FUTO Keyboard

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

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.