Grayjay - Follow Creators, Not Platforms
grayjay.app
Grayjay is a unique media application that revolutionizes the relationship between content creators and their audience. Our app democratizes the content delivery process, shifting the focus from platforms to creators themselves.

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.

  •  jet   ( @jet@hackertalks.com ) English
    82•1 year ago

    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.

      •  Piers   ( @Piers@beehaw.org ) English
        4•11 months ago

        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.

    •  ToxicWaste   ( @ToxicWaste@lemm.ee ) OP
      11•1 year ago

      I see where you are coming from. Still i would argue that it is open source, since it is open for everyone to see.

      The explanation for this more restrictive license was that they want to prevent what happened to newpipe. Some ppl repackaged newpipe with additional crap, put ads on it etc. They want to have the legal geounds to combat these things.

      While I don’t think, they would go against me for forking it and tweaking things here and there - they have the legal ground to do so…

      •  jet   ( @jet@hackertalks.com ) English
        14•1 year ago

        Their license allows you to modify it, just not to distribute your modifications. For now.

        By the strictest technical definition of the term open source I agree with you.

        But in the cultural zeitgeist it is not open source and that it can’t be used by other projects, people can’t tinker with it and improve it downstream, if this company goes out of business the source code dies with it. At least legally.

        The Microsoft Windows source code is available, if you sign an NDA, and it’s been leaked a couple times online. So if you really want to, Microsoft Windows is source available with some hurdles. But I wouldn’t consider it open source - mostly because it cannot contribute to the ecosystem evolving.

        •  Piers   ( @Piers@beehaw.org ) English
          1•11 months ago

          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-)

        •  ToxicWaste   ( @ToxicWaste@lemm.ee ) OP
          1•11 months ago

          I have found three comments from you, where you insert yourself as an expert on what Open Source is/not is. Although you do link to some sources, you do so without arguing your point. IMO this is not a constructive way of communication. Since I believe your perspective is purist but overall not too helpful, I will go through the trouble an actually argue the point:

          Your problem is following sentence published by the OSI: “The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources.” Which FUTO does - they won’t allow you to put ads on top of their software and distribute it. But I hope that you would agree with me that GNU GPL is an Open Source License. However, they do have a copyleft which practically makes selling software impossible. If you use a library which uses the GPL, you have to make your sources available - which makes selling a compiled version a difficult task…

          If we look at Wikipedia, we see following sentence: “Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use or modification from its original design.”, Grayjay fulfils this. Wikipedia continues: “{…}. Depending on the license terms, others may then download, modify, and publish their version {…}”, you are allowed to download and modify Grayjay. They do not allow you to commercially distribute your modifications, which is a license term.

          Lets look at a big OSS company. Red Hat writes: “An open source development model is the process used by an open source community project to develop open source software. The software is then released under an open source license, so anyone can view or modify the source code.” These criteria are fulfilled by the FUTO TEMPORARY LICENSE (Last updated 7 June 2023). Red Hat does not mention the right to redistribute anywhere I could find it.

          To those who actually read up to this point: I hope you find this helpful to form your own opinion based on your own research.