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Licensing announcement - Purchase a license to support Immich! #11186
Replies: 105 comments 275 replies
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Happy to support this, the different licenses confuse me though. |
This line says it all right here. "we want to help you save on costs" says that the intent is a required payment. Also directing people to the individual licence which is a 1yr licence vs a lifetime licence is far more costly long term. I'll be switching back to photo prism over the weekend. This is clearly where Immich will start a big downward turn and while you say today that you'll never hide features behind a paywall, the constant nag and requirement to buy a licence is just as bad. Such a shame. |
Both licenses are lifetime, not sure where you got that from... |
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@MRobi1 Not that I disagree about the nag or having the license be in any way required, but the individual "license" is also "lifetime" - granted that just means a lifetime of having the "Licensed" badge. Still I really wish they would just rename this whole thing a donation for a supporter badge, and change the nag box into an unobtrusive donation box. It's unnecessary to pretend that they're selling the software when that confuses, misleads, and upsets people about what that could mean for the future, meanwhile I don't think anyone would disagree with having supporter badges as long as there are no nag screens or cheapening of the non-supporter experience (a la "Unlicensed", "Free Tier", "Trial"). |
Possible I misread or got it in my heads for the comment. But yes, double checked and both are lifetime. My bad. Purchasing a license is a legal agreement I'm not willing to enter into though. |
right now it's probably quite easy to fork the project and remove the poor wording, would be my course if this doesn't get better |
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Will there ever be an option to pay with Bitcoin/other crypto? |
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I believe the FUTO team is working on that payment method |
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Can't wait to pay for the license when Bitcoin Lightning Network is possible. Instant transactions and actually no/very very low fees. |
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I mean, Bitcoin in 2024 is not the one. Far better and cheaper options available now, Lightning Network or not. As an example, Litecoin is cheaper, faster and has had Lightning Network since 2016/17. Then for privacy there's Monero, but difficult now due to being delisted from many exchanges. |
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Share by face and I'll buy instantly |
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Did you create a feature request? Perhaps buy a "license" and see that as upfront payment? |
I have kids.. I would like it so everytime either i or my wife take a picture of either of my kids it gets shared to the other automatically.. Google photos has this. |
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We're working on a Workflows feature that lets you do that and more. It will let you set if/then style rules and automatically take actions based on them. |
That is fantastic. I can't wait |
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I'll keep my github sponsorship until this gets added and insta-buy a license after that. |
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Tf is this bro just put a donation link somewhere 💀💀💀 |
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Agreed, prefer to be a supporter than buying license... please reconsider this |
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In addition, calling it a lifetime license instead of a donation will probably harm long-term income. People would quite probably make a $25-100 donation more than once over the years. But sell them a lifetime license and you're unlikely to see another dime. I say that out of genuine concern because lifetime licenses don't exactly have a great reputation for being sustainable. |
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@peng1can well they do want to bring it as an actual license for the software. You arent forced into it so if you dont want to then dont but it does be the actual cost of the product (they just wont call it theft if you do not pay). Maybe they could add a donation url somewhere even tho I would not like it to have a donation button aswell as an license option. |
Then don't call it a license. |
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What this needs is the license and a tip jar somewhere. I was planning on donating $$ per year, after a few years a single license would be losing income on someone like me, who'd give perpetually a bit over a long time |
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I'm confused, what is or is not included in the Trial Period? |
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Trail Period, regardless of it saying it is an unlimited trail period makes me feel that someday it will be limited. |
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The "Trial" word is used from the reason of "you should try something before you decide if you like it or not" |
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Changed the wording to avoid confusion |
Or at the very least a constant nag to purchase a license |
Where is the feature for not having a big "Buy" button in the web interface? |
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Not even really unusual, see Cryptomator, DAVx5, etc. |
Yeah that's a good point |
Yes, he is upfront about this, and we can disagree with it. |
I agree, I understand this change as someone who's been using Immich for a while, but if I were a new user I might be worried seeing an "Unlicensed" indicator. |
I haven't tried immich with licensing yet, but my understanding is paying for a license just changes text from "unlicensed" to "licensed". Maybe it would be a good idea to also consider past donators as "licensed" as well, or some other text like "supporter". EDIT: #11186 (reply in thread) Seems like as a past donator, they will give you a license if you ask for one. That's pretty nice! |
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I don't like the fact that it will say trial period on my self hosted instance. |
In an AGPL-licensed self-hosted instance, too. It also implies that we do not hold a valid license and are stuck on an "infinite trial" period. This is simply complete nonsense - we hold the AGPL v.3 license when we use Immich, and this is a full license valid for any use which respects the four freedoms. I really don't like this shareware terminology - it also feels like the rug might be pulled at some time, and it eerily reeks of corporate speech for "we are exploring ways to move some development to proprietary components but we are stuck with an AGPL core, let's pave the way for these future developments and keep our options open". Please ping me if the community happens to decide on a fork. If a satisfactory resolution isn't reached, then I would be more than happy to move on to a community - supported derivative work that does not guilt trip me into believing my AGPL v.3 license is just a free trial. Ironically, had it been a "donate" button of some sorts, I would have happily paid. But with how hard it is being pushed through a borderline dark pattern, my gut refuses to do it. It feels sketchy. |
Very much interested, thank you! I'm browsing from mobile and missed that link. I believe changing the wording would already solve most of the problem here, thanks for taking community feedback into consideration |
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@lbrame no problem, sorry for the confusion. Have a good weekend! |
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I strongly agree with you here @lbrame - calling it a 'license' is both misleading and against the terms of the AGPL (see the last paragraph of section 10). |
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I did buy license but I don't like this 'licensed' label in left down corner - can we have an option to hide it for paid users? |
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We were actually just discussing that, we'll add a setting for that soon 🙂 |
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@zackpollard I also have one more thing - I expected that I will get email with a key but I didn't - is there a way to backup my license in case of server failer? I can't find key in immich also |
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@RavMazurek Can you send in your issue to billing@futo.org |
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You can remove the element by adding to your theme settings. |
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@lichenscon This works! |
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Do previous supporters get a complementary license? |
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@alextran1502 Will you be sending license keys to all past donors automatically or do we need to reach out? And now seeing that the wording/"licensed" is changing, does it even matter? (also for whatever you choose to go with for the new wording, I'd love something that adds some badge or wording to paid servers, instead of adding a subscription nag to all the free ones) |
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@Bytelake we are working on it. And yes it is still matter |
If it just changes a bit of text and nothing else what is the matter? This wording seems to contradict the forever free trial with every feature... |
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Thanks @alextran1502 appreciate the license and more than happy to continue to support you via month Github. |
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Any option for liberapay donors as well? |
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A license can be transferred to another server if necessary, for example, when moving the service ? |
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@tomsik-radek, we are not checking if multiple instances are activated at once. It all comes down to your own ethical judgment here |
I was hoping this would be the case, as it should be. Thank you! |
To clarify it also only does this on the web at the time of activation, the server never phones home as it always receives both keys and can validate them locally |
So that is only for the user license? |
That's for both types, they work the same the only difference is the server license automatically saves to the server settings and shows the activated message server-wide and the user license gets directed to the user settings service and only shows the activated message for that user. In either case if you enter just the license in the UI instead of using the link that provides both, the browser fetches the activation before sending it to the immich instance to be validated. I took a look at the source and saw that a public key is baked into the server, and the license is basically an arbitrary string with a prefix determining if it's a server or individual license. This is either encrypted or signed with the private key that immich keeps secret, so with the baked-in public key, license string, and activation key, the server can verify that the activation key either decrypts to or is the signed license string (idk which method is used but it has the same effect, only the holder of the private key can generate valid activation code for any arbitrary key by encrypting or signing it). The "browser phone home" is just to retrieve the activation key if you only have the license, but you get both the license and the activation code in the email which lets you activate fully offline - there's just no UI to do this at the moment aside from the formatted link in the purchase email - but I tested and saw that I could activate my server offline by manually sending it the license and activation. You could also edit the baked in license public key to your own so you can generate your own keys, and even if you didn't edit the license server url you should be able to activate with your own keys as long as you provide both a license string and a valid activation generated using your private key. |
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Will it be possible to move the license or re apply it when a server is rebuilt or fails ? (Because I tinker a lot and my instances come and go !) |
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Yes you can |
Yeah, this was my question as undoubtedly I will f things up myself. :D. Glad of the answer too. |
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Will these funds only be going to the core developers or are there plans to compensate open source contributions from outsiders in some way? Perhaps a bounty program? |
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We've briefly talked about making donations to some of the projects we use, like libvips. We don't have anything set in place for this at the moment, but I think it's a great idea and worth pursuing. |
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Will it ve possible in the future to allow white labelling for license holders? also where can we find the EULA for this license if it has one? |
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Said the exact same thing on reddit. |
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Thank you for the heads-up, let us rethink this to see if any other wording that clarify the intentions better |
I think poll should happen for the name. I vote for Free and Premium tiers. |
I think that's too far... I would much prefer a Standard & Support wording as the whole "goal" of this was to show our support. [The next part is applying UK law] Using "license" implies something legal or tangible, with its current state there isn't anything tangible or binding between you and the user other than the purchase transaction of the key. I want Immich to succeed however in this current form - for me anyways, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth as it sounds like the path that Cal & others went down is happening again. I'm not sure what a better solution than this is to ensure sustainability but I know it's not this. |
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"Community" and "Supporter" or something along those lines makes complete more sense about whats going on here imo. Agreed that "License" was a poor choice of wording here |
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I have to agree that the term license has been chosen very unwisely as the license that applies should be GNU AGPL v3 License - Community / Supporter would have been a much more applicable choice of terms for the support gesture |
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Or just "Premium" and "Free" tiers. If my family sees "unlicensed" in the bottom corner they will nope TF out. |
Honestly, labeling the default experience "Free tier" kind of cheapens it. I would prefer something like "Community Edition" and "Patreon edition". |
Or that. They could do a poll. Really most labels would be better than "Unlicensed". |
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In the name of transparency, I would encourage you to set the price to $100 and $25. |
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We can do this |
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Dark patterns, unremovable "you're using a trial version" UI elements now, I'm certain popups will come later, we all know how this works. Sad to see Immich become enshittified, and so quickly too. |
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Kind of a crazy amount of people complaining in here. I have no problem paying for license, fact is if there is 0 money going into something ever it ends up dying and turning to crap. |
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Sorry you have no clue what you’re talking about and you did clearly not read the comments. To summarize: This is an OPEN SOURCE project. It IS licensed already, the license is called AGPL. Few people here complain about paying for the software but making a commercial enterprise out of the code of an AGPL software. (Nearly) everyone here is on board to financially support the project and/or support a company providing additional services based on the project And lastly, your “fact” is BS. Way too many examples of extremely successful open source software that did not turn into crap (HA, Linux, Nextcloud just to name a very few) but many which turned into crap after monetizing the code, adding paywalls, restrictions or making important parts closed source (eg Zarafa/Kopano). |
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All the projects you named have money going into them though ;) |
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@bo0tzz yes, but the way they have organized this is much more friendly and better for the community. I've never seen a screaming 'YOU-HAVE-NOT-PAID-BANNER' in my Home Assistant installation ON EVERY PAGE. Linux doesn't do that. Nextcloud doesn't do that. That is the issue. It's not about trying to make the project financially stable and viable, we're all for that, but it's about the way it's done. |
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Nobody here is arguing big projects shouldn't have money flowing into it. We are arguing that, if you really want to monetize something, you must have a sustainable and working business model in place. It's one of the main skills that are crucial to the success of something, and are completely unrelated to technical prowess. Everyone here wants Immich to succeed. I'm sure many people - me included - would be more than happy putting money into the project as a donation; personally, I have paid for far worse software much more. The point is - your business model should not come to the detriment of the quality and nature of the software. Past this point, your investments are, ultimately, your responsibility. For the same reason you wouldn't plan your retirement with a blindfold, you should know what you're getting yourself into when you put money into a self-hosted, AGPL-licensed, free software project for personal use that cannot easily use the main FOSS strategy of "sell the enterprise support for it" in a way that does not negatively impact the product itself. So, the money and funding part, is FUTO's own responsibility and a logical consequences of a choice they made (and that they can still pull out from, if it proves unfeasible). It's our job as a community to give constructive feedback and try to foster a relationship that works well, makes the development of this project healthy and sustainable for everybody, without compromising the FOSS nature of it - neither in licensing, nor in philosophy. What you insist is "whining" is actually us, as a community, being responsible and doing what we have to. It's much better to talk things out in a civil and constructive manner to help find a solution of the issue that leaves all stakeholders satisfied (yes - this is often possible - though challenging). Meta-discussion, bikeshedding, flaming other users and starting pointless arguments is not conduct that is productive in any way. |
That's exactly what we're trying to do, and being open source is an essential part of that.
I want to make it absolutely clear that no Immich team member has called the community response "whining" |
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The whining in here is unbelievable. Yes, the term "license" is an unfortunate choice, and there's a little "unlicencend" message in the sidebar, but that's about it, right? I mean, does it affect the functionality of the software? No. Does it trigger the OCD of some here? Apparently, yes, but that's their problem, right? At the end of the day you have three options:
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@obrb I do not recognize your point of view of the situation with Jellyfin. The clients work fantastic, both on iOS and Apple TV (Swiftfin!) as Android TV (official client plays anything). Jellyfin is actually much more polished and usable than the project it forked from (Emby) at the current stage. I think Jellyfin was the worst example of a fork-initiated project you could have given here 😅. |
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The Kodi add-on is a client in and of itself, and it has more than enough hard to debug issues, due to the differences between the platforms running Kodi, or features I don't use. I don't have any AndroidTV devices, so I can't comment any on that, except that a big part of Jellyfin is on-the-fly transcoding for clients that need it. |
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I'm testing Jellyfin from time to time. And while the official Android TV app has gotten better, it still has trouble playing some of the same files that play fine with Plex (direct play) or in Kodi on the same box (nvidia SHIELD). I've never tested Emby, so I have no idea if it's better or worse. But yeah, of course not all commercial applications are inherently better than their FOSS alternatives, and vice versa. And please don't get me wrong, I think it's amazing what the Jellyfin project is doing. Also, the Android TV app is being re-factored and thus under heavy development, so they might get there eventually, but still, with a full-time Android developer the development process would probably go a lot faster. |
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Could be as simple as the sub format isn't supported by the client, and as such need to be burned in, forcing a full video transcode. |
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Yeah you're probably right, but Plex doesn't have that issue with the same file, so there's that. ;-) And if Jellyfin, instead of saying they have enough money, could fund one or two full-time developers to develop the client apps for the most popular platforms, the problem might have been solved long ago, and for that I would happily accept a little note in the sidebar, and then probably even click on it and pay for a "license" or whatever they decide to call it. |
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I'd like to purchase a licence using USDT, is it possible? |
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I have previously sponsored immich, is there any possibility of obtaining a discount on the license? |
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Yes, we're working on a way for past sponsors to redeem a key. |
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Glad to hear that. And thank you for your work. |
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I still haven't received any invoice from billing@futo.org. They just won't reply to my mails... |
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thanks for not being Spotify |
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Hi, I just wanted to say - ever since I started using this project, I wanted to donate somewhere, but I never saw the option anywhere. Now that there is one, i'm somewhat conflicted. On one hand, I want to support you guys. On the other hand, I believe lifetime licenses are unsustainable from a business perspective. The core contributors/full time engineers need a salary which is a recurring outcome, yet the lifetime license is a one-time per user income. Cheers 🍺 |
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No worries, we've thought about that too ;) This current model will hold us until Immich is stable, after which we can put time into offering services like cloud-hosted Immich for a recurring income. |
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Any estimated timeline until when immich will be stable? I still do not like the current "licensing" model, therefore I'm asking. |
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The choice of term "Licensing" for basically a crowdfunding is just bad and misleading IMO. |
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Hi all,
Could you check out what is going on please? |
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Hello, thank you for supporting us. Did you use the page https://buy.immich.app? Here is what I see when progressing with the payment 
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I've got in touch with futo. Apparently this site is detected as dangerous site by AVG. |
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There is no other way, hopefully it will be removed from AVG's site list, as that's an incorrect flag. You could try purchasing via mobile though where you presumably don't have AVG scanning your sites? |
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In advance: Sorry for commenting on a closed discussion, if that is not appropriate. I was wondering if you have considered a subscription model as well? Could be "pay what you want", or ex $50 per year (like https://frigate.video/plus/). The reason for suggesting this is that even if you get a lot of users who want to pay for the software, then that money will probably dry up relatively fast. |
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We intend to offer cloud-based services with a subscription model in the future, such as E2EE backups and (later) Immich as a service. There's a massive amount of work to get there, though. |
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Oh, sorry: I wasn't referring to the cloud-based, I was talking about self hosted. I would like to support your project once a year, even if I'm self hosting it. |
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However, I noticed that China is not listed in the available options, and the prompt above suggests that this is related to taxation. I'm not sure whether selecting another region at random would cause unexpected issues, so I've decided to pause the payment for now. 
It would be great if you could consider adding more countries to the list, or perhaps provide an "Others" option if the region doesn’t have a significant impact. This could help prevent confusion for users in similar situations. |
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Hey team! Any plans to accept Bitcoin in the future? I can help with that if the team is interested :) |
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All the stuff that is being explained in this discussion should be on this website: I consider myself quite technical and I still had no idea what this meant. Do I purchase (access to a) a server? I mean, it says $100 "for the whole server"? But that doesn't make sense. Do I need both server and individuals? Are hosted services even available? Is everything still Open Source? |
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Really confused by this. I just installed, but I've not seen anything in it saying it's a trial, or that I need a license. I don't see any user limits. What does this license give me that I don't get with already? If it's just a way to support the devs, why not just call it a donation? |
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We very much did listen to feedback and haven't called them a license for a long time: #11313 |
I don't intend to re-litigate, but I want to be clear - I'm just re-stating that calling it a license is misleading since this is a good opportunity to illustrate what my argument was back then. It's nice that the decision was since changed, but clearly the old wording is still confusing people. In my opinion, not calling it a license but still avoiding saying donation, supporter badge, or any other terminology that makes it clear that the product key is optional still leaves a lot of room for confusion. Though I think it's fairly late to rebrand at this point, I just get a sense that the wrong path was taken every time I see someone confused by what Immich is asking them to purchase, and having to explain to people that "buying" immich has no effect on how it functions makes it harder to advocate for Immich. |
But using the words "Product Key," "For the whole family" and "For a single user" is the exact wording everyone else has used for years for buying a license. I get that you have the explanation below, but if you're going to have large print and two large images saying product keys and number of users, it's going to be perceived as a license. 
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You can think of what Immich and FUTO are trying to do here as something outside the norm used by other open-source projects, because asking for donations simply doesn't support the project's sustainability. We are now also a company, and as a company, we don't ask for donations. We also encourage other open-source developers and maintainers that if they are building something great for others to use, they shouldn't be shy about asking users to become customers and create the model they think is best for the project. We also think it is fine to keep the conversation going to reiterate what we are trying to do, even though it can be confusing at first for some folks. FWIW, when we changed from asking for a donation to selling the product key, the difference was night and day. |
That sounds like purposely picking language to fool those who don't know any better, and that would not be cool. While I hope that wasn't how the conversation went when you decided on this approach, it certainly doesn't make me feel any better about it. |
and others
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Licensing announcement - Purchase a license to support Immich!
Important
Please read the updated plan to change the wording here #11313
Hello everybody,
Firstly, on behalf of the Immich team, I'd like to thank everybody for your continuous support of Immich since the very first day! Your contributions, encouragement, and community engagement have helped bring Immich to its current state. The team and I are forever grateful for that.
Since our last announcement of the core team joining FUTO to work on Immich full-time, one of the goals of our new position is to foster a healthy relationship between the developers and the users. We believe that this enables us to create great software, establish transparent policies and build trust.
We want to build a great software application that brings value to you and your loved ones' lives. We are not using you as a product, i.e., selling or tracking your data. We are not putting annoying ads into our software. We respect your privacy. We want to be compensated for the hard work we put in to build Immich.
With those notes, we have enabled a way for you to financially support the continued development of Immich, ensuring the software can move forward and will be maintained, by offering a lifetime license of the software. We think if you like and use software, you should pay for it, but we're never going to force anyone to pay or try to limit Immich for those who don't.
There are two types of license that you can choose to purchase: Server License and Individual License.
Server License
This is a lifetime license costing $99.99. The license is applied to the whole server. You and all users that use your server are licensed.
Individual License
This is a lifetime license costing $24.99. The license is applied to a single user, and can be used on any server they choose to connect to.
You can purchase the license on our page - https://buy.immich.app.
Starting with release
v1.109.0you can purchase and enter your purchased license key directly in the app.Thank you
Thank you again for your support, this will help create a strong foundation and stability for the Immich team to continue developing and maintaining the project that you love to use.
Cheers! 🎉
Immich team
FAQ
1. Where can I purchase a license?
There are several places where you can purchase the license from https://buy.immich.app or directly in the web app.
2. Do I need both Individual License and Server License?
No,
If you are the admin and the sole user, or your instance has less than a total of 4 users, you can buy the Individual License for each user.
If your instance has more than 4 users, it is more cost-effective to buy the Server License, which will license all the users on your instance.
3. What do I do if I don't pay?
You can continue using Immich without any restriction
4. Will there be any paywalled features?
No, there will never be any paywalled features.
5. Where can I get support regarding payment issues?
You can email us with your
orderIdand your email addressbilling@futo.orgor on our Discord server.All reactions