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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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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.
Exactly. Beware of the inevitable enshittification down the line. Once they have the market share, they have no reason not to close their source
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Having a license allows them to go after the malicious actor with legal backing.
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They should allow that. With gpl, the name is protected and that’s all that matters.
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.
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
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?
Hrmmmm. I’m not certain I’m liking YOUR gratitude, sir or ma’am.
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Sounds like a pretty good excuse to me. The code is viewable, which speaks to the privacy and accountability crowd. He allows personal modification, which appeases the tinkerers. The only group it doesn’t benefit are the ones trying to make money off of his work by degrading the user experience with ads. Are there better licenses he could have picked to accomplish his goal? Yes. Am I going to go on a Lemmy rant over a dev’s choice of license when he’s already done so much right? Hell no. It’s a win. Take the W and uninstall later if he changes his tune, just like with any other app whether open or closed.
I do agree that true open source is better for everyone as it allows the community to truly own, improve, and evolve the app into the best version of itself. But this is the Privacy group, not the FOSS one. As far as my money is concerned, it ticks the boxes and earned my install. We’ll see where it goes from here.
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…
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.
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-)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/live/OJPmbcU-Vzo?si=DovtYTWTC3S1QIY-
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Still i would argue that it is open source, since it is open for everyone to see.
You are mistaken. Please read The Open Source Definition and the Open-source software wikipedia article, and then kindly edit your post to remove the inaccurate statement “The Software is open-source”.
Important to note that this is a custom temporary license. Doesn’t mean it’s not good, but still something to keep in mind.
https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay/-/blob/master/LICENSE
https://ghostarchive.org/archive/dD09d (click “Archived page not showing up? Click here.” on the left side)
edit: removed archive.org link because it wasn’t loading properly
edit 2: corrected some mistakes about the source
They said they’ve been working on it for at least a year so not having a proper license can only mean the license will get more restrictive.
Just asking: what rights are missing for this to be FOSS?
The main right missing is for others to use the code for any commercial reasons, while checking I re-read the license again and realized I made some mistakes, so I fixed those in my comment.
I guess it is open source depending on definitions of it, and I was just being nitpicky, but not FOSS since it does restrict the purposes that the code can be used for, giving futo more rights than forks would have as well as the control to cut others off from the code at any time
We may suspend, terminate or vary the terms of this license and any access to the code at any time, without notice, for any reason or no reason, in respect of any licensee, group of licensees or all licensees including as may be applicable any sub-licensees.
They can vary the terms of the license for future commits.
The license seems similar in terms of effect to the MIT license while still giving them control over trademarks and images.
I’d call this a more restrictive form of MIT but not as copyleft as GPL.
Louis Rossman said in his video that this was so people didn’t repackage the application with ads and malware. He said it’s fair game to recompile and altar it in any other capacity though.
I’ve never heard of him before Grayjay suddenly started trending on here, so I’ll only trust them after this has existed for a little while due to them being able to change the license terms so freely (not that they will or not)
Without a fully open license I just don’t trust someone who comes in suddenly doing it differently than everyone else. Assuming they end up being trustworthy this will be a great thing though.
Louis Rossman is the poster child for the right to repair movement. He’s been doing this for well over a decade at this point. It’s okay that you don’t know him, but just trust us when we say that he’s pretty trustworthy. Maybe I don’t know, do some research into him.
I’ll still wait to see, repairing devices and advocating for the right to repair is not the same thing as developing a video app and open source licensing
I wouldn’t assume by default that a person who knows how to build and repair a rocket also knows how to reach the moon in one.
I don’t expect others to be skeptical just because I think it is, but I just prefer to wait and see on these things regardless of who’s in charge of it, I’ve been burned by things that were supposed to be trustworthy before.
Afterall a healthy mentality. Even if I think Rossmann does some great things - he is still a rando on the internet.
Me as a dev understands the desire to protect your work against malicious actors. On the other hand some of the best work is GPL licensed. IMO their license provides an ok middle ground between protection and non-commercial redistribution.
Let actions speak louder than words.
Ah, so that’s why everyone was so hyped when he developed a €169 software to calibrate the MacBook orientation sensor
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What’s wrong with the FUTO license?
AFAICT, the only restrictions are you cannot make money off it, and you can’t pretend to be the official app. Very similar to the Mozilla license, although Mozilla’s has some extra bits to be compliant with releasing on the App Store, which has its own licensing requirements that is not met by any version of the GPL
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Ohh I see, sounds like more of a principled reason then if i’m understanding you correctly
Edit: while Louis is accepting feedback on the license specifically, I doubt the project will move to something relicensable, since Louis specifically picked this license to prevent what is happening to NewPipe and the spread of malware using his name to gain trust. He’s also been burned a lot during the R2R stuff with unforseen loopholes abused by rival lobbyists, so the FUTO license is probably looking at things from a protectionist perspective, not as an individual from the FOSS community.
I’ve only heard of one OSS project relicensing in recent times, and they had to reach out to each individual contributor for written permission, hopefully this rings a bell for someone here because I can’t remember the project name…
That’s not only principle, it’s very practical especially with a service like this.
App looks legitimately amazing. Seems a bit buggy in alpha but I’m sure it’ll be ironed out. I just hope they look into supporting Piped instead of directly connecting to YouTube, as well as SponsorBlock. Once they get those 2 things and iron out some of the bugs, I’ll primarily use it for sure. Its a great concept.
The app supports plugins for other platforms with development docs coming that I don’t think are out yet. So if they don’t add it someone else certainly can
Wouldn’t interacting through Piped just introduce an additional communication layer, which makes interacting with YT slower? I see your argument with Piped, but what would be the pros of using Piped which outweighs the additional communication costs?
Pro would just be not directly connecting through Google/YouTube servers, and instead using a proxy. Its a nice privacy benefit. I agree it could make things slower, so I don’t think it should completely replace direct connection with YouTube, but I just think the option would be nice to have.
Yeah a Piped option would be pretty great tbh, and probably most people wouldn’t notice the additional latency maybe?
Louis Rossmann is based AF
I wish somewhere on their site or anywhere in that description they’d say “Android App”.
I was a little disappointed as an iOS user browsing their site trying to find the iOS App Store link 😬.
Edit: I appreciate the advice to switch to Android but I really wasn’t asking. 😅
Apple actively sabotages projects like this one. You’re using the wrong phone.
Silly apple user you don’t get to have good apps
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All you can hope is that some day they are forced to support 3rd party apps because of some anti monopoly lawsuit telling them they have too.
But good luck with that, Apple is very powerful and can probably just buy out the right lawyers and judges in that situation.
Or if they were forced to it would have an Apple twist on it like they get to approve the 3rd party app stores that are allowed or something.
Just get an Android phone you can put a custom ROM on and you’ll have a very good experience.
That’s not how things work…
All you can hope is that some day they are forced to support 3rd party apps because of some anti monopoly lawsuit telling them they have too.
I’m not sure if you are aware already but the reason Epic are announcing a million changes to their business is that the previous business plan was based around them successfully throwing a fortune at suing Apple to force them to support 3rd party apps and they tried and failed.
I think if it were ever going to happen that way, Epic would have succeeded.
That’s not to say it won’t still happen one day through political means. Seems plausible the EU might force it at some stage.
use yattee
A shame it is not available for iOS (at least I can see).
Your mistake chosing an iPhone.
If there was a Linux approach to smartphones, I’d be interested. Instead, it’s a choice between two large corporations. And one of them receives the majority of its income from advertising. So that’s why I chose what I perceived to be the lesser of the two evils.
The lesser of two evils is Android as it’s like they put closed-source software on top of open source software (see AOSP) whereas on iPhone it’s all closed.
There are Linux phones, like the Pinephone and postmarketOS, but they’re not as polished as Andrpoid and iOS
GrapheneOS?
Apple actively sabotages these kinds of projects. You’re on the wrong device.
I wonder, are there any decent open source apps available for IOS? Asking for a friend, an Android envious friend, (actually my wife)
Yattee, it’s an invidious/piped frontend, so you’ll need to find an instance for one, but it’s on the app store or can be sideloaded.
There’s that and uYou+/uYou+ extra which needs to be sideloaded via AltStore or other methods, but doesn’t need a piped or invidious instance and accesses YouTube directly
Is a nice XMPP client for iOS. But yeah Apple is pretty hostile to open-source developers.
no. FOSS and Apple don’t mix, especially on their iShits.
apple sucks for many reasons but this is just blatant fanboy mudslinging lol. i use plenty of foss on my apple devices, mainly mac
Apple and FOSS is dedinitely an antithesis but it’s kinda rude to disapprove Apple that heavily, even though I’m a hater too.
Louis says somewhere in a comment on the presentation video that they won’t have (at least for the time being) an iOS app because Apple wouldn’t allow it in the Store, so there’s that.
Hopefully once the alternative App Stores come about (thanks to EU legislation), it might appear in the future.
Or web app approach (like Voyager does with Lemmy).
alternative app stores are only supposed to be in eu
apple is looking forward to region lock this side loading facility
I don’t see the option either. Need more options like this and Piped (Piped has Yattee on iOS).
FOSS and Apple don’t mix. If you want to use FOSS apps, dump the iShit
There are definitely foss apps on iOS and you can sideload without jailbreaking to access more foss apps. Any amount of foss is good regardless of what OS is used.
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Downloaded it and tried it. It’s awesome. It blows invidious and newpipe out of the water. Plus it includes my nebula subscriptions in with my YouTube subscriptions.
Do you know if it sends back watch data to the platforms? I pay for Nebula to support the folks I watch, so wouldn’t want to lose out on that.
I know there is an option for that on the YouTube settings, not sure about nebula though.
Nebula is beta, hopefully it gets support for sending back watch stats and saving watch progress 🙏
I see they have something similar for YouTube already, where you can enable/disable anonymity (using your google account for requests VS anonymous requests), and enable/disable saving watch history to your linked Google account
Really enjoying it so far
I literally just watched the video from Louis Rossman, and came straight here. Pleased to see everyone already talking about it!
I watched a bunch of that too but what was a little concerning to me was holding up Destiny as an example of a good use case for the service. There’s a reason Destiny keeps getting banned from every platform he touches. Putting him up front and center makes me wonder if they have a plan to deal with problematic people (like Destiny). Are they just going to the up hosting white supremacists and Neonazis? That’s not really a (meta)platform i want to support.
The app looks cool, but why did you post this in c/privacy? Does this have some extra privacy related features?
It excludes trackers from apps like YT, Twitch etc, so there is an argument to be made
Exactly this. Bonus points: this time privacy is more convenient than the native apps.
Not FOSS. So I don’t really trust it
What exactly do you mean by “trust”, here? Yes, it’s not fully FOSS, and I do understand why you wouldn’t like or use it because of that, but you can still verify the code, compile it yourself and build and run it with your own modifications, so how would being fully FOSS make you trust it more?
Not sure what part of a free YT+ frontend that doesn’t require permissions or an account you don’t trust, but the reason is they don’t want people to fork it freely and spread a version with malware, like happened to NewPipe.
I understand the reasoning, but I disagree that it’s an effective solution, or if it was, that it’d be worth what you’re giving up.
Software simply being FOSS does not equal trust. It never has, and never should.
A free program certainly doesn’t make it trustworthy.
An open source program doesn’t make it trustworthy. Unless you vet the program yourself you can never be 100% trusting.
For most of us, we’re trusting the smaller community of people who actually go through the code for us. We don’t trust individual pieces of FOSS, we trust the FOSS community and recognize that a developer is less likely to place malicious software in the code. However, it’s also much easier for a malicious 3rd party to fork the program and infect the code.
I’m confident that anything FUTO puts out is going to be heavily looked over by all the Louis haters and fanboys - if they’re up to something shady, we’ll hear about it.
This particular software is what I’d call Open Source Donation Ware (OSDW)
“please pay us but we aren’t checking if you do. Here’s the code, if you want you could copy it and remove the payment all together. However, we retain the legal right to destroy any fork that adds spy/malware.”
As a model, I can respect it. It’s a good medium between releasing the program to the wild and being closed source. It’s also a good model for making money for their work, pretty much like winrar’s approach (rip now that windows is finally getting native .rar support). Yes, some programs are more subtle with a little coffee cup button, but as long as it doesn’t constantly nag you, I’m okay with a more prominent ‘donation’ button.
I tried to import my subscription from YouTube to the app but I got rate limited due to the large amount of channels. Is there a way around it?
Also happened to me.
Also now the rate limit applied for a while to newpipe as well. Kind of unfortunate that until they fix it it’s not a very useful app.
You’ll probably want to report that to the devs. It is in alpha so there is a lot to add, fix, and tweak.
I did report it just making sure I haven’t miss anything. Pretty excited about the app
Finally something new that is feature complete from the get go.
I know! The alpha is more complete then most companies full releases!
If only all modern software was like this, as they used to be over a decade ago ☹️
Isn’t that kind of the nature of open source though? Waiting until something is “finished” before making it open source would cut off a lot of innovation and contribution possibilities. Some software would never be seen because the original author didn’t get to “finish” it and nobody else could pick it up.
Unfinished open source software releases are a good thing.
I’m not seeing an APK. Or is it only to be build in android studio?
it’s on their site when you click download … or go to the bottom of the page.
Thank you
