What is Grayjay?
Grayjay is a cutting-edge app that serves as a video player and source aggregator. It allows you to stream and organize videos from various sources, providing a unified platform for your entertainment needs.
It’s mostly used as a YouTube frontend^. However, it is now launching as a desktop app for Linux, Mac and Windows.
And by “clarifying” you mean “dunking on Open Source and parading around like the saviors of the human race for inventing Open-Source-except-with-donation-nags-to-fund-their-fully-for-profit-business.” Good job, guys, you’ve solved enshittification (/s).
Haha yeah I do find the licence a bit weird. Kind of a non-commercial licence but there are definitely some parts that I don’t quite get.
I have seen Eron Wolf talking a bit about what he is trying to do. I get his frustrations, but am not convinced their licence helps with those at all. You can’t really take open source, take away some freedoms that are sometimes taken advantage of, and pretend that removing those freedoms didn’t remove the benefits that are the reason those freedoms existed in the first place.
One of the goals of source first licenses is to stop enshittification since it doesn’t allow paid clones
Not saying I agree with their policy, but I would hope more for-profit businesses make their source code available
This is basically Proprietary Licencing in a way
Copyleft prevents enshittification much better than anything in their license. If someone makes a paid clone of some, for instance, AGPL 3.0 program, one person can buy it and release the source code of the paid version and then all of the improvements can be incorporated back into the version from which it was forked.
Unless the paid clone makers go so far as to break the terms of the license. But that’s not a problem that the Grayjay license solves any better than the AGPL 3.0.
Grayjay’s license is itself a textbook example of enshittification.
I’m not pissed at FUTO for releasing their source code under a non-FOSS license. I’m pissed at them for doing everything in their power to sabotage Open Source specifically to serve their bottom line while also pretending they’re some champion of consumer rights in tech. And it’s really shitty to use a
.orgaddress to further drive home the lie that they’re anything but a for-profit company fucking over consumers to make a profit.The original clone keeps making money from people who don’t know any better, even if it’s an exact replica. Just look at the windows app store
Why is that a problem?
Because that’s how unsuspecting people get spyware and viruses. Sure, the clones must publish their source code, but that doesn’t stop them from profiting from open source software while contributing nothing
Can you name any real-world examples of this happening?
Actually, I can. I know before Minetest (a FOSS Minecraft clone (they’d bristle at being called that, but anyway) that has since renamed itself to “Luanti” - I reccommend it, actually) officially supported Android, somebody ported it to Android (I don’t remember what they called the clone) and put it on the play store for money. Now, Minetest wasn’t under a copyleft license, so the clone wasn’t even FOSS (nor was it legally required to be.) I don’t remember any malware being involved. The Minetest community did all heave a collective groan when a wave of clueless people who didn’t realize it was FOSS started joining Minetest servers. People in the Minetest community definitely resented the clone. But beyond that, no real harm came to the game or its players. Some folks paid for an Android Minetest client that didn’t afford them the freedoms guaranteed by the Free Software Definition or Open Source Definition, but at the time the official Minetest client didn’t support Android. Aside from that, I don’t know of any harm that came from any of that. And had Minetest been under a copyleft license, even less harm would have come of that.
Also, in practice, anyone who’s only out to get a quick buck is going to either avoid copylefted code like the plague or just blatantly violate the terms of the license. They’re unlikely to actually put forth the effort to compose a proper GPL compliance plan. (In fact, the ongoing U.S. court case “SFC v. Visio” is very apropos. Visio is named as a defendnt in that suit specifically for blatantly violating the terms of the GPL. Specifically the copyleft portions.)
And if someone who does just want to make a quick buck clones some GPLd code and sells it in compliance with the license, I’m still not convinced that does anyone any harm. The GPL was also designed with non-programmer empowerment in mind, specifically allowing the use case where if a non-coder wants a feature added to a piece of GPL’d code, they can commission a coder to add it. But I’m not sure the Grayjay license would allow that even if it would allow one to make changes themselves noncommercially.
I dunno. You seem to be really hung up on “contrubuting nothing”. And mind you, I don’t think that’s uncommon. That’s a big part of the whole “post-open-source” thing Parens is involved with these days. If FOSS as a whole was floundering right now in a way that money could solve, I maybe could get on board with the idea that there might be improvements that could be made to the existing FOSS paradigm. (Though something like legally-preserved nag screens in source-available software seems at best a clueless and ham-handed approach to that problem.)
Much more concerning to me is that software respect users’ rights. I mostly won’t use software I don’t feel I can trust (either legally or security-wise.) And FOSS is software I can virtually always trust. When I’m publishing software, I do so under the AGPL v3 because I kinda don’t care if anyone sells it. (Though they can always get a free version from my GitLab (yeah, I switched to GitLab before Codeberg was a thing).) I do care if someone distributes (for money or gratis) my code in a way that doesn’t afford the end user the four freedoms. Which is why I use AGPL v3 over other options like non-copyleft FOSS licenses or noncommercial licenses.
And, just to repeat this, again, I’m not angry at FUTO for releasing their code under non-FOSS licenses. That’s enough to make me not want to use their software. But not enough to make me resent them the way I do. The anger is at the way they’ve been sabotaging Open Source to the best of their ability while misrepresenting themselves as consumer rights advocates.
They have backtracked on that stance because of backlash from the FOSS community. They call themselves “source first” now to not confuse people
https://www.futo.org/about/futo-statement-on-opensource/
I think that’s fair
Too little too late. The damage is already done.
And even on that page, they’re still being assholes about Open Source (“Our use of the term ‘open source’ thus far has been not out of carelessness, but out of disdain for OSI approved licenses which nevertheless allow developers to be exploited by large corporate interests.”) while pretending what they’ve done with the FUTO license is some boon to consumer rights (“Fundamentally, our goals are to build great products that don’t abuse people, beat the tech oligopoly, and elevate the rights of programmers developing software that has source code open to public scrutiny and tinkering.”). And they’re still not dropping the effort to dilute the term “Open Source” (“The OSI, an organization with confidential charter members and large corporate sponsors, does not have any legal right to say what is and is not ‘open source’. It is arrogant of them to lay claim to the definition.”).
Also, just as an aside, as page that the words “legal right” in that last quote link to says, the OSI attempted to trademark “Open Source.” I’m not sure why FUTO seems to think the same reasons why the “Open Source” trademark was rejected won’t apply just as much to the term “Source First” (but they do seem to think that: “we will be making our own term and trademarking it.”)
But they do provide a good alternative for watching videos on multiple platforms without ads, without subscriptions or anything. And the app works if you don’t pay as well. Just because they ask money for their hard work while at the same time allowing the community to work with it sounds all good to me. It’s just not completely open source and completely free. But feel free to make a non-profit true open source counterpart if you like :)
I don’t mind them asking for money. As I said just a moment ago in another comment, “I’m pissed at them for doing everything in their power to sabotage Open Source specifically to serve their bottom line while also pretending they’re some champion of consumer rights in tech.” I wouldn’t honestly be as pissed at them if they a) had just admitted from the get-go that they were a for-profit company with no actual interest in improving/solving enshittification and b) had never coopted the term “Open Source” or dunked on Open Source.
I don’t need to.