What's Up with Futo?

Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago

stargrave

47 points

23 comments

drewdevault.comTechstory

heatedmixed

Debate

70/100

FutoOpen-SourceSoftware Freedom

Key topics

Futo

Open-Source

Software Freedom

The article discusses FUTO, an organization supporting open-source projects, sparking debate about its practices and impact on the open-source community.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Light discussion

First comment

52m

Peak period

4-6h

Avg / period

2.1

Comment distribution23 data points

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Based on 23 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
Oct 22, 2025 at 4:24 AM EDT
3 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Oct 22, 2025 at 5:15 AM EDT
52m after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
4 comments in 4-6h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Oct 23, 2025 at 5:45 AM EDT
3 months ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (23 comments)

Showing 23 comments

constantcrying

3 months ago

1 reply

Hadn't really heard of FUTO before to be honest, no idea that Rossmann was involved in something like that. Seems like a cool project, thanks for sharing Drew.

russelg

3 months ago

Only reasonable response to this guy's rhetoric.

marginalia_nu

3 months ago

3 replies

FUTO sent me money for a production server with no strings attached. Seem to be nice people, if possibly a bit inexperienced with charity work. Eron came off as very much the archetype of a Gen-X tech bro what little I spoke with him.

Whether a donor's politics are red or blue, their dollar bills are still green. Turning money down, especially when no strings are attached, is just self sabotage.

Dunno if that puts me on Drew's Pepe Silvia wall but whatever.

ErroneousBosh

3 months ago

1 reply

> Whether a donor's politics are red or blue, their dollar bills are still green.

So morality doesn't factor into it for you? You'd take anyone's money, regardless of how dirty the source?

Where's the line for you? The Irish Republican Army? Hamas?

> Turning money down, especially when no strings are attached, is just self sabotage.

Reputation is the most valuable currency you have, but it's easy to get it dirty and very hard to clean it up again.

marginalia_nu

3 months ago

1 reply

It's ultimately actions that have moral value, and sponsoring projects that do good is a good thing regardless if it's Hannibal Lecter or Mother Theresa that does it. It's a very strange idea that we should try to prevent bad people from doing good deeds. If anything we should encourage and applaud such breaks in character.

What Eron does is ultimately a form of wealth redistribution. Money is flowing from the pockets of a rich guy into the pockets of open source developers who are not independently wealthy. Unless wealth redistribution is only a good thing when money is taken by force, and not given willingly? That doesn't ring true.

Reputation in this game hinges on your ability to get things done. Money is above all what enables that. There is nothing noble or reputable about turning down funding, going broke, and getting nothing of consequence done.

ErroneousBosh

3 months ago

1 reply

So, you'd accept money from any source, regardless of how reprehensible, as long as you got paid? Do you take payment in melted down gold fillings?

See, this is why you shouldn't read Ayn Rand books, or at least take them seriously.

marginalia_nu

3 months ago

1 reply

I can see this is an argument made in bad faith, as I simply don't see any other way a statement made in the context of not looking too closely at the politics of donors has turned into the accusations you are making now.

But still, I happen to quite enjoy pointless sophistry and I am no stranger to hyperbolic comparisons, so: Wouldn't the logical conclusion of your line of argument be that criminals and reprehensible individuals should be tax exempt, in order to avoid making the government evil by association?

ErroneousBosh

3 months ago

It's not an advert made in bad faith. It's a simple question.

Where do you draw the line? Whose money would you *not* take?

bogwog

3 months ago

2 replies

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're simply uniformed about Curtis Yarvin and his politics, and think this is just another culture war slap fight.

Go look him up and then decide whether you want to reconsider your stance on the issue. You have that responsibility if you took their money.

constantcrying

3 months ago

Yarvin was always one of the more impressive technologists from the US. Certainly surpassing much of the total slop funded by VCs. His politics are largely a restatement of the Italian elite theorists and people like Schmitt. Definitely one of the more enlightening political thinkers you can read today, especially when it comes to the power of billionaire technologists and how they will seek to reshape the political landscape in the US and elsewhere.

em-bee

3 months ago

FUTO is not yarvin. parent poster got sponsored by FUTO not by yarvin. perhaps FUTO was also uninformed about yarvin? all we can see is that they talked once or twice. i don' see them actively working together.

zdw

3 months ago

Just because you're not aware of where the strings are attached yet doesn't mean there aren't any. There very well may be none, or they may be unsaid - one historical example:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1338390/darpa-pulls-fu...

In any case, the examples of donations being given through unconventional channels, then reusing the name/logos as marketing/endorsement for FUTO without obtaining permission, feels very problematic.

wkat4242

3 months ago

1 reply

I only know their YouTube app grayjay but I don't really like it because puts all this futo stuff in my video feed. A video player should get out of the way.

I prefer smarttubenext (tv) and revanced.

mzajc

3 months ago

1 reply

Another: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/ (has backends for a few extra services, interestingly including media.ccc.de)

wkat4242

3 months ago

Yes newpipe is ok but they don't allow the sponsorblock plugin for high horse reasons and I need that. Without that YouTube is unbearable even with premium. Someone else even did all the work for them writing the plugin.

I used a fork for a while that did have it but it wasn't updated often enough to keep working reliably.

anonnon

3 months ago

1 reply

This reminds me of when Rossman was accused of transphobia and other prejudices because he created a KF account solely to respond to things said about him in his own dedicated thread on that site, without posting anywhere else. Pure guilt-by-association tactics.

DeVault apparently considers anything short of complete deplatforming (even spirited debate) as a form of sympathizing, and probably would regard even Robin Hanson (who debated Yarvin) as a kind of cryptofascist--which is funny, since the only effective push-back Yarvin ever gets is from conservatives, who (besides preaching to the same choir), still preferring debate to deplatforming, haven't suffered the atrophy of their rhetorical muscles that afflicts progressives[1]. Meanwhile the man hysterically paranoid about creeping fascism and fascist sympathizing is himself a well-documented lolicon addict[2].

It is cute, however, that he thinks it's still 2015 and not 2025, and that he can write pro-censorship, pearl-clutchy stuff like this:

> and Odysee, the latter a platform controversial for its role in spreading hate speech and misinformation.

and still be taken seriously.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcSil8NeQq8

[2] https://dmpwn.info/

Joker_vD

3 months ago

1 reply

It's always amusing to see takes like

    perpetuating the self-serving myth that “open source” software can privilege one party over anyone else and still be called open source.

from someone who is absolutely okay with doing exactly that, if those "anyone else" are being labelled the morally-justifying label.

constantcrying

3 months ago

The championing of a supposed openness, together with a radical culture of denouncing people with opinions not more extrem then the average American as fascists, is just so bizarre.

Here in Germany a similar anti-fascist hacker culture exists, but those people do not pretend that they want any kind of culture of openness, which would extend beyond their political lines.

Zufield

3 months ago

1 reply

Why does anyone even listen to Drew Devault? He's basically the open source version of the angry cat lady from the simpsons

asindon

3 months ago

He's worse than that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41859793

xg15

3 months ago

In some way I'm as almost relieved that Yarvin's acolytes are still operating at the level of writing weird internet manifestos and faking endorsements from open source projects.

After all the talk about "dark enlightenment" and the connection to Musk and Thiel, I'd have expected Yarvin to already have an office in the White House or at least ministry of state somewhere.

bertman

3 months ago

Site seems down. https://web.archive.org/web/20251022103755/https://drewdevau...

vdupras

3 months ago

Drew's moral grandstanding is at odds with HN culture, so of course it's never going to be well received here. And to a point, HN is right to reject it because it's pointless: fascism is obviously coming and nothing can stop it.

Nothing can stop it, not because those evil men are too powerful, they're clowns. Nothing can stop it because, as Orwell says, modern man is inadequate for modern times.

> Modern man is rather like a bisected wasp which goes on sucking jam and pretends that the loss of its abdomen does not matter

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