Before I Buy - Clarity on Immich Funding, Transparency, and How Support Is Used

[alexkahler]

I’m a big fan of Immich and would genuinely like to support the project. Before I do, I’m hoping to get more clarity on how the financial side works — mainly to understand where contributions actually go.

From what I’ve read so far, Immich is funded partly through user support (“licenses” / product keys) and partly through FUTO, which is said to sponsor full-time development. However, I haven’t been able to find any public breakdown showing how incoming funds are handled, distributed, or allocated.

Some aspects around terminology and licensing have already been discussed in these threads:

• Wording change and clarification for purchasing Immich #11313
• Follow up on supporting Immich announcement - change of wording #11226

But I still haven’t found clear information about the actual money flow or transparency around it.

Here are the main points I’m trying to understand:

1. Who receives the money when a user buys a product key or donates?
   Does it go directly to the developers/maintainers, to FUTO, or into a general project pool?

2. Is there any financial transparency available?
   For example, something like Jellyfin’s OpenCollective model, where donations, expenses, and allocations are publicly visible.

3. How does FUTO’s funding affect the financial model?
   If FUTO pays the core team full-time, how do community contributions fit in? Are they supplementary? Reserved for infrastructure? Something else?

4. Is there a cost or expense breakdown?
   Even rough visibility into infrastructure, salaries, operational overhead, etc., would help supporters understand where funds go.

5. Is there public information about the number or amount of donations / product-key purchases?
   Even aggregated figures would help clarify scale and financial impact.

Additionally, I’m curious about longer-term governance and sustainability:

6. How are potential conflicts of interest handled between FUTO and the community? (This I find personally important)

• Does FUTO influence roadmap decisions?
• Do they have veto power over features?
• How independent is the project’s direction?
  These aren’t obvious from public information.

7. Does the team plan to publish periodic transparency reports?
   Even quarterly or annual summaries would build trust. Many open-source projects (KDE, Godot, OC-based groups) do this already.

8. What percentage of product-key income goes to development vs. infrastructure vs. overhead?
   Approximate ranges (e.g., X% dev salaries, Y% infra, Z% admin) would already go a long way toward transparency.

9. Does any of the funds reach individual maintainers (not at FUTO)? And if so, how does the team ensure that funds reach individual contributors — not only core maintainers?
   Immich has many community contributors. Understanding whether any part of the support model benefits them is important, especially if feature work comes from the wider community.

10. Is there a contingency plan if FUTO funding ends or changes?
    Sustainable open-source projects usually have backup strategies.

• Would the project return to community-funded development?
• Would maintainers still be able to work full-time?
• Could governance or financial sources shift?

To be clear: my concern isn’t about contributing — I’m perfectly happy to pay $100 as a thank-you for a project I use and appreciate. I just want to be sure that support actually benefits the people building and maintaining Immich, and doesn’t disappear into opaque accounts or unclear structures. Transparency helps build trust, especially in open-source communities.

If there’s any existing documentation or plans to improve financial visibility, I’d really appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

Thanks!

[alexkahler]

Any news on this?

[MykolaVaskevych]

it seems no one going to answer for some reason...