if this company goes out of business the source code dies with it.
Despite the fact that probably none of us had heard of them until today, it appears that FUTO has tremendously deep pockets so are very unlikely to go out of business any time soon (which Rossman mentioned in the comments of his video with a link to this one (that I haven’t yet watched) of his interview with the owner a year ago https://www.youtube.com/live/OJPmbcU-Vzo?si=DovtYTWTC3S1QIY-)
Futo (the organisation developing this app) appears to be a tech billionaire (Eron Wolf) firing his money at the tech industry until it stops being so shit.
This is from the about page on their website:
Our Three Pledges
We will never sell out. All FUTO companies and FUTO-funded projects are expected to remain fiercely independent. They will never exacerbate the monopoly problem by selling out to a monopolist.
We will never abuse our customers. All FUTO companies and FUTO-funded projects are expected to maintain an honest relationship with their customers. Revenue, if it exists, comes from customers paying directly for software and services. “The users are our product” revenue models are strictly prohibited.
We will always be transparently devoted to making delightful software. All FUTO-funded projects are expected to be open-source or develop a plan to eventually become so. No effort will ever be taken to hide from the people what their computers are doing, to limit how they use them, or to modify their behavior through their software.
(From: https://futo.org/what-is-futo/)
What they say and what they will do could of course differ but they do go to great pains to paint themselves as fundamentally opposed to be sort of action you are worried about.
It isn’t free however they are very clear that they make no effort to make you pay for it. IE the app works whether you pay or not and they aren’t planning to change that. It’s not free in the same way WinRAR isn’t free. Here’s the announcement video from Louis Rossman where he talks about that. https://youtu.be/5DePDzfyWkw?si=KuNumtHUrtW_kHSC
Hey, I just realised that the link I shared was a response to my comment not yours and so you may not have seen it.
This is a recent article about a successful brain implant that has been completed by a different organisation to help a paralysed man gain some amount of control of body parts he previously couldn’t control. https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/ai-brain-chip-paralysed-trial-b2386217.html
Here’s an example that popped up in a feed for me just now. An article from a reputable British newspaper about an American organisation (that isn’t mismanaged by a self-aggrandizing, lunatic, grifter) successfully implanting chips into a the brain of a man who was paralyzed from the chest down to restore movement and sensation to his limbs.
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/ai-brain-chip-paralysed-trial-b2386217.html
I’ve not yet seen any indication as to what exactly they have approval to test. My guess is it’s literally just something like testing an electrode gel that goes on your skin as part of the process or at most the external parts that interface with the implant. There’s an endless world of things the FDA could have given them approval to test as part of their project that doesn’t involve actually cracking anyone’s skull open and jamming stuff in there to watch them die like the monkeys did. After you get the approval to test your application sponge on real human subject, you launch a press release stating “Neuralink gets FDA approval to move to human testing!” and await that sweet delivious investor money.
Brain computer interfaces are an exciting field for helping people with health issues that we currently cannot help with. Nueralink aren’t the only business working on them though so if, as seems very likely, they are overhyped and ineffective as a way to chase a good market value for another of Elon Musk’s ventures, there will still be other organisations that do better work.
I’m not sure if you are aware already but the reason Epic are announcing a million changes to their business is that the previous business plan was based around them successfully throwing a fortune at suing Apple to force them to support 3rd party apps and they tried and failed.
I think if it were ever going to happen that way, Epic would have succeeded.
That’s not to say it won’t still happen one day through political means. Seems plausible the EU might force it at some stage.