tldr is that you can hide the button that asks for payment and it says “purchase immich” instead of “purchase liscence”
I don’t really get what’s the fuss about… We’ve all ran unlicensed trial software (like WinRAR) for years and nobody bat an eye.
I saw a lot of concern in the original github announcement regarding the use of the term “license.” People felt it gave the team a legal footing to paywall features down the road and offer them only to licensed users, along with a few other concerns based in the legal implication of the term license. That of course runs counter to their statement that no features will be paywalled ever, so I guess there’s still some anxiety over their trustworthiness out there. Understandable given some of the rug pulls that have happened in the open source world over the past year though (i.e Redhat, redis, etc…)
They do, but I don’t think that would apply to Immich. Immich is under the AGPL, and hasn’t taken on any FUTO licensing. In a QA they did awhile back they said there was no plans to change it as well, so should be AGPL for the long term.
As far as I’ve seen, the only connection that Immich has with FUTO is the $1M grant and continued development support. I would imagine any sales from these Immich server purchases are now obligated to go to FUTO, but that’s the only connection between the two companies.
The wording is still misleading because you aren’t purchasing immich and if you were, what exactly would you be purchasing? Control of the project? The immich name? You aren’t purchasing a license to use it as you already have that. A supporters badge key? Okay well be upfront that that is what you are selling because you aren’t selling immich itself.
You’re keeping the project alive. You’re purchasing the ability to continue using a project that will sustain and continue to get updates and add features.
I agree it is not clear, but it’s also hard to say that in one or two words.
None of those things are true. Paying money is in no way guaranteeing the current developers will wake up wanting to maintain it tomorrow, nor am I purchasing access to an update service. It isn’t a purchase of anything and shouldn’t be framed as one. It’s a Contribution or a donation that gives nothing in return and saying it’s something else is dishonest.
“Purchasing Immich”
Since when do I have to purchase something made from the community? This is incredibly dumb on so many levels. You don’t sell other peoples work on a project like this.
Create a donation banner at the bottom that popups up on a new release. You will have much better luck.
Overall I think Alex handled this situation really well, listened to what people wanted and come to something that everyone’s fine with.
Sounds great to me. Us software devs need to eat, so I totally get trying to turn this into a profitable business model. I’m very happy that they’re not paywalling any features, but honestly, I’d be fine if they did. I’m probably going to pay either way. Immich has been awesome, and it’s gotten me off of my second to last Google app, Photos. If only there were a good alternative to YouTube…
