FUTO

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Notice: This Article's Relevance Is Under Review

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This article has been flagged for questionable relevance. Its connection to the systemic consumer protection issues outlined in the Mission statement and Moderator Guidelines isn't clear. Articles that focus on isolated incidents, personal disputes, or local matters may not meet the inclusion criteria for the Consumer Action Taskforce Wiki.

Why This Article Is In Question

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Articles in this wiki have to meet the following criteria:

• Systemic Nature: Demonstrate a broader pattern of systemic abuse, negligence, or policies that align with modern consumer exploitation (e.g., ownership revocation, barriers to repair, privacy violations, changing the terms of the sale after the sale).
• Relevance: Relate to consumer protection issues that extend beyond individual grievances or localized problems.
• Evidence: Provide verifiable evidence or credible sources to support the author's claims and demonstrate systemic impact.

Examples of articles that do not meet these criteria:

• A single negative customer experience; with no evidence of systemic issues or company policies enabling such behavior.
• Localized disputes, such as a bad experience with a contractor or small business, better suited for platforms like Yelp or local consumer protection agencies.
• Complaints that focus on personal dissatisfaction (e.g., "I waited too long for a response") without tying the issue to broader consumer exploitation themes.

How You Can Improve This Article

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To justify the relevance of this article:

• Provide evidence demonstrating how the issue reflects broader consumer exploitation (e.g., systemic patterns, recurring incidents, or related company policies).
• Link the problem to modern forms of consumer protection concerns, such as privacy violations, barriers to repair, or ownership rights.
• Add credible sources or documentation that substantiate claims and connect them to systemic practices. i.e:
  • A company that takes 5 days too long to refund a deposit is a bad Yelp review. Not eligible for inclusion.
  • A company with 500,000 active repairs at any given time that purposely delays all deposit refunds for a period of five days, in order to invest/gamble with these deposits on their balance sheet, with verifiable hard proof from internal communications that this was an intentional & standard practice performed with malicious intent is eligible for inclusion.

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End of Stub Notice. The article content begins below this line.

FUTO

Basic information
Founded	2021
Type	Private
Industry	Technology
Official website	https://www.futo.org/

FUTO , founded in 2021 by Eron Wolf (a software developer, and noteworthy investor in WhatsApp), is an organization that develops applications and sponsors FOSS (free and open source) software projects as well as other independent software projects that align with their principles. FUTO has enabled the development of notable apps, such as Immich, FUTO Keyboard, and GrayJay.

Eron Wolf hired Louis Rossmann in 2022 as Director of Community Outreach.

FUTO Keyboard is a keyboard app for Android-based operating systems which offers many modern typing features like localized voice input, swipe typing, and autocorrect, while respecting the purchaser's rights.

FUTO has been criticized for using their own definition of the term "open source" and claiming their applications are "open source", when their license does not meet the OSI's definition of the term. FUTO has since changed their wording.

Organization's objectives & principles

Three pledges

• FUTO's first pledge is to "never sell out. All FUTO companies and FUTO-funded projects are expected to remain fiercely independent."
• FUTO's second pledge is to never abuse it's customers.
• FUTO's third pledge is to all be devoted to transparency and to making High Quality Open-source software.

Ethical Capitalism

FUTO while a legally a C-Corporation for profit company but as of 2025, according to Louis Rossmann, Director of Community Outreach at FUTO^{[citation needed]} is in no way profitable to it's sole owner & investor Eron Wolf, and their stated financial goal is to operate fiercely independently and "never sell out."

The Five Pillars of FUTO-ey Software

1. Source First/Open Source: If people are to have control over the computers in their lives, they must have the capability to inspect and modify the software running on them.

2. Self Manageable Servers (if applicable): Servers should be Source First too. It should be relatively easy for a user to run their own server for whatever service their client software needs.

3. Sovereign Identity (if applicable): Servers must allow the user to authenticate with a private/public key pair. Email and phone number authentication is sensible for normies, but it must always be possible for a user to transition to using a sovereign mechanism.

4. Open Databases (if applicable): Crowdsourced content should never be kept hidden in a silo by the crowdsourcer. The creator of the content most likely intended for their work to be distributed as widely as possible. The crowdsourcer must provide reasonable mechanisms for the content to be distributed by others.

5. End-to-end Encryption (if possible): Servers should never be able to leverage their man in the middle status to discern the content of communications between their users.

0. Don’t Suck: This applies to all software, FUTO-ey or not. We have accomplished nothing if our software is sluggish, unreliable, or lacks key features. Our clients need to be delightful. Our servers need to help our clients be delightful.

FUTO self managed life guide

In December 2024, a guide was published as both an extensive wiki article (as of 2025-04-28T20:45:00 the wiki is not reachable because of a certificate error and HSTS) and a two-part video series. It covers topics like setting up your own personal cloud storage for files, shared documents, photos, notes and even contacts. With it, you can run an entire app suite of your own that looks and feels the same as the one you are probably used to, with the benefit that you actually own your data. It also covers topics like creating a smart home, so that you can connect your smart devices and let them work together however you wish. This includes home security/surveillance cameras, for which you can set up alerts and decide where the footage is stored, so that it is just you who can look at the footage. A comprehensive overview of the topics can be found in the table of contents of the wiki article and the timestamps of the video descriptions. It is a very comprehensive guide, and it has been written in a beginner friendly way. Every step of the guide in the wiki has been individually tested and provides explanations with pictures.