed
| s/BSD/My Own License', and call it good.
| threwawasy1228 wrote:
| I think you are being incredibly harsh about the licensing
| structure, they are simply trying to make sure companies with
| keyboard apps like Google don't steal their work out from under
| them by adding in a non-commercial clause. Lots of companies
| have this Elastic Search License, Business Source License, etc.
| There are numerous companies who have used permissive licenses
| only to be horribly burned by companies stealing their work out
| from underneathe them and they have subsequently used non-OSI
| approved licenses.
|
| Why is it such a bad thing for developers to license there work
| however they please in a way that fits with the goals and
| values of their individual project? Here the keyboard
| maintainer wants to use a license that isn't FOSS, why is this
| so concerning to you that they have opinions which differ from
| yours?
| josephcsible wrote:
| Wouldn't a copyleft FOSS license like the AGPLv3 keep
| companies like Google from stealing their work out from under
| them too?
|
| > Why is it such a bad thing for developers to license there
| work however they please in a way that fits with the goals
| and values of their individual project? Here the keyboard
| maintainer wants to use a license that isn't FOSS, why is
| this so concerning to you that they have opinions which
| differ from yours?
|
| See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.en.html
| threwawasy1228 wrote:
| I don't need to see the link, I am aware of what your
| stance roughly is. I'm saying:
|
| Why are you so intolerant of the freedoms of other people
| to make their own choices about what license structures are
| best for them and their needs?
|
| Developers should have the freedom to choose whatever
| license they please. Just because you have a pet category
| of license structure that you think everyone should use,
| why can't you be respectful of those who choose other
| options?
|
| It is essentially you forcing your narrow definition of
| what you think licenses are and how they should be
| structured onto everyone else?
|
| Why can't people simply say they understand the various
| licensing options but they choose one that isn't the one
| you like after a careful consideration? Are they simply not
| allowed to have a diffferent opinion than you?
|
| If you make your argument and the maintainer still chooses
| another license, that is a failure on the part of the FSF
| to properly sell their mission or elaborate their
| arguments. Does the fact that someone chose something other
| than what you prefer mean that you now need to go around
| evangelizing every time that any non-FOSS license is used?
| skeledrew wrote:
| AGPL simply means the source of any modifications must be
| made available. It doesn't stop a company with an
| overwhelming marketing dept and existing user base from
| rebranding and providing as their own.
| Electrolux wrote:
| saying "download from fdroid" and pointing to your private repo
| is the shittiest thing anyone can do.
|
| it's the same as linking to your .exe or .img and saying "get it
| from microsoft/apple". no it's not. you are just using those
| platforms ability to handle links and extension of functionality.
|
| it is in no way the validation from those platforms that wording
| like they do imply
| newsclues wrote:
| For sounds like the right word not from.
| alex-futo wrote:
| The wording was not intentionally construed to imply anything
| of the sort. It's been updated now to say "with" instead of
| "from"
| MrOwen wrote:
| What about software you download from a third party yum or apt
| repo? You would still say you're getting it from yum/apt,
| albeit not from a red hat or canonical hosted yum/apt repo.
| Same for f-droid. They're just called f-droid repos and the
| biggest repo that currently exists is also run by f-droid.
| Sateallia wrote:
| That's more on F-Droid, no? If someone said "Download from
| Cydia", I would not expect it to download it from Saurik's
| official repository called "Cydia/Telesphoreo". Using the same
| name for the app (store kit) and the repository is just a bad
| design choice, especially if the reference implementation comes
| with only the said repository.
| freedomben wrote:
| I think this is a cool idea, and is something I would pay for,
| but I'm concerned about the (lack of) openness. It's a lot harder
| than I would prefer to figure out these factoids for example:
|
| 1. FUTO Keyboard is licensed "FUTO Source First License 1.0"
|
| 2. FUTO Keyboard is a fork of the AOSP keyboard (called
| LatinIME). LatinIME is open source, Apache licensed.
|
| 3. The source code is here:
| https://gitlab.futo.org/alex/latinime/
|
| I'm not an open source purist, but the more central/fundamental
| the project is to my life/workflow, the more important that
| becomes to me. A keyboard is pretty fundamental. I'd love to have
| an open source keyboard that is good, especially with good speech
| to text (it drives me crazy how Google continually changes the
| behavior of STT on the Pixel 8. I get the philosophy behind
| incremental improvement, but it's a continual stream of two steps
| forward, one step backward, one forward, two backward, three
| forward, etc. Just as I learn the quirks and how to work around
| them, it all changes and there's all new quirks to learn and
| workaround. Maddening).
|
| It's still early days, but this an interesting project to keep an
| eye on!
| sleepycatgirl wrote:
| Oh yea, anything FUTO is not open source. Its merely source
| available.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| That's what open source is. I have the application and I have
| the source code.
| sleepycatgirl wrote:
| Nope.
|
| It restricts modifications one can do, and how to
| distribute it.
|
| There is quite a stark difference between source available,
| and open source.
| praveenperera wrote:
| You can modify however you want, you just can't turn
| around and sell it.
| josephcsible wrote:
| No you can't. You're banned from removing their payment
| nag.
| skeledrew wrote:
| Why would you want to remove it? Do you reasonably see
| yourself digging into the code to remove that bit,
| rebuilding and reinstalling, compared to tapping "I have
| paid" once to dismiss (ideally after you actually have
| paid)?
| kvdveer wrote:
| You're missing "and I can use the source".
|
| Without that freedom, you really don't have the benefits of
| open source. This is commonly referred to as "source
| available".
| Onawa wrote:
| Nope, that's 'source available'. Open source usually means
| a non-restrictive license, ala https://opensource.org/osd.
| lowkey wrote:
| Why is the OSI definition considered canonical? I mean
| the OSI:
|
| - didn't invent the term open-source, they co-opted it
| from Christine Peterson who is not even a member of OSI
|
| - was founded by secret charter members and is funded by
| closed-source tech giants like Google, Apple, and
| Microsoft who make billions exploiting open-source
| software while giving virtually nothing back in return
|
| - is heavily influenced by these same corporate giants
| who steer decisions such as the definition of open-source
| for their personal profit above the needs of society
| lowkey wrote:
| The inventor of the term "open source software" defined
| it as software which includes the freedom to view,
| modify, and distribute the software's source code. She
| made no mention of the ability to commercialize without
| compensation. Those terms were only added in the OSI's
| Open Source Definition (OSD)
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> Why is the OSI definition considered canonical?
|
| 'The introduction of the term "open source software" was
| a deliberate effort to make this field of endeavor more
| understandable to newcomers and to business, which was
| viewed as necessary to its spread to a broader community
| of users. The problem with the main earlier label, "free
| software," was not its political connotations, but that--
| to newcomers--its seeming focus on price is distracting.
| A term was needed that focuses on the key issue of source
| code and that does not immediately confuse those new to
| the concept. The first term that came along at the right
| time and fulfilled these requirements was rapidly
| adopted: open source.'
|
| Source: https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-
| open-source...
|
| This is from Christine Peterson's published account of
| how the term 'open source' came into popular usage.
|
| The term 'open source' in popular usage as defined by the
| Open Source Definition (https://opensource.org/osd) has
| been in use for more than 25 years now.
|
| Let FUTO keep their "source first" license and use it to
| forward their goals, but do not create confusion by
| trying to co-opt the well-known and broadly understood
| meaning of "open source".
| card_zero wrote:
| You might think so, I might think so, but apparently
| there's some gatekeeping about the term dating back to its
| invention in the 20th century.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-
| so...
|
| "This article may be confusing or unclear to readers."
|
| Also:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source - Richard
| Stallman argues the "obvious meaning" of term "open source"
| is that the source code is public/accessible for
| inspection, without necessarily any other rights granted
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_terms_for_free_so
| f... - In a 1998 strategy session in California, "open-
| source software" was selected by Todd Anderson, Larry
| Augustin, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Christine Peterson, and
| Eric S. Raymond. Richard Stallman had not been invited.
|
| I'm getting downvoted now for dissenting. :D
| prophesi wrote:
| I would also agree that the common sense definition of
| open source should be public/accessible code. But FOSS is
| a well-established movement and anyone involved with
| software development should be well-acquainted with Free
| vs Open.
| card_zero wrote:
| So you mean the _actual_ definition should not be the
| common sense one? That 's probably pragmatic, yes.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Almost every word has some special meaning depending on
| the context it's used in. This is not controvercial. This
| is a silly argument to try to make a thing out of.
| vdfs wrote:
| The trick is to star fully open source until you get popular
| then pull a licence change, aka Elastic/Redis/HashiCorp model
| cvwright wrote:
| Not true at all. We do use the "Source First" license for a
| lot of things, but all of my projects are OSI Certified (TM)
| Open Source. For example:
|
| * https://github.com/futo-org/circles-android (AGPL)
|
| * https://github.com/futo-org/circles-ios (AGPL)
|
| * https://github.com/futo-org/matrix.swift (Apache 2.0)
|
| There are a few other little things here and there, mostly
| Apache 2.0, but the above are the bigger ones.
|
| Edit: There is also Alex's Whisper finetuning repo
| https://github.com/futo-org/whisper-acft (MIT)
| sleepycatgirl wrote:
| I stand corrected, I am sorry. My mistake.I really should
| have checked it better...
| lowkey wrote:
| "Oh yea, anything FUTO is not open source. It's merely source
| available"
|
| I disagree and so does FUTO but in the interest of making
| nice with the community, they now call their software license
| "source first."
|
| Personally, I think of their license as open-source for
| humans, but not the for-profit legal fictions we call
| corporations. I am ok with that.
|
| Why does the OSI get to dictate the one true definition of
| open source?
|
| OSI didn't invent the term. It was invented by Christine
| Peterson in 1998 and notably she is not even a member of OSI.
| They just co-opted the term from her.
|
| OSI was founded by still secret charter members and large
| corporate sponsors such as Google, Apple and Microsoft who
| make Billions off the back of free open source software while
| giving back almost nothing.
|
| FUTO was founded as an alternative to the tech oligopolies
| and their software is licensed as open-source except that
| they require separate licensing for commercial use,
| specifically to protect against exploitation by tech giants.
| card_zero wrote:
| Is FUTO an acronym? https://www.futo.org/about/what-is-
| futo/ doesn't say.
| cvwright wrote:
| You can backronym all kinds of things into it.
|
| But in reality it's four letters that sound good
| together. (And for which a domain name was available, I
| assume.)
| card_zero wrote:
| It's also a Nigerian university. But I'll go with "FU
| Tech Oligopoly".
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| They don't dictate.
|
| It's an interesting reaction to suggest that.
|
| They developed a definition as a service and gave it to
| everyone to use just like one does with software or art.
|
| Other people have decided that they agree that this
| definition correctly describes a bag of concepts and
| principles they need some sungle convenient collective term
| for.
|
| They "dictate" the definition only in the same way you
| "dictate" the contents of anything you wrote, or the way
| you "dictate" what your own name is.
|
| If I say "Foo is not an OSI approved license." _I_ am the
| one "dictating" something.
|
| I am using a definition that was written down so that it's
| available for me to use as a reference when I want to say
| the entire bag of principles without having to spell them
| all out each time in a tweet or something.
|
| All the OSI did is write down some ideals and principles
| the same as a wikipedia page.
|
| They have no power to "dictate" that you exhibit those
| values. If you don't hold those principles, then don't.
|
| What, you want to be able to call yourself a saint and
| enjoy the admiration due to saints, without having to
| actually live up to the annoying things that actually make
| a saint worthy of that admiration? Ok.
| lowkey wrote:
| Agree with your statement.
|
| It is accurate for me to say that the FUTO license is
| open-source according to the original definition of open-
| source as coined by the author of the term, which focused
| on the freedom to view, modify, and distribute the
| software's source code, but made no mention of the
| ability to commercialize without compensation.
|
| If you say "FUTO is not an OSI approved open-source
| license since it does not conform to their Open Source
| Definition" - you are also 100% correct.
|
| When one implies that the FUTO license is not open
| source, without further clarification, such as adding
| "according to OSI" then the accuracy of the statement is
| less clear.
| ohmyiv wrote:
| >FUTO Keyboard is licensed "FUTO Source First License 1.0"
|
| FUTO posted an explainer about its "source first" licensing.
|
| https://futo.org/about/futo-statement-on-opensource/
| threwawasy1228 wrote:
| They also have: https://sourcefirst.com
| ohmyiv wrote:
| Thanks! That's a much better explanation.
| logicprog wrote:
| I saw this from the Louis Rossmann video and have been trying it
| out for the past couple hours -- in fact I'm actually dictating
| this message with it right now -- and honestly, it seems pretty
| great! Certainly much higher quality and more reliable than the
| version of Google Voice Dictation that I was using (sandboxed
| without network access) on GraphineOS previously, which would
| crash regularly and had only passable voice dictation quality. My
| only problem is that it doesn't seem to let you speak punctuation
| marks, so it's sort of hard to get my sentences punctuated the
| way I want them to be. The keyboard itself is also very high
| quality; it seems to have a really highly polished interface and
| a pretty good number of features and options, almost competing
| with openboard!
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Awesome, thanks for sharing your experience with it. I like
| what FUTO is doing.
| bpev wrote:
| How is multilingual support? Because I feel like this is usually
| the thing that I find to be quite poor in smaller company
| keyboards, and I don't see anything on their landing page.
|
| Edit: specifically for non-roman chars ala chinese or japanese is
| where I tend to see gaps
| rom1v wrote:
| What are private and open source keyboards on Android?
|
| I use [OpenBoard](https://f-droid.org/fr/packages/org.dslul.openb
| oard.inputmet...), but there is no update since 2022 (it works
| well though).
| skeledrew wrote:
| Heliboard works really great, but for swiping you need to
| manually add Google's lib (which I did), and support for
| alternative language layouts is very basic (if that's something
| you need).
| rom1v wrote:
| Oh, thank you.
| https://alternativeto.net/software/heliboard/about/
|
| > HeliBoard is a fork of OpenBoard, continuing the project
| from where it stopped.
| dvh wrote:
| The only reason I'm unhappy with gboard are the constant updates.
| And as I'm typing now I see that the predicted words are often
| wrong compared to gboard and occasionally i get 1s lag. It's
| borderline unusable, not because of the lag but because of the
| inferior predictions.
| vile_wretch wrote:
| No comments about the product really but an iPhone as a
| placeholder device on their website is an odd choice.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Although it does look similar to an iPhone, that's how all
| flagship smartphones look in 2024...
| jitl wrote:
| As an iPhone user I was confused to see my device, scroll down,
| then all the app stores listed were Android!
|
| (Although other than source-availability the other features
| come on the standard iPhone keyboard)
| madspindel wrote:
| No iOS version?
| Sytten wrote:
| Personnaly been using the open source AnySoftKeyboard for the
| past 8 years without issue. It is very flexible so I am wondering
| what that brings really to the table. They could have sponsored
| AnySoftKeyboard instead.
| lowkey wrote:
| Both are privacy-focused open-source keyboards, the difference
| is that FUTO Keyboards also includes a polished voice-input
| capability designed for dictation and speech-to-text
| functionality that is also fully-offline capable and built on
| top of Whisper models. I don't believe AnySoftKeyboard offers
| this capability but I could be mistaken.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Of the two, only AnySoftKeyboard is open-source.
| lowkey wrote:
| Correction: only AnySoftKeyboard is open source according
| to the 0SI definition - an organization that famously did
| not invent the term open source but co-opted it from
| Christine Peterson, and which is primarily funded by closed
| source tech giants, such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft
| who are wildly conflicted in their interest as they profit
| heavily from open source software, according to the current
| definition while contributing virtually nothing back.
|
| Coincidence? I think not.
| okso wrote:
| Finally a voice recognition keyboard that works well on Android
| and offline! I just tested it and the quality in English at least
| is great.
|
| Too bad that the license is not open-source, I prefer donating to
| projects that are open-source even if asking for a fee to use
| (ex: Netguard, MyExpenses).
| MrOwen wrote:
| ?? https://gitlab.futo.org/alex/latinime
|
| Isn't that the whole point of futo? Paid for open source
| software?
| josephcsible wrote:
| It's not open-source, just source-available. Check the
| license.
| lowkey wrote:
| Correction, it isn't open-source according to the
| definition of opensource.org - an organization that
| famously did not invent the term but just co-opted it and
| whose primary source of funding comes from private closed-
| source tech giants such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft - a
| clear and very serious conflict of interest.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| You keep going on about them not inventing the term, as
| though that matters.
|
| They din't invent it, they proposed a formal definition,
| and other people agreed, and have been using the term to
| mean that meaning for decades by now.
|
| You can't change the meaning to suit yourself at this
| point after other people have already used it. That would
| be changing other people's words. You can't very well
| accuse OSI or anyone else of the crime of presumtion
| while being willing to do that.
|
| "did not invent the term" is just a totally pointless and
| silly thing to even think about or say. It's as silly as
| saying that Websters didn't invent the words they write
| down definitions for.
| lowkey wrote:
| It's a fair point that "did not invent the term" is not a
| valid criticism and I retract my earlier comment.
|
| I still stand by my comment that the OSI is an
| organization that profits directly from significant
| funding by closed-source big tech players and therefore
| has a strong conflict of interest in their definition of
| open-source according to their Open Source Definition.
|
| The OSD is defined specifically to ensure that open
| source code, except GPL can be commercially exploited and
| effectively become closed-source by big tech.
|
| Famously, Christine Peterson the woman who did invent the
| term, defined "open source software" in 1998 as software
| which included the freedom to view, modify, and
| distribute the software's source code.
|
| She made no claims about the ability to commercially
| exploit open source software without compensating the
| original author(s). Those terms were added later by the
| OSI definition.
|
| I do think it would be more accurate to claim that
| software with terms limiting commercial exploitation is
| "open-source" per the original definition, but is not in
| compliance with the OSI's Open Source Definition (OSD)
| lowkey wrote:
| I haven't personally used the FUTO keyboard since it is Android-
| only and I am on an iPhone, but I do want to share some context
| on FUTO.org as it is a fantastic group with an inspiring
| mission.to provide decentralized alternatives to the tech
| oligopoly.
|
| The have funded development of Signal, Louis Rossman's Right to
| Repair Advocacy, Trieve.ai - the YC 2024 open-source AI-powered
| search platform, TOR project, GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, KiCAD, VLC,
| Zulip, Blender, FFmpeg, GIMP, KeePassX, PeerTube, Free Software
| Foundation, NeoVIM, Lichess, GitLab, and many many more.
|
| The company doesn't promote itself heavily so you have to deep-
| dive to truly understand their impact, but it is significant. It
| was founded and funded by a developer and entrepreneur who sold
| his company to Yahoo back in the day, ran Yahoo Games for a while
| and then took his considerable resources and moved to Austin, TX
| where he built an amazing ecosystem around decentralized
| technology.
|
| I am not directly affiliated with FUTO but I know them because
| they host free lunches for decentralized tech enthusiasts every
| Friday on their campus in Austin, which I regularly attend as do
| some notable figures from the open-source, decentralized tech and
| privacy-forward community such as the CTO of Signal, CalyxOS and
| others.
|
| If you are ever in Austin on a Friday I encourage you to come
| check out a FUTO lunch to be inspired, meet friendly folks and
| talk about our decentralized future. Lunch details are posted on
| their Zulip chat, available from FUTO.org
| nickorlow wrote:
| They donated to Asahi Linux too :)
| GaggiX wrote:
| Some interesting technology behind the voice recognition:
| https://github.com/futo-org/whisper-acft
| skeledrew wrote:
| I've been using their Voice Input for a few months now and really
| like it. My only issue is that it buffers the input and then
| spews it all when you stop speaking, but I guess that helps the
| model to be more contextually accurate.
|
| I hope their Keyboard is as good and provides decent multilingual
| support. Currently using Heliboard, and have to switch to a
| broken GO Keyboard install (dictionary is missing), that failed
| to properly clone from my previous device, whenever I want to
| type Japanese.
| 7e wrote:
| Which modern keyboards do connect to the Internet? The Apple and
| Google keyboards, AFACT, use private federated learning to keep
| their vocabularies up to date with the latest trending topics. I
| don't think this solves a problem I have, unless the offline
| dictation is somehow much better than the best big tech has to
| offer.
| threwawasy1228 wrote:
| There are numerous issues with the 'privacy-preserving'
| federated learning models that are used by Google and Apple.
| They have constantly been called out by privacy researchers and
| cryptographers due to their misuse of differential privacy.
| There is very little trust in the privacy-preserving measures
| that are being used by these companies. This is not to say that
| these methods are bad in general but in terms of how they are
| used by Google and Apple, they amount to little more than a PR
| stunt. There are numerous reconstruction attacks on their
| privacy protocols as used by things like GBoard.
| BlackLotus89 wrote:
| So I tested every open source keyboard a while back and was
| thouroughly disappointed with every solution. (tested for swipe,
| word prediction/text prediction, language support, "coding"
| support, size, speed [yes there are slow Keyboards]) Switched
| back to asop. This keyboard is over a 100MB as well, BUT it's the
| first keyboard where I get the additional size.
|
| I habe to check if this is "open source enough" for my needs but
| glancing over the comments it seems to be completly source
| available at least which is great. If this turns out to be a
| decent keyboard I only need an open source text to speech
| solution and I'm golden.
|
| Edit: tried the keyboard and I failed in adding the dictionaries
| I downloaded. And I failed to find language models for other
| languages, but the keyboard seems nice at first glance. Have to
| try it on a low end device to see how it really performs, but I
| could live with this
|
| Edit2: oof seems a bit heavy. Phone feels warmer and battery
| usage reported by Android is kinda high. Have to throughly test
| the different settings and see how it affects battery life
|
| Edit3: so the voice recognition is okish. If you don't say
| anything and press the circle it hallucinates something and it's
| a bit annoying that it only prints out the text after you are
| done talking, but it is usable. Now I need the ability to
| transcribe voice messages I get using whisper as well :)
|
| Edit4: OK text prediction is really bad right now. I saw a
| function to learn from my typing behaviour (with the "eats
| batteries" warning attached), but hopefully it will get better
| through this
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