Immich v1.109.1 released with optional paid license

cron@feddit.org to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 154 points – Release v1.109.0 · immich-app/immich
github.com

Welcome to version v1.109.0 of Immich. This release introduces an additional way for you to support Immich financially as well as bug fixes for various issues. Some of the highlights in this release include:

Immich license pricing is $25 per user or $99 per server for a lifetime license.

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I’ll repeat here what I said on discord:

I’m no fan of stallman, but I like his quote: “I’m happy to pay for good software so long as it’s free”.

It’s important to remember that anyone with the skill to work on this project could earn a pretty good living elsewhere. We can debate the terminology, but at the end of the day devs gotta eat.

Personally, so long as it stays on the GPL they can call us “god-kings” and “filthy peasants” for all I care

Important bits that came up in the discord and I haven’t seen here:

  • User license is only there to make it cheaper for small instances.No word I’ve seen on transitioning from a user license to a server license down the road. Looks like you can switch by contacting them, and they have plans to do it automatically in the future.
  • It looks like enforcement is basically nonexistent. You could activate multiple servers with one license, or just flip a value in the db yourself
  • The reason they aren’t using “supporter” or “contributor” is because they don’t want it to sound like charity. It’s a transaction.

Immich is free software. That means anyone can fork and maintain the code and they have the same rights as everyone. Trying to squeeze money out of people is slimy. They should either stay a community project and ask for donations to fund it (paid versions count as donations as long as there isn't extra exclusive features implemented in non libre code) or they could start a company that sell backups and support.

Selling copies of free software is straight up encouraged by the FSF. You don't have to buy a copy. You can copy the source code and build t yourself. But selling it is legitimate.

I don't have problems with selling software. I do have a problem with what FUTO is doing. The just up ended a perfectly good financial model and make the "licensing" feel like Windows server.

As you said it's free software, and the license for immich is actually open source. I'm not really offended by a please donate nagware screen, or even a give a cup of coffee to the developer, so this license is the same thing just with different language. And as it's open source somebody could fork the project to remove this line, or you could edit the database and fill it, it's totally up to you.

I think this is a net positive and should be encouraged