Watched Louis Rossman today, and he’s part of the team behind a new app for watching online video content - not just youtube, but nebula, peertube, twitch and more.

adblock already integrated, works amazingly with a quick test on my end - it’s an app in the Lemmy spirit

(it’s got a paid model similar to winrar, you don’t have to pay - but they do want you to - opensource and all)

  • It is an interesting project, not sure where it goes. The title is deeply misleading though. The features of ReVanced make YouTube so much better, whereas this project doesn’t seem to be about making YouTube better so much as circumnavigating YouTube for the comment boxes and as your hub to creators. They seem to be doing different things.

  •  ram   ( @ram@bookwormstory.social ) 
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    458 months ago

    So, I really want to be optimistic about this project. I love that it integrates multiple sources, that it lets you use different identities that are not attached to any of these services. I installed it and already paid for it even, because I love initiatives like this.

    I think it’s unsustainable. In 5 years, everyone who’d use the app’s already paid for it, which means the devs have no incentive to continue to work, and funding dries up. When that happens, they’ll of course just let the app run until the plugins stop working. Nobody will be able to pick it up and continue development in an open forum because it’s not FLOSS.

    My hope is they re-license it under a copyleft license later, but I’m not optimistic about that happening. With how things are now, it does appear to be doomed to enshittification.

    •  Phlimy   ( @Phlimy@jlai.lu ) 
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      28 months ago

      As long as Rossmann has a say in the ordeal I doubt it’ll enshittify. If it they can’t carry it anymore, I think they’ll re-license it.
      But in any case, I’m really glad to see effort toward this. Because I may be naive, but I think this will make viewers & potential devs aware that it’s possible to have a great experience consuming video without being tied up in Youtube’s basement, and I predict will inspire more FOSS in the same vein.

  • I just bought the FUTO voice input app as well from them and it’s genuinely amazing. It has punctuation where it needs to. It cuts out all the UM’s. And the best part is, I don’t have to pretend that I’m talking to a robot. I can just speak as if I’m talking to a normal person and it gets it right nearly every single time. It is so worth the $5.

    This entire comment was typed with it, and I did not edit a single thing.

    •  puddy   ( @Puddy@feddit.de ) 
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      38 months ago

      Thank you so much for this suggestion. It’s really a great step towards the end of tedious voice messages. Works great but is a bit slow when using the multilang voice model. I don’t mind.

    • It is not free software but it is open source. Stop gatekeeping the term. I can look at the code and modify it to my hearts content. I can also watch as the project is being developed. That means it’s open source. It would be free software if you where also allowed to redistribute it but I can fully see why they do not want that

    •  ToxicWaste   ( @ToxicWaste@lemm.ee ) 
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      108 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.

    • This whole discussion is like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It depends completely on how you define open source, and there is no single universally agreed upon definition. Per this article, there are over 80 variations of open source licenses all with different term and conditions. Some are more permissive, some less so. Yet they can all be considered a variation of open source, though I’m anticipating you wouldn’t agree? For this particular app, there are some restrictions in place aimed to protect users from malicious forks. IMO this is a good thing. I can’t understand why you are acting like the definition police here, it seems very pedantic tbh.

      Many software buyers – even new developers – misunderstand the term “open source” to mean the software is available to use, copy, modify, and distribute as desired. This misunderstanding may arise from confusing open source with public domain or shareware, both of which are free to use and modify without specific permissions or licensing.

      The truth is that, for the most part, open-source software is covered by one of several types of open source licenses and is not necessarily free of charge either.

      In contrast to proprietary software where vendors typically make it impossible to access, copy or modify the source code, open source code permits the use, reuse, sharing, modification, and distribution of the code in other programs or applications. But just as with proprietary software licensing, open source software is subject to various legal terms and restrictions, depending on the type of open source license in force.

      •  Arthur Besse   ( @cypherpunks@lemmy.ml ) 
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        8 months ago

        there is no single universally agreed upon definition

        There is an overwhelmingly agreed-upon definition. Look at who agrees with it: https://opensource.org/authority/

        And who doesn’t agree? Historically, a few of the giant software companies who were threatened by the free software movement thought that “open source” was a way for them to talk the talk without walking the walk. However, years ago, even they all eventually agreed about OSI’s definition and today they use terms like source-available software for their products that don’t meet it.

        Today it is only misinformed people like yourself, and grifters trying to profit off of the positive perception of the term. I’m assuming Louis Rossman is in the former category too; we’ll see in the near future if he acknowledges that the FUTO license is not open source and/or relicenses the project under an open source license.

        there are over 80 variations of open source licenses all with different term and conditions. Some are more permissive, some less so. Yet they can all be considered a variation of open source, though I’m anticipating you wouldn’t agree?

        There are many open source licenses, and many non-open-source licenses. there is a list of licenses which OSI has analyzed and found to meet their definition; licenses which aren’t on that list can be open source too… but to see if they are, you would need to read the license and the definition.

        Have you read The Open Source Definition? I’m assuming not.

        I can’t understand why you are acting like the definition police here, it seems very pedantic tbh.

        It’s because (1) FUTO are deceiving their customers by claiming that their product is something which it isn’t, and (2) they’re harming the free and open source software movements by telling people that terms mean things contrary to what they actually mean.

        • You make some good points, but whether it exactly meets every criteria of open source software as per that definition or not, I really can’t bring myself to care that much either way. I get that it’s important to you, and that’s fine, but not everyone cares that much about it. People can read and vet the source code, the intention of the project seems good, and the intention of the authors in deviating slightly from pure open source principles seems to be to protect their users from scammy clones, which also seems fine with me. TBH we’re not really into strictly following the letter of the law in the pirate community, and if this app helps people to avoid surveillance capitalism and puts even the slightest dent in Google’s massive profits then I’m all for it. Anyways, have a good one.

          •  Arthur Besse   ( @cypherpunks@lemmy.ml ) 
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            8 months ago

            deviating slightly from pure open source principles

            saying that prohibiting redistribution is just “deviating slightly from pure open source principles” is like saying that a dish with a bit of meat in it is just “deviating slightly” from a vegetarian recipe.

            if you saw a restaurant labeling their food as vegetarian because their dishes were based on vegetarian recipes, but had some meat added, would you say that it seems like their intentions are good?

            to protect their users from scammy clones

            As I said in another comment, the way free open source software projects should (and can, and do) generally do this is using trademark law. He could license it under any free software license but require derivatives to change the name to avoid misleading or confusing users. This is what Firefox and many other projects do.

            TBH we’re not really into strictly following the letter of the law in the pirate community

            In the video announcing the project Louis Rossmann explicitly says he intends to vigorously enforce this license. Since it is a copyright license, the only ways of actually enforcing it are to send DMCA takedowns and/or sue people for copyright infringement.

      • I can understand why someone would say open source

        I can understand why too: it’s either because they were not aware of the widely agreed-upon definition of the term, or because they’re being disingenuous. I’m assuming it was the former; whether OP edits the post will reveal if it was actually the latter.

      • Yeah people have mixed opinions about that, but atleast in my case YouTube’s recommendations does a really good job at finding content I’m interested in. It just needs some training for it to do a good job. When there’s something I’m not interested in, I just flag it as “not interested” and then that stuff dissapears and is replaced with something else.

        • Interesting- It’s really bad for me!

          It always keeps suggestion the same few things, and things from the channels I’m already subscribed to. Videos I’ve already watched often get in there, and it’s very rare I get suggestions for relevant creators.

        • Oh yeah it works great, I just don’t like how the algo feels like it’s trying to trick me into watching as long as possible. I enjoy the things I subscribe to but I don’t need YouTube to take up any more of my time.

      • I don’t agree, you need a way to discover new stuff (akin to going to /all). What I do hate is how they don’t give you the option to do anything but that. Or they give the option but it’s incredibly annoying so you don’t use it. Like you can’t trust YouTube to show you the content from the people you’re subscribed to. You can’t trust them to even show their content on the homepage of the channel if you want to be sure you didn’t miss anything interesting you have to go channel by channel clicking in the videos and live tabs for anything the algorithm might deem not worthy

        • I get it. My Spotify algorithm was exceptionally good at sending me stuff that was basically just “diet everything else in my library”. Hardly anything ever new or challenging. Most of my new interesting music comes to me these days from friends and the radio, and song IDing anything that catches my ear while out and about.

          I suppose I do like Spotify auto-playlists for when I need consistent background Muzak or a “chill beats to study to” vibe. But the algo is just too “good” if that makes sense.

      •  JokeDeity   ( @JokeDeity@lemm.ee ) 
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        28 months ago

        I’m the same way, I watch (hate to admit) hours of YouTube every day. I do subscribe to a lot of people, but only after I’ve seen several of their videos and enjoyed them. Primarily I refresh the homepage and see if anything peeks my interest. In my personal opinion YouTube has one of the best algorithms, generally showing me a good mix of stuff I’m interested in (with addons and whatnot to hide the bullshit and recommended MSM garbage). Conversely Instagram and Facebook have some of the consistently worst algorithms, but I think Facebook is getting better about it, Instagram however NEVER shows me ANYTHING I could ever possibly care about and usually actively get annoyed by.

  • I wouldn’t classify it as a better revanced, but that doesn’t matter, thanks for sharing this awesome tool I really liked it, I first started incorporating Matrix in my life, then a couple days ago Lemmy, and now this, it’s great

  • Nice. I definitely have to check it out. I pay for Nebula/Curiosity Stream but am not able to play the Nebula videos with the screen off like I can with ReVanced. Hopefully I can with Grayjay.