- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Sorry for the terrible photo, I can only upload 1 so I had to mash all these screenshots together somehow.
If you’re not familiar with GrayJay, it’s a cross-platform video app. You can watch and search videos from YouTube (YMMV if you use a VPN), Odyssey, Bitchute, Nebula, Kick, Twitch, pretty much anything you can imagine, and aggregates all your subscriptions and searches into 1 cross-platform feed. And if it’s not on there you can create your own plugin. There’s a repository here.
PeerTube has been supported since day 1 but previously you could only view videos from the instance you added, so you had to add them all individually. It was updated recently and seems to not be tied to any instances at all. You can view comments but it doesn’t seem to support login right now so you won’t be able to “like” or leave comments. I’ve asked them to add this functionality.
For PeerTube you’ll probably have to go into the sources and enable it. You’ll probably also want to enable SepiaSearch at the bottom (this searches across instances, for those who have opted into search).
I don’t really know how to explain the monetization model. There’s a $10 lifetime license fee. They’re adamant that it’s not free (as in beer) but if you don’t pay for the license, nothing happens 🤷♂️ I paid for it because it’s awesome.
You can download from F-Droid (using FUTO repository) or direct from grayjay.app (the app updates itself).
There’s also a desktop version, and your license works for both. Although the desktop version is really nice, it’s not yet as polished as the mobile one. It also supports syncing your data over your local network.
Enjoy!
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GrayJay is an app associated with Louis Rossmann and lot of people seems to like him and therefore has gotten lot of traction lately but there is something you should know. This app is not open source even though source may be available. The app is not licensed in any existing open source license such as GPL, BSD, or MIT, etc. The source license is basically does not allow freedom of redistribution of modified code so therefore it fails the minimal definition of open source. Louis Rossmann has gone on the record on video saying he will sue people if someone were to do something with code he does not approve of whatever that means. Number of people have tried to tell him not to call GrayJay an open source app but he simply ignored them. It’s pretty clear he is now just calling this app open source for marketing purposes which I think is misleading and deceptive.
If you want to buy the app because you find it useful and you don’t care about open source, that’s perfectly fine. However if you believe that supporting an open source ecosystem is part of the reason for supporting GrayJay, then you should know what’s really happening here.
The source license is basically does not allow freedom of redistribution of modified code so therefore it fails the minimal definition of open source
That’s not correct, you should read it more closely.
Louis Rossmann has gone on the record on video saying he will sue people if someone were to do something with code he does not approve of whatever that means.
He was very explicit that he does not want people doing what they do specifically with NewPipe, which is to redistribute it with ads or malicious code. Which I think is very fair. He also doesn’t want companies like Google making billions of dollars on the backs of community projects.
If you’re unsure you can contact them about acquiring a license.
If you want to buy the app
GrayJay is free, just FYI
Nice!
Warning, GrayJay fails to include a libre software license text file. We do not control it, anti-libre software.
Not being libre doesn’t make it anti-libre.
Don’t they? I’m aware of the events that took place when they released it. But seems they’ve solved licensing by now. There is a License.md in that repo since a few months. FUTO seems to even have written blog posts about their licensing, detailing why they do it. In short: They like to call it open source, while it’s not. It’s source available. Seems from their posts, they mainly want to exclude commercial use, but I’m not sure about their legalese, and the actual license text restricts how people can share and modify it. But the licensing is there by now. It’s just not an open source project. But I agree, they still like to confuse users and twist the meaning of words.
Well, any software needs to include a license of some form, if you want it to be usable by others. But if it’s not an open-source or libre license, then it’s a proprietary license. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. At that point, it depends on what’s actually written into the license. But it’s also not a good thing, as you miss out on various open-source benefits due to there being no proven legal compatibility with open-source licenses. Well, and if I remember correctly, FUTO’s license actively prohibits reuse of the code anyways.
I share your opinion. They seem to have clarified a few things, though. Their license states what kind of reuse is allowed. You need to read it thoroughly. For example you can study the code or adapt it for personal hobby projects, if it’s non-commercial and you add the required statements… But I think it’s completely unappealing to use GrayJay or contribute to the project. It’s not Free Software, so you don’t get much in return. They tell you you should send pull requests, but as far as I can see there is no way of logging in to their GitLab. So you somehow need to hunt down their GitHub mirror, and file something there, in the hopes someone is going to read it amongst the hundreds and hundreds of open bugreports… And their phrasing and use of the term “open source” is just annoying and bound to confuse people. I’m not sure what Louis Rossman is doing these days, but when they launched it, he was making videos with lots of outright false claims about the licensing. A lot of that hasn’t been ideal. I’ve sent them some comments back in 2023. But they never replied directly. I believe they took notice of the discussion and promised to step up their game concerning their community. But I don’t think they’re doing a particularly good job. And I suspect they lack a deeper understanding of what Free Software is, what it’s about and good at, how to foster a community that’s not just alike what you get on Youtube as a creator.
But I’m not mad at them. As long as they keep Louis’ promise of not prosecuting any individual for getting confused by their mixed signals. They seem to be mildly successful with whoever their target audience is. Guess I’m just not a part of that. But I have NewPipe/Tubular, my browser with the proper Ad-blocking in place, so I can live a comfortable life without GrayJay.
It’s so cool to see the fediverse taking off and things maturing! :D
I can’t wait to see how things develop in a few years.
Nice!
