It’s a privacy orientated notes app made by the guys over at FUTO.
Why I think this tool should be added
I use FUTO Notes on my GrapheneOS phone and to me personally its the only one that feels fast to use with no bloat and no asking for a subscription unlike something Standard Notes for example.
It also has a sync server people can use to self host their notes on their own server instead of only being stored locally on the phone.
Can easily be added to Obtanium and is also available on the Google Play Store.
Others can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that FUTO Notes cannot be added to the PG site because it is not FOSS-licensed. This extends to all software released by FUTO, since their license restricts commercial use.
I think we’ve been through this topic multiple times before.
If we’re taking the “Minimum Requirements” provided on the site as the base for the software to even be considered for recommendation, then FUTO Notes does not qualify.
Personally, I don’t care. If the software works well, doesn’t have trackers, works offline, or can be self hosted, I see no reason not to use it. On the same note, I closely followed the discussion around Anytype. I use it a lot, and it works great. Does it work offline? Yes. Can I see the source code? Yes. Is it open-source? No. The commercial use is restricted as well.
I think the last reply on the Anytype discussion page also fits here. If we want FUTO software to be recommended, we need to discuss the criteria changes to at least move the open-source requirement from “Minimum Requirements” to “Best Case” (as seen with password managers).
I think most people that visit Privacy Guides aren’t going here for apps that they can use commercially which is why I thought to suggest FUTO Notes.
I thought that maybe other people were in a similar position to me as I felt like the other Android notes apps listed here feel quite slow to load etc (and that’s on a decent Pixel) or had some sort of subscription (which I don’t like as it tends to paywalls features) so I thought this could be a useful resource since FUTO Notes will not have any paywall features as far as I know and is easy to self host as I mention before.
Also, I do think FUTO Notes will be here for the long term as a relatively decent notes app but if this doesn’t meet the requirements then that’s totally understandable as I’m not going to make a complaint about it since I respect the PrivacyGuides website for even existing in the first place.
For me as long as I can see the source code for a notes app to verify it’s not doing anything shady then I’m usually happy to use it if I believe it’s the best for my use case but that’s just me. (:
Thanks to the OP for bringing this to my attention – I’ve been looking for a simple note-taking app like Futo Note for a while now. Until now, I’d been using Signal for that, so I’m really pleased to have found an app that meets my needs exactly: open source, privacy-friendly and free.
I’ve been using FUTO Keyboard for a while and it’s improved exponentially from a year or two ago. I’ll have to check out their Notes app. Been using Joplin, no complaints so far.
There are 3 major scenarios handled by these licenses that I believe PG care about (but not explained afaik).
Is the source available for auditing for the application you are running.
Are there legal guarantees that the applications you are running
Is the project able to continue to operate by other contributors / fork should the original maintainers fail to continue the project.
OSS guarantees 1 and 3. FOSS (copy left and AGPL likes) guarantees 1, 2, and 3. FUTO guarantees 1.
Given PG does not care if it’s FOSS, only OSS, then the only stickler point is that it wants the longevity I’d the project to continue.
From threat modeling, it’s a consideration, but one I consider mostly irrelevant to immediate privacy and security considerations. I use FUTO apps happily.
For me personally I think that FUTO Notes will be maintained long term considering FUTO has the funding behind them.
If they ever did decide to stop maintaining the project I think they would most likely do the same thing they did with FUTO Circles where they stopped maintaining the project but then relicensed it under an Apache 2.0 license for other people to maintain if they wanted to.
I understand this isn’t necessarily a guarantee that they would do the same with FUTO Notes but I think if we had to guess I 100% think FUTO Notes will be a long term project.
As I’ve said before I really like FUTO Notes and love that there’s no paywalls etc and I thought maybe other people would as well which is why I thought to post the suggestion here.
Hi, I’m Justin from FUTO I’m the project lead for FUTO Notes. Thanks for posting here, @defiling9046.
We see this discussion come up a lot around our software. We consider ourselves open source, but not FOSS. You can view the source code and modify it. We just restrict the modification of our software for commercial purposes. We don’t want some corporation making a clone and slapping their own paywall on it.
I intend for FUTO Notes to be a long-term project.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out or ask here.
I like they idea of people being allowed to in control over their own sync server but it would be great it if it just was E2EE so you could run it anywhere. And maybe make it so that it can be used to sync all kinds of things like grayjay subscriptions, contacts, to name something.
Aside from that it probably isn’t for the masses if sync requires a server you have to set up yourself.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but the server is E2EE. But to your point, it is purpose-built for FUTO Notes so it won’t work on other types of files.
And yes, you are right, self-hosting is a significant hurdle for most, but we’re going to be releasing a hosted sync service in the future. But self-hosting will always be an option.
Tbh source available philosophically does not sit well with me.. even though it’s there to review, the fact other people cannot contribute / take and modify for themselves means less eyes on it.
Though this is clearly not the same sort of threat, a great example of this is what happened with Coldcard wallets. I’d wager that if if was FLOSS and not just source available, more people would have seen this and then found the issue.
It’s not source available. It’s “source first” which means you can still fork it as long as you keep within the source first guidelines. I’m not going to try and explain it since I’d leave that to Justin to explain since he works at FUTO but you are allowed to modify it. For example there’s a Grayjay fork right here for instance:
Here is their website talking about the license and what it means:
I’m the project lead for FUTO Notes. Thanks for posting here,