FAQ

What does FUTO stand for?

It’s four letters that sound nice together.

We don’t know why so many people seem to have a hard time believing this. Nevertheless, make sure to always capitalize — cruise control for cool.

How is FUTO funded?

From its founding, FUTO has been funded entirely by investment from its sole owner, Eron Wolf.

We neither receive nor allow investment from Silicon Valley, government funding, or NGO grants. We never will.

Is FUTO a non-profit organization?

No. FUTO is legally structured as a regular for profit corporation.

Our mission to return control over technology to the people is our raison d’être. We have given away — mostly with no strings attached whatsoever — hundreds of thousands of dollars to individuals and to non-profits. We have also given tens of thousands to for-profit open source projects. We believe if you like a piece of software you should pay for it. We will continue to support great software and we think you should too.

We stand on the shoulders of giants, many of them volunteers, and welcome help from the community. That said, FUTO’s core team of engineers are professionals that are paid for their hard work building FUTO projects.

We do not solicit donations. We claim no tax exempt status. Being a non-profit would add substantial government oversight and significant restrictions on our freedom to pursue our mission how we see fit. If it becomes advantageous to that mission to start a foundation, we’ll do it. Until then, we exist solely as a regular C-corp.

Will you ever make money?

We certainly hope to!

One of our foundational beliefs is that the free market, despite all its virtues, has failed to create the kind of software free people desperately want and deserve. Instead, it has caused the great majority of people to surrender their sovereignty if they wish to navigate the modern world.

FUTO seeks to develop sustainable ways to monetize open source/source first software without exploiting customers.

Whenever FUTO produces revenue generating technology, that revenue — always generated through honest, transparent, and non-abusive business models — will be reinvested in FUTO or used to reward the engineers inside and outside the organization who are responsible for freedom-promoting technology.

Come on! Do you really think you can beat the tech oligopoly?

Yes.

Big tech and opaque, tightly controlled software will probably always be around in some form. Maybe the powerful will always demand the people surrender their sovereignty. You might think that, but nevertheless there are two things we know.

First, a few talented engineers can produce delightful software that rivals anything big, established firms can produce. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t believe those engineers are out there and can be marshaled to change the world.

Second, there will always be some people — even if it’s only a minority — who choose to be free. Some people will jump at an opportunity to dump abusive products from their lives and use technology on their own terms. There are clearly millions of these people, and we want to see if there are more than that. If you’re reading this now, you’re probably one of them. There’s a better way!

What happens when you recieve legal requests?

We have a transparency page for listing all legal requests we receive. This page publishes all correspondence between ourselves and the parties of such requests.

We do not tolerate abuse of our platforms by users but we will also not tolerate abuse of our users by international law enforcement. We comply with legal orders for user data that are valid within the jurisdiction that we operate but will fight against any dubious or non-enforceable legal orders.

The our transparency page also includes a warrant canary . We are highly skeptical of whether these have any real legal weight to them but have put one up regardless.

I work for a megacorp in Silicon Valley, how can I get involved?

Quit your job!

This might be FUTO’s most important message. We know how it is. We’ve been there. You’re making good money, maybe fantastic money. You tell people where you work and they oooo and ahhh. It’s hard to give up. But ask yourself, do you really want to spend the rest of your career working maintaining someone else’s code for an evil megacorp? Or do you want to help bring back the world before your employer took over and made things boring?

If you’re actually that good, they’re paying you not to go somewhere else as much as they are for what you’re working on. What are they afraid you’d create? Maybe you want to show them. Maybe you’d fit in here in Austin. Let’s talk.

I’m a coder, how can I get involved?

Talk to us about what you’re working on.

We have several programs in place to support open source projects that further our mission. The FUTO Fellows Program, our grants, and investments are all meant encourage you to take the next step. So let’s compare notes.

I live in Texas, how can I get involved?

By coming and hanging out with us, duh!

We host a lunch in Austin for developers interested in tech freedom every Friday from 1-3pm. Sometimes there are talks and presentations. Sometimes we just shoot the breeze and get to know people in the Austin tech scene. Always, we have fun and enjoy tasty catering. Get in the Zulip for weekly details.

There are also other fun FUTO events in Austin. Some are publicly announced, others are not, but if you live nearby, don’t be a stranger.

I’m just some person, how can I get involved?

Yes!

Join our Zulip here . Subscribe to our videos . We produce a lot of content aimed not just at explaining our work to other engineers but also at keeping the general public informed about the issues and developments that affect their control over their technology.

Perhaps most importantly, you can use the software we develop and the stuff we recommend. None of our work matters unless at least some regular people make the choice to reject oligopoly control and take back their tech sovereignty. All we can do is help create the tools.