Follow up on supporting Immich announcement Hello everybody, Alex from Immich here. What a controversy that we caused with the choice of wording, right? My personal apology to you all. On behalf of...
Alex from Immich here. What a controversy that we caused with the choice of wording, right? My personal apology to you all.
On behalf of the team, we would like everyone to know that we hear your concerns and we appreciate the love and care that you all have expressed for the project. At the end of the day, what we want most is to make sure you are all happy using the app.
With that said, we are working on a change to the word license: we will not call it licensed or unlicensed anymore. What will it be called?
We are still thinking of different options to make the wording less confusing. The new wording will hopefully showcase our intentions properly going forward.
We’re also working on updating the FAQ with more information to clarify those intentions. We just want to provide good software that people will want to pay for whilst not limiting your usage in any way if you can’t.
So expect these changes over the next week. We’re pushing this out now to let you know our appreciation for the feedback you’ve given us.
The amount of purchases in the first 24 hours has been overwhelming. Thanks everyone for the great support!
I get that they’re trying to figure out how to monetize it while staying kosher FOSS, and their first wording suggests they’d like to offer per-seat licensing.
What I don’t get is what would compel me to get a license. I still can’t rely on it for anything serious. I’m basically using it as an UI for the face recognition models and that’s shoddy too. They’ve made it impossible to lean on it for anything else.
I don’t want to sound like a hater because they’re obviously working hard on it but, God, you can tell they’re not professional developers and it’s so frustrating. Focus on doing something well, and stop breaking compatibility every other week.
Being in alpha and having breaking changes is fine, the question is how many. My impression is that Immich seems to introduce breaking changes far more frequently than what people might be used to from other projects.
And that does go back to professionalism: The better you plan ahead, the fewer breaking changes you have to impose on your users.
What I don’t get is what would compel me to get a license.
Ideally nothing. Maybe a sticker or a theme, but nothing important to the function of the tool. If the personal gratification that comes with offering financial support to a FOSS project (along with the resulting product itself) isn’t enough, then this “license” (or whatever they end up calling it) isn’t for you…ideally.
Should I not be able to use the software if I’m donating?
I see these comments going “oh it’s still alpha, we need to encourage them”. Well it should have exited alpha a long time ago, and secondly I’m not going to pay for the mere possibility of it being useful at some undetermined point in the future. Show my something useful now.
If anything, Immich has demonstrated it has no intention of ever becoming a useful project. A perpetual alpha that breaks super often and plans to remain in that state on purpose indefinitely should not be asking for any support.
Even in FOSS you have to show some modicum of practical sense. FOSS was founded on “scratch an itch” not on “break forever”.
The impetus to pay once is supporting great Foss software. I personally think a donation model works for me but I don’t research human behaviour or marketing either.
Copy/paste for the lazy:
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Hello everybody,
Alex from Immich here. What a controversy that we caused with the choice of wording, right? My personal apology to you all.
On behalf of the team, we would like everyone to know that we hear your concerns and we appreciate the love and care that you all have expressed for the project. At the end of the day, what we want most is to make sure you are all happy using the app.
With that said, we are working on a change to the word license: we will not call it licensed or unlicensed anymore. What will it be called?
We are still thinking of different options to make the wording less confusing. The new wording will hopefully showcase our intentions properly going forward.
We’re also working on updating the FAQ with more information to clarify those intentions. We just want to provide good software that people will want to pay for whilst not limiting your usage in any way if you can’t.
So expect these changes over the next week. We’re pushing this out now to let you know our appreciation for the feedback you’ve given us.
The amount of purchases in the first 24 hours has been overwhelming. Thanks everyone for the great support!
Have a great weekend!
Immich team.
I get that they’re trying to figure out how to monetize it while staying kosher FOSS, and their first wording suggests they’d like to offer per-seat licensing.
What I don’t get is what would compel me to get a license. I still can’t rely on it for anything serious. I’m basically using it as an UI for the face recognition models and that’s shoddy too. They’ve made it impossible to lean on it for anything else.
I don’t want to sound like a hater because they’re obviously working hard on it but, God, you can tell they’re not professional developers and it’s so frustrating. Focus on doing something well, and stop breaking compatibility every other week.
the project is still in alpha, its normal they have breaking changes
Alright then. We’ll talk about money when it’s out of alpha and stops breaking.
Being in alpha and having breaking changes is fine, the question is how many. My impression is that Immich seems to introduce breaking changes far more frequently than what people might be used to from other projects.
And that does go back to professionalism: The better you plan ahead, the fewer breaking changes you have to impose on your users.
Ideally nothing. Maybe a sticker or a theme, but nothing important to the function of the tool. If the personal gratification that comes with offering financial support to a FOSS project (along with the resulting product itself) isn’t enough, then this “license” (or whatever they end up calling it) isn’t for you…ideally.
Should I not be able to use the software if I’m donating?
I see these comments going “oh it’s still alpha, we need to encourage them”. Well it should have exited alpha a long time ago, and secondly I’m not going to pay for the mere possibility of it being useful at some undetermined point in the future. Show my something useful now.
If anything, Immich has demonstrated it has no intention of ever becoming a useful project. A perpetual alpha that breaks super often and plans to remain in that state on purpose indefinitely should not be asking for any support.
Even in FOSS you have to show some modicum of practical sense. FOSS was founded on “scratch an itch” not on “break forever”.
The impetus to pay once is supporting great Foss software. I personally think a donation model works for me but I don’t research human behaviour or marketing either.
Just don’t monetarize then. Foss and community driven is just that like many other projects. Clearly these guys are trying to sell the shit
Are you not aware of the countless issues with absolutely unsustainable open source projects out there in the wild?
We need a cultural change and a way to normalize supporting and paying (whoever can afford to) for good open source projects.