this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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Privacy

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Quick shout-out to Grayjay: An app to watch videos on any platform - reducing the power of individual services. The Software is open-source and can be found here: https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay

I will test this out for myself and hope someone here finds this useful.

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[–] [email protected] 119 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It's viewable source, the license does not allow modification and distribution of the modifications. The license also reserves the right to be revoked at any time.

It's source available, but it is not what most people would consider open source in the common usage.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Exactly. Beware of the inevitable enshittification down the line. Once they have the market share, they have no reason not to close their source

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Words are cheap. Google used to write "don't be evil". If they are a billionaire, they could easily afford to make this FOSS.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I trust Louis Rossman not to do that. He explained the only reason for the current license is to prevent people forking the app and putting it on the Play store with ads

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I trust no one. Just put the code in a permissive license so when you eventually cease developing the app or when you turn into adding anti-features there are community forks.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He explained his reasoning in the video. He said a malicious copy of newpipe got forked and uploaded to the play store and he would like to prevent that from happening.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

that's no excuse at all. This way they are restricting everyone's freedom.

Free software, or if you prefer, open source, is based on the principle that everyone can use the code for any purpose (some licenses have copyleft but that just requires you to share your modifications to the code).

A malicious actor will simply grab this app code anyway, don't giving a crap about the license and put ads on top. If they are a malicious actor after all, I highly doubt the license will stop them.

What the license is stopping are legitimate community forks. There's a fork of Newpipe that adds Sponsorblock support, for example, which comes super handy. If community forks weren't allowed, it wouldn't be possible at all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Having a license allows them to go after the malicious actor with legal backing.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

They should allow that. With gpl, the name is protected and that's all that matters.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

He says in the video on yt that you can fork it and modify it however you want for personal use no problem. You just can't make money distributing it I think.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So basically no chance of it coming to iOS. Given that even open source apps have options to purchase donations in the iOS app, cause developers can’t eat gratitude

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He also says somewhere in the comments that apple simply wouldn't allow this app on the app store. But there's also the option of sideloading, I think that's free no?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Sideloading on iOS is free but a total PITA. There is little incentive to build an app for such a small userbase

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Hrmmmm. I'm not certain I'm liking YOUR gratitude, sir or ma'am.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He says in the video it is this way so they can legally pursue forks with malware and advertisements.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Youtube fails to fight its clones and you think they will succeed? It's only disuasive