FUTO Keyboard

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

A new Android keyboard from FUTO is drawing interest for its polished design and fully offline speech-to-text based on Whisper models, offering a privacy-focused alternative to Gboard and other big-tech keyboards. Much of the debate centers on its “Source First” license: the code is available and modifiable but restricted to non‑commercial use and requires keeping the in‑app payment prompt, which many argue disqualifies it from being true open source. Users weigh these licensing concerns against practical benefits like local dictation quality, lack of telemetry, and feature completeness compared with existing open-source keyboards.

Licensing and “Source First” model

  • Keyboard is released under the “FUTO Source First License 1.0”, a source‑available, non‑commercial license.
  • Key restrictions: use and modification only for non‑commercial purposes; redistribution only free of charge; payment UI cannot be removed/obscured.
  • Many point out this is not OSI‑compliant open source (fails commercial‑use and non‑discrimination clauses) and thus is “source available,” not FOSS.
  • Some argue that’s acceptable or even desirable to prevent large corporations from repackaging it for profit; others say such licenses are a dead end, harm community forking, and create legal ambiguity (e.g., is typing work email “commercial use”?).
  • Project maintainer in thread says intent is to restrict OEM bundling/commercial redistribution, not user typing, and admits wording should be clarified.

Payment, nags, and monetization

  • App is free; users can optionally pay (~$5) for a “support badge.”
  • Code shows a reminder appearing in settings after 30 days; it can be postponed indefinitely or dismissed via “I already paid” on the honor system.
  • Some see the unremovable payment section as an anti‑feature; others consider it a reasonable way to solicit donations without paywalled features.

Features, UX, and performance

  • Praised for polish, good offline Whisper-based dictation, and better privacy than big‑tech keyboards.
  • Dictation: high quality for English and some European languages, but outputs text only after end of ~30s segments; users request longer audio handling and more advanced settings.
  • Typing: mixed reviews. Some like swipe and prediction; others find predictions and swipe far worse than Gboard/SwiftKey, with occasional lag and higher battery usage.
  • Has text‑editor mode with arrows and clipboard keys; number row and extra symbol visibility are configurable but somewhat hidden.
  • Lacks many Gboard features (emoji/GIF/sticker search, Bitmoji, rich multilingual auto‑detection). Multilingual support and non‑Latin layouts (Japanese, Chinese, etc.) are currently weak.

Distribution and F-Droid wording

  • The “Download from F‑Droid” button actually points to a third‑party F‑Droid‑compatible repo, not the official F‑Droid repo; several find this misleading. Wording was reportedly changed to “with F‑Droid.”

Context about FUTO

  • Commenters note FUTO funds various privacy/decentralization projects and see this keyboard as aligned with that mission, but some remain wary of the custom license and long‑term freedom to fork.