I think there could be more to it. Louis Rossmann had personal issues with the lead dev there a year or two ago due to how they interact in their forum, and I think he had some great reasons to be concerned. Since then the lead dev has stepped away as project lead, but I doubt the bad blood is completely gone.

I think it’s a bit suspicious that they don’t mention what feature(s) FUTO wanted. Given their interaction with other projects, I’m guessing they wanted a “supporter” badge for people who have bought the software (no change in functionality other than the badge). I’m guessing also that due to their interaction with Rossmann, they’re uninterested in clarifying, esp. if it would put FUTO in a better light if they did.

Then again, maybe FUTO is a bunch of scumbags. It just seems the slant against them is so much stronger than the actual negative impact from a handful of repos having source-available licenses instead of FOSS licenses.

My read is that FUTO as a software movement is totally fine, it does what it claims on the tin. The people behind FUTO are a different story, and the main person bankrolling it seems to have friends with odd views (I think they’re blown out of proportion, but they’re still concerning).

You’ll never find a perfect movement. Here’s what FUTO seems to prioritize:

• local first alternatives to big tech
• source availability, but in a way big tech can’t use but home users can
• profitability for devs without coercion or feature gates

That sounds pretty good to me! I’d prefer it to be FOSS, but allowing me to distribute modifications for non-commercial use is probably good enough for most things.

I probably disagree with their founder politically, and I’d run FUTO differently, but I think their software is good and I could maintain it myself if needed, and at the end of the day, that’s what matters to me.

FUTO doesn’t seem interested in getting involved in politics, they’re merely musing philosophically, and their products aren’t profitable, so it doesn’t really matter to me what their political positions are.

We need two things:

1. much shorter copyright and patent durations, like 14 and 5 years respectively (14 comes from OG copyright duration)
2. stronger enforcement of copyright to protect creators from AI stealing their work

They should happen in that order, and ideally copyright would only be awarded to individuals (or perhaps specifically named lists of individuals, with some reasonable cap), not corporations. The current system is absolutely bonkers.

Exactly, and that also includes online games like Minecraft. Nobody is going to sue Microsoft because of what someone said or did in a private Minecraft server, though they might if it’s a Microsoft hosted one.

The original article completely misrepresents the initiative:

We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws.

Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.

…

Stop Killing Games is not trying to force companies to provide private servers or anything like that, but leave the game in a playable state after shutting off servers. This can mean:

• provide alternatives to any online-only content
• make the game P2P if it requires multiplayer (no server needed, each client is a server)
• gracefully degrading the client experience when there’s no server

Of course, releasing server code is an option.

The expectation is:

• if it’s a subscription game, I get access for whatever period I pay for
• if it’s F2P, go nuts and break it whenever you want; there is the issue of I shame purchases, so that depends on how it’s advertised
• if it’s a purchased game, it should still work after support ends

That didn’t restrict design decisions, it just places a requirement when the game is discontinued. If companies know this going in, they can plan ahead for their exit, just like we expect for mining companies (they’re expected to fill in holes and make it look nice once they’re done).

I argue Stop Killing Games doesn’t go far enough, and if it’s pissing off the games industry as well, then that means it strikes a good balance.