this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Copy/paste for the lazy:

–––––

Hello everybody,

Alex from Immich here. What a controversy that we caused with the choice of wording, right? My personal apology to you all.

On behalf of the team, we would like everyone to know that we hear your concerns and we appreciate the love and care that you all have expressed for the project. At the end of the day, what we want most is to make sure you are all happy using the app.

With that said, we are working on a change to the word license: we will not call it licensed or unlicensed anymore. What will it be called?

We are still thinking of different options to make the wording less confusing. The new wording will hopefully showcase our intentions properly going forward.

We’re also working on updating the FAQ with more information to clarify those intentions. We just want to provide good software that people will want to pay for whilst not limiting your usage in any way if you can’t.

So expect these changes over the next week. We’re pushing this out now to let you know our appreciation for the feedback you’ve given us.

The amount of purchases in the first 24 hours has been overwhelming. Thanks everyone for the great support!

Have a great weekend!

Immich team.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

I get that they're trying to figure out how to monetize it while staying kosher FOSS, and their first wording suggests they'd like to offer per-seat licensing.

What I don't get is what would compel me to get a license. I still can't rely on it for anything serious. I'm basically using it as an UI for the face recognition models and that's shoddy too. They've made it impossible to lean on it for anything else.

I don't want to sound like a hater because they're obviously working hard on it but, God, you can tell they're not professional developers and it's so frustrating. Focus on doing something well, and stop breaking compatibility every other week.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

the project is still in alpha, its normal they have breaking changes

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Alright then. We'll talk about money when it's out of alpha and stops breaking.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

What I don't get is what would compel me to get a license.

Ideally nothing. Maybe a sticker or a theme, but nothing important to the function of the tool. If the personal gratification that comes with offering financial support to a FOSS project (along with the resulting product itself) isn't enough, then this "license" (or whatever they end up calling it) isn't for you...ideally.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

The impetus to pay once is supporting great Foss software. I personally think a donation model works for me but I don't research human behaviour or marketing either.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago

Just don’t monetarize then. Foss and community driven is just that like many other projects. Clearly these guys are trying to sell the shit

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I would need the iOS app to properly back up photos before I paid for it lol.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't think you pay for the iOS app, only the server portion can be licensed AFAIK

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You’re correct but what I mean is I’m not paying for it until it’s a stable product with a complete basic feature set. As in, I need the back up software to back up reliably, it doesn’t have to be totally complete.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I consider open source software to be community owned/maintained so I never liked the idea of selling the software. It makes much more sense to my eyes to sell services surrounding the software be it support, customizations, or even hosted services.

I can't really get over selling a "license" for a software that is expected to still be maintained by unpaid contributors. Especially under an AGPL license where any licensing changes has to be approved by every contributors.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah this getting into a fake toss shit . All starts with FUTO crap and some previous shady movements they did . This will die eventually

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

How is it "fake Foss" when you can just download and run the code without paywalled features and not spending anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I'm not sure what the right model is to get money flowing in. It seems like they took the easy route. 100 dollars for a server licence is not really that small amount considering that most server users are families? I would have preferred massive fund raising campaigns .... I'm a bit lazy and need lots of nagging to get my credit card out .... But its right these guys get some income for their work. As long as code remains AGPL ... I bet soon there will be a fork like happened with Emby. I ended up purchasing the server licence a a few month later moved to the forked version ...🙂

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What is the context of this? License vs unlicensed? What's going on?

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/11186

Tldr is that theyre going for a winrar model where you have an infinite free trial, but the app is technically paid

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Except it doesn’t annoy you with popups trying to get you to buy Immich every time you open the app

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago

Does not really matter what wording they will put in. It is clear that project will go to pay or get nothing way. So just start working on decommissioning it. Free software really need better ways to pay developers, that will allow to avoid crap like that.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Better but not best as they could just ask for funding and do a biyearly funding campaign

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Except this makes them a LOT more money than what you're suggesting, and also theyre trying to normalise the winrar model in oss

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm talking about optional donations via something like Librepay. For instance, Thunderbird prompts you to donate on first launch. The raised about a million dollars doing that. It was non invasive and easily dismissible

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

They stopped accepting donations, like 2 months ago, but they accepted donations before, you know how much money they made off donations? Less than they made off the liscence in the first day it was released

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago

Foss and community driven is just that, not money making . This is not foss anymore