Welcome to version v1.109.0 of Immich. This release introduces an additional way for you to support Immich financially as well as bug fixes for various issues. Some of the highlights in this release include:
- Immich licenses (and https://buy.immich.app)
- “My Immich” url forwarder (https://my.immich.app)
- Notable fix: Generate thumbnail for iOS18 HEIC
- Notable fix: Generate Motion Photos for Pixel 6, 7, and 8
Immich license pricing is $25 per user or $99 per server for a lifetime license.
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I wanted to like immich but I hate the way it imports images and creates its own structure.
It’s had an external library feature for awhile now
I am importing my externally synced and managed library to immich. It does not create any structure or edit the files.
I don’t mind this model. That being said for me Immich is great but has a fatal flaw that has prevented me from using it: it doesn’t do updates.
For me that’s a big one, everything else I self host I have a docker compose pointing to latest, so eventually I do a pull and up and I’m done, running the latest version of the thing. In Immich this is not possible, I discovered the hard way that they are not backwards compatible and that if you do that you need to keep track of their release notes to know what you need to manually do to update.
I haven’t settled on a self-hosted photo management because of this. In theory Immich has almost everything I want (or more specifically, all of the other solutions I found lack something), but having to keep track of releases to do manual upgrades is stupid, this is a software, it should be easy to have it check the version on start and perform migration tasks if needed.
No need to update unless they’re is a feature or security patch.
Updating to latest could result in not knowing your version in case of recovery or have an exploit pushed.
Having everything on latest seems a very bad idea.
Why? Latest means latest stable for most services
Latest also means automatic major upgrades without doing the steps necessary for said upgrade, or breaking functionality/changes.
See: https://medium.com/@mccode/the-misunderstood-docker-tag-latest-af3babfd6375
https://vsupalov.com/docker-latest-tag/
https://cloudmaniac.net/docker-container-never-use-latest-cicd-pipeline/
That’s interesting, although most of it is directed at people building the images, the fact that pushing without a tag sets the latest is something I did not know and something that I could see the human factor causing a problem.
This just means that this project is still too early in development for you. The breaking changes happening in this phase are going to pay off in the long run and prevent the project from getting bogged down.
I would give it another shot when they release v2
Yeah, I have high hopes for the project, it ticks almost every box for me. I would still prefer to be able to store tags in the actual images and use them and also be able to recover a library already in the proper folder (so in the case of a catastrophic failure, reimporting the full library is a matter of minutes not days, not to mention having to retag people, etc).
My point is that projects should ask for donations when they’re so early in development, asking for a subscription implies you have a stable product.
This is not a subscription but a perpetual license and for my needs it’s already well worth the price they are asking. Using this actively with my wife but also sharing albums with about 8 other family members.
I find the no-subscription model very attractive and I’m open minded to companies trying out new software licensing approaches. I like the idea of the developers getting paid for their good work and being able to do it full time.
That’s the thing, if the project is too early to have a stable enough structure to allow for programatical updates then it’s probably too early to offer something “perpetual”
Yeah, I am very very tempted to go for it, mainly because it is not a subscription. I wish it would have been less than $100 though, but I am not arguing about that since whatever I feel I would want to pay is probably less than they would think is OK.
Well, they do say, that it is in very active development. There will be a time when updates get more stable and where they will offer an automated update path, just not now.
Yup, and I’m fine with that, but I think that switching from a donation to a subscription model before then is wrong.
I mean… It’s perfectly usable as it is. Even though it’s still in early development, it already has more feature than basically every competitor (except Google Photos maybe)
I agree, I’m not trying to bad mouth the project, I just feel that they shouldn’t change from a donation structure until they have a stable version of the product.
But this is not a subscription yet. Its a lifetime license. Of course they might change terms, you never know.
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In the discord they said they will give you a license, and they’re planning to do it automatically
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If they have an email address they can send a license key
Why does FUTO have to shoot itself in the foot?
There is as far as I can tell no new actual license just a payment scheme and some shaming functionality. They even offer you the software if you don’t pay. Remember the GPL allows them to require payment to give you the software, they just can’t prohibit someone else giving you the software.
However calling unpaid copies unlicensed is incorrect, they are licensed under the GPL (just like paid ones are).
They should remove references to licensing and display something like “This instance of Immich has been paid/not been paid for.” Call the key PRODUCT key.
Sure some find the “pay or shame” scheme distasteful but it is not against the GPL which allows commercial use.
Is feel a lot better about this if it was a “supporter” tag not this “unlicensed” crap.
Yeah this terminology just gives me the impression they don’t consider the AGPL to an actual license
It also raises red flags about what they (hopefully don’t) have in mind for the future
They should just have you pay to have your name listed on the list of supporters
I am a huge fan of immich, been running it for quite a while, it started as just phone photo backup but it’s good enough that I’ve made it my primary photo repository (fully backed up of course). I will absolutely pay for a license but count me as one who doesn’t really like the terminology used.
I would happily put a donated or supporter badge to show off, but the unlicensed just feels a bit wrong. I have no trouble paying for software, especially as useful as immich, but in the enshittifying world we live in, such language gives one pause.
good news, the terminology is changing
Declaring the use without a paid license as “Unlicensed” is very misleading since the project is also licensed under the GNU AGPL v3.0.
That’s FUTO for you
My biggest question to FUTO/Immich is if they’re worried about a revenue stream, why not do something similar to Home Assistant? You never have to pay HASS a dime and never see anything to “shame” you. All you get is essentially a forwarding subdomain with some “easier” ways of doing cloud related things. There’s zero “shaming” or calls to pay. I pay HASS/Nabu Casa monthly cause I’m lazy and it makes my life easier. FUTO should consider doing something similar.
Same with jellyfin.
They basically don’t accept recurrent donations on purpose
If and when Jellyfin “needs” revenue, 100% agree. But with that post they’re saying they’re not worried about it, unlike FUTO/Immich.
Hopefully one day Jellyfin will be big enough and stable enough to warrant that kind of funnel.
Right now, I use TailScale funnel for Jellyfin. For some reason nginx just bogs it down too heavily.
I use nginx reverse proxy on Jellyfin (and a bunch of other services as well) and it’s working great. Maybe you have some weird setup or complex situation.
I have a boat load of stuff thru nginx. Using nginx-proxymanager. Dunno if I need to add any special parameters for Jellyfin. Tailscale Funnel is working fine for now.
If you could share your settings for your nginx setup, that might help me.
I don’t use NPM but directly nginx. All my nginx general setup and per-service specific settings are here: https://wiki.gardiol.org
There is a global page for the reverse proxy, and then each service I tried/use has its own setup page.
Awesome! Thanks so much!
From Discord
Copy this to custom CSS in the adminpanel and the license banner is gone:
.license-status{ display:none !important; }It is possible to set the status to licensed too vua the database, but I didn’t try it.
I hope it will only be this banner. Kavita has had a donation button too and 2 updates further it was a floating button. The whole thing about licensing is heavily discussed on Discord.
I just hope they don’t destroy this beautiful product.
Immich joined FUTO, and FUTO’s model is that their stuff costs money but if you haven’t paid you’re not restricted.
A bit weird but they (FUTO) are trying to experiment with a new model.
FUTO is the same organization that doesn’t believe in Foss. The want one creator to have power over users. I don’t think that model is going to work out.
That’s not quite their position. They believe the OSI decides what counts as Open Source based on what benefits big tech who fund them. Basically, they think it’s wrong to argue that something cannot be considered open source unless Google is allowed to use the free labour of contributers without restriction or payment.
They talk more about it here and here.
Personally I don’t have a side in this fight but nothing I have seen has made me shy away from using their products.
Tbh it’s the English language that decides what counts as Open Source. Free/Open Source software has been established for decades at this point. It’s good that they changed the name to “Source First”.
I think that better wording would be “the organization that doesn’t believe that foss solves every problem”. For project like immich AGPL is completely fine but for the android keyboard it might not be a good idea to allow Google to use it to abuse their customers.
It isn’t open source or free software. There software prevents you from having the same rights as the parent organization. You can’t fork the project if there is a big development shift you don’t like so it is effectively proprietary.
Yes you can, you just cant change the payment links
Sorry I though you were talking about Grayjay.
Yep and eventually there will be a paid proprietary version. That’s usually how it goes. I hope I am wrong.
Would be very difficult to switch licenses away from GPL3
They would need to do a private rewrite. Once again this is why you should never sign any kind of CLA. There isn’t a CLA here but it there were it would be a simple matter of them changing the license.
While true it is not impossible to relicense a software project.
They would have to track down everyone who has ever contributed to the project and convince them to sign a CLA. Many/most would refuse, whose code they would have to rewrite from scratch without violating their copyright (meaning no copy-pasting).
It would be messy and extremely painful, and at the end of the process we’d still have Immich as it was before the license change available to fork and maintain ourselves.
They only need the biggest contributors. Small contributions like single line or even a few lines edits etc. are not eligible for copyright. Also minor contributions can be easily rewritten.
Most ppl you will get with a paycheck.
… at which point we could still fork the project from before the license change and continue on our merry way.
If you expect ongoing maintenance, are you saying you feel entitled to the devs’ continuing work in perpetuity, and at no cost? Because that’s called slavery and we have laws against it.
If you expect ongoing maintenance, are you saying you feel entitled to the devs’ continuing work in perpetuity, and at no cost? Because that’s called slavery and we have laws against it.
Stop putting words in my mouth.
They promised at least that’s not how they’re going to do this, at least. But in the end, it’s easy to backpaddle on these promises.
Still: you can always fork the project.
Who is? That’s the problem with forks. They always divide the community into slices
I don’t think that there’ll be a community for a project that turned proprietary.
Why not? There are some popular examples, like mysql --> mariadb or elasticsearch --> opensearch
I meant for the propietary branch.
Ok, makes sense
I don’t think it’s possible to make this project proprietary because FUTO does not own the rights to the code that were made by random contributors on git. Part of the promise was that they won’t change their CLA so it should be fine.
If worse comes to shovel the community could fork it. That would be very hard and seriously detrimental but if they start pulling crap like this it might be time.
This was planed from the begging of these guys developing the project. Don’t be naive guys. What o don’t like is the lack of transparency . It started as complete open and now it’s adding the “but” like many projects already did .
They’ve been extremely transparent about this:
That video is new
Streamed 2 months ago? They announced joining FUTO on 1st May 2024 (in the immich discord anyway) and announced the livestream then.
I think the app a quite older than than . Or not?
Immich is older than that video yes?
They need to make money somehow. And you probably don’t want sponsored images in your library.
or your pics analyzed for ads
Like Jellyfin
What?
Wish end to end encryption was on their roadmap
If Immich can’t analyze the images on the server then its feature set would be quite limited. It’s meant for self hosting anyway, you don’t trust your own hardware?
you don’t trust your own hardware?
no, I do not. Thats the whole reason data at rest should be encrypted.
So you trust your phone and its closed source OS with your photos, but your Linux server can’t see them?
I’m having a hard time imagining what Immich could do other than file syncing in this scenario
My phone isn’t closed source. And no, I don’t trust it fully either, I limit the amount of trust given to any datastream to the minimum necessary to get the functionality I want.
If you wanted a client side encrypted image service, yes syncing would be a major benefit, or you do the image tagging/scanning client side before going to the cloud, or after the fact. Just limit where the unencrypted data exists in the system.
Ok, that’s totally fair. Your needs are valid, but most of us just want a self-hosted google photos replacement that’s good enough our families won’t complain. Just being self hosted improves security and privacy immensely; E2EE would be an incremental improvement in this regard while having major drawbacks for usability.
oh yeah, 100%; I like the focus of immich, I like that it exists, we are all better for the option.
I was just wishing up thread that client side encryption was in the roadmap, if for no other reason that when they make architectural decisions now they leave some room for a encrypted block pivot.
not sure about drawbacks though; what does a cloud photo provider do? 99.9999999% of the time its just blocks at rest on disk; Sometimes it does image recognition, face recognition, and photo sharing; All 3 of these can be done in a end to end encrypted way (yes, with a few more hoops, it would add work, no doubt)
Https is end to end encryption and doesn’t need to be on their road map
Encryption at rest could be an option but seeing as how many other projects have trouble with it (nsxtcloud), its probably best to have this at the fike system level with disc encryption
Small nit: Https is transport layer encryption, not commonly considered end-to-end encryption.
For the end-to-end encryption model to work, the data must be encrypted entirely from the sender to the recipient. In the model of immich That’s yourself.
But you’re right, I should have been clearer, client-side encryption, encryption at rest are better terms. But I don’t want the server to ever see the unencrypted data ideally unless I am physically there requiring it to do so.
I like having more ways to support the project, but I don’t think “license” is the correct terminology they should use, unless they intend to release paid-only features which I’m not a fan of at all.
I can’t say I support FUTO but if they are looking to drive development I am all for it
Nothing like that is ever acceptable to show up on the dashboard of a service I am self hosting. Will not update Immich anymore unless they remove this garbage.
Does this mean I have to pay to use immich now? Huh?
No. It will remain free. Your experience of immich will be identical to someone with a paid “licence”. It’s like a donation.
Except that it will taunt you on your dashboard.
See this comment here which has some CSS you can put into the custom CSS box to hide it.
Itll also be added to the mobile app /:
It just says you are unlicensed on the webapp. They also said no features will every be locked behind it.
