I think Louis Rossmann's heart is in the right place, his work for right for repair is genuine, his disdain for New York's intolerable bureaucracy is completely understandable and justified, but it is leading him in bad directions and has been ever since he linked up with FUTO. Never trust a billionaire and never let them delude you into thinking they care about you or anyone. He is being used for his reputation and his audience and when they are done consuming those things for the billionaire's cause's benefit he will be left with neither one and the billionaire will move on without slowing down or shedding a tear.
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
332 points (97.2% liked)
Technology
76415 readers
3156 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
What else do you expect him to do that will make an ACTUAL change? You HAVE to make some concessions when collaborating with large entities, and I think we are lucky that Louis can stay true to all of his beliefs with a large backing like FUTO, even if they aren't perfect.
I feel like I've seen stories like this before, how a popular YouTuber, or advocate isn't "perfect". People in the comments provide a "perfect" alternative, they are usually super niche and super underground. Certainly someone that hasn't yet had the chance to come under the same amount of scrutiny.
We need to be a little compromising to avoid cannibalizing our movement to achieve "purity" of our ideals, while corps continue to take ground. My two cents. Stop the bleeding first, before you worry about scars.
Exactly!
FUTO is a force for good IMO, even though I disagree with their approach. I use:
- Grayjay - way nicer than NewPipe and works with a bunch of services
- FUTO Keyboard - best keyboard alternative for swipe typing IMO
- Polycentric - I've posted a bit through Grayjay and want it to catch on
I wish their software was FOSS, but at least it's source available and I think they fixed it to allow noncommercial redistribution of modifications. It's not perfect, but it's a force for a good.
He's always been more than a little petite bourgeoisie. Among all his spats with the city of New York, I'm sure you can find something where he was at fault, but we generally only get his side of things. Still, I think he's been mostly a good advocate. FUTO is not the right place to do that.
While I can't say I agree with everything Rossmann, the guy seems very genuine, regardless of where I think he may be wrong or right. Also, I've seen him pedal back and retract plenty of times when he is shown (with evidence) that he was wrong.
Can you name one other personality with a large following that comes even close to Louis Rossmann in bringing stuff to light and fighting back against enshittification?
As for Futo, yeah, I'm pretty sure that billionaire that owns it is just using Rossmann for his following. But who knows, maybe Rossmann is also taking advantage of him to advance what we all want to see as well.
Can you name one other personality with a large following that comes even close to Louis Rossmann in bringing stuff to light and fighting back against enshittification?
Well, there's Corey Doctorow, of course. He literally wrote the book on Enshittification.
There are definitely more "behind the scenes" folks doing a lot for that particular cause who don't so much have a following of anywhere near the same size, but nonetheless do fight enshittification in big ways. Bradley Kuhn comes to mind.
I know about Corey Doctorow and his coining of the term and his book. I appreciate there are people like him, they do make a difference. I've never heard of Bradley Kuhn, thanks for pointing him out. I'll look him up.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. People like these are doing what they can to further knowledge about how shit is extremely wrong and needs to change.
Louis Rossmann uses the following he has built up over the years to carry the word on the extreme enshittification we live in, and pushes for changes that will be beneficial for us at the legislative level as much as at the operating level.
I do believe that Futo and it's owner are just trying to benefit from him, but that does not remove the fact that Rossmann has also taken advantage of Futo to improve our situation as much as he can without making a penny out of it for himself.
Honor where honor's due, that's my thing.
Are they sitting through hours of legislature meetings just to have a 60 sec chance to speak? Are they meeting with legislators and city councils to discuss causes they care about? Are they making YouTube content going over lengthy legal documents to show people the problem?
Or are they mostly writing books and speaking at paid conferences?
IDK about you, but the former sounds a lot less bougie than the latter.
eli5?
This is all in reference to this article.
FUTO is an organization that talks a lot of rhetoric about being some bastion of consumer rights in tech, but they're doing a lot of shitty, shady, and downright evil things. Among them, FUTO has been in the practice of making small grants to FOSS projects (like ffmpeg and musl) and then plastering the FOSS project's name and logo all over the FUTO site in a way that makes it seem as if FUTO is endorsed by said FOSS projects when that's not the case at all.
(All this after doing everything in their power with their rhetoric to try to discredit and degrade the entire FOSS community. They wrote an "apology", but even in the apology, they express their "disdain for OSI approved licenses". Mind you, ~~none of FUTO's projects are Open Source~~ most of their projects are proprietary.)
After that article came out just a couple of days ago, apparently they redid their site, I'd have to guess in an effort to address the concern that the way FUTO presented their grant program before implied endorsement by a lot of FOSS projects that didn't endorse them in any way. I don't think they've done enough, and there are tons of other reasons to think FUTO is evil assholes using consumer rights rhetoric to manipulate people in service to its (fully for-profit) bottom line.
Other concerns in the article include FUTO's connection to explicit/proud fascists and using their platform to (even coercing Louis Rossmann into) spread fascist propaganda.
They weren't even grants. They just donated money and said "look we're sponsoring them!", implying a relationship. As mentioned in that article, musl and ffmpeg (and probably everyone) didn't even know FUTO was doing this.
look we’re sponsoring them
spon·sor
verb
- provide funds for (a project or activity or the person carrying it out).
My disapproval of FUTO notwithstanding, that is the dictionary definition.
I never looked at those "we sponsor/donated to" sections on organization pages as implying a relationship of reciprocal approval. Are idiots online thinking that?
Anyone should be able to assert "X gave Y money" when that's true. Taking money from people we disagree with shouldn't be a problem: less money for them, more for us. Do we want them to spend on shit we definitely disapprove of?
By that dictionary definition, yes, but there's a connotation of scale and a relationship. For example, your local arts events are often sponsored by local businesses and philanthropists, but if you or I donate $10 I wouldn't call that a sponsorship.
your local arts events are often sponsored by local businesses and philanthropists
Do you or they necessarily approve of those businesses? Is that implied?
but if you or I donate $10 I wouldn’t call that a sponsorship
Then are people getting carried away with their imaginations? When I see a "we sponsor" section with logos/names, I don't assume a substantial amount: could be token for all I know. Quibbling over that when it's true feels like arguing over inconsequential merit badges.
Donation recipients should be able to take money from donors who should be able to declare that truth.
I've clicked through the links and the most 'evil' thing they did seems to be using a non-mainstream open source licence? Evil is getting contracted by Israel. Prohibiting other companies from profiting off your work isn't evil.
Edit: And they hosted an interview with Curtis Yarvin. That's bad, but still doesn't warrant calling them evil.
Honestly getting tired of the purity tests. The alternatives are horrific. Google. Apple. Meta. So please find me the FOSS project that is perfectly free of sin which I'm allowed to support.
At this point it begins to feel as though this DDV is only here to write takedown pieces on projects not deemed pure enough for the cause.
FUTO hosted an interview once with a POS guy. Oh, the horror. Please help me understand what that has to do with the existence of a keyboard that isn't spyware. Yeah no. I'll keep supporting the working alternatives, you have fun using absolutely nothing because "What if one of the devs wasn't a good person??!"
I absolutely agree with your statement. Hell, even the GNU project (RMS mostly) had their own scandal a while ago, so if you really insist on being pedantic about this matter feel free on removing practically every piece of open source software from your systems.
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(9 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Immich it licensed under AGPL 3 and the code is open - isn't that FOSS?
I know some of their apps are licensed under a semi-open license of their own creation and that's been touchy to say the least. But is it true to say that none of their apps are FOSS?
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(15 replies)
They secretly funded projects without letting the recipients know it was them funding and then added their names and logos to their site without permission. When someone spoke out against this, they harassed them. This is in addition to a lot of behavior supporting fascists.
load more comments
(6 replies)
view more: next ›