We want to help you save on cost if you have lots of people using your instance, thus the tier reason

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.

We want to help you save on cost if you have lots of people using your instance, thus the tier reason

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...

@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").

We want to help you save on cost if you have lots of people using your instance, thus the tier reason

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...

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.

We want to help you save on cost if you have lots of people using your instance, thus the tier reason

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.

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

I believe the FUTO team is working on that payment method

Can't wait to pay for the license when Bitcoin Lightning Network is possible. Instant transactions and actually no/very very low fees.
Also no problems if a payment provider or immichs webshop gets hacked/leaked, because Lightning Network is more private than the public blockchain.
https://github.com/btcpayserver/btcpayserver

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.

Did you create a feature request? Perhaps buy a "license" and see that as upfront payment?

Can you describe more what you mean by that? Would it be like any photos identified as "Person A" will be automatically shared with "Person A"?

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.

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.

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

I'll keep my github sponsorship until this gets added and insta-buy a license after that.

Agreed, prefer to be a supporter than buying license... please reconsider this

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.

@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.

@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.

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

Trail Period, regardless of it saying it is an unlimited trail period makes me feel that someday it will be limited.

The "Trial" word is used from the reason of "you should try something before you decide if you like it or not"

Changed the wording to avoid confusion

The different is just the text saying that you are licensed or unlicensed. There is no difference in the feature set [...]

There might be no difference for now, but I bet we'll start to see new features released only for "licensed" servers and users...

Or at the very least a constant nag to purchase a license

We will never do any paywalled features ever. Is that good enough?

Where is the feature for not having a big "Buy" button in the web interface?

Not even really unusual, see Cryptomator, DAVx5, etc.

also makes it feel my past donations to the project are absolutely worthless now and that it kinda was a mistake. I understand the move and that it's the case but it still hurts a bit

Yeah that's a good point

Calling them licenses definitely was not a good move. Makes it so misleading

Disagree. He's being upfront about it. Not misleading at all. A bit unusual, I guess? But not misleading.

Yes, he is upfront about this, and we can disagree with it.

Calling them licenses definitely was not a good move. Makes it so misleading

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.

also makes it feel my past donations to the project are absolutely worthless now and that it kinda was a mistake. I understand the move and that it's not the case but it still hurts a bit

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!

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.

@lbrame if you are interested in reading the follow up announcement about the change of wording, you can see here #11226

@lbrame if you are interested in reading the follow up announcement about the change of wording, you can see here #11226

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

@lbrame no problem, sorry for the confusion.

Have a good weekend!

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).

We were actually just discussing that, we'll add a setting for that soon 🙂

@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

@RavMazurek Can you send in your issue to [email protected]

You can remove the element by adding

.license-status {
    display: none !important;
}

to your theme settings.

@lichenscon This works!
Thanks

@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)

@Bytelake we are working on it. And yes it is still matter

@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...

Thanks @alextran1502 appreciate the license and more than happy to continue to support you via month Github.

Any option for liberapay donors as well?

@tomsik-radek, we are not checking if multiple instances are activated at once. It all comes down to your own ethical judgment here

@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!

The purchase confirmation email includes two keys. Both are used to verify your license entirely locally to the server. If you enter only the short key (for simplicity), the other one will automatically be retrieved from the purchase servers, and then used for local activation. We don't track how often a key has been used or anything like that.

So phoning home is involved. Thank you for clarifying, this should really be in the docs. And how are you checking if multiple instances are activated at once?

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

The purchase confirmation email includes two keys. Both are used to verify your license entirely locally to the server. If you enter only the short key (for simplicity), the other one will automatically be retrieved from the purchase servers, and then used for local activation. We don't track how often a key has been used or anything like that.

So phoning home is involved. Thank you for clarifying, this should really be in the docs. And how are you checking if multiple instances are activated at once?

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?

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.

Yes you can

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 !)

Yeah, this was my question as undoubtedly I will f things up myself. :D. Glad of the answer too.

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.

Said the exact same thing on reddit.
License, and unlicensed more specifically, are VERY legal terms and means if they wanted to take litigation against unlicensed copies, they could. BAD terms for a good software looking for methods for people to simply provide a 1-time payment to continue funding. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE reconsider using different terms like supporter, premium server/user, paid tier vs free tier. Stay away from licensed vs unlicensed. From a user perspective, licensed vs unlicensed leaves the user vulnerable to future issues.

Thank you for the heads-up, let us rethink this to see if any other wording that clarify the intentions better

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.

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.

"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

Or just "Premium" and "Free" tiers. If my family sees "unlicensed" in the bottom corner they will nope TF out.

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 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".

We can do this

I'm not so happy about the license model which has just been introduced after I'm using Immich for about 6 weeks. Frankly, 99.99$ for a server license, even it's a lifetime license, is a bit too much from my point of view and my use-case. Two users at the moment (does the admin count as a user?) and maybe adding my parents soon. I'm very happy to support this awesome project, but not with 100 bucks! Per user license would be approx. 50$ but as soon as I'm adding my parents, and maybe someone on top (so 5 users in total) I could have bought the server license.

Is there a trade-in feature, so that you can switch from e.g. a two user license to a server license and just pay for the difference?

We will be adding a way to register 4 user licenses as a server license, it's just not in there yet 🙂

This is just a donation, you don't have to buy it to use it.
Yes, bad wording... @P4SQL

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).

All the projects you named have money going into them though ;)

@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.

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.

if you really want to monetize something, you must have a sustainable and working business model in place. (...) your business model should not come to the detriment of the quality and nature of the software.

That's exactly what we're trying to do, and being open source is an essential part of that.

What you insist is "whining"

I want to make it absolutely clear that no Immich team member has called the community response "whining"

@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 😅.