You can import YouTube subscriptions by clicking on the Sources tab and then tapping on the YouTube source (says tap to open in small print). You can then sign in and after that you’ll have import subscriptions as well as import playlists buttons.
Tried it out a bit. I Ike the idea of the app being basically an rss read for video platforms. This is great for not having a bunch of apps (twitch app/Xtra for twitch and YT app/Newpipe/skytube/etc. for YT.) A user profile and allowing app comments are nice to have on the app.
However, I’m worried about what Rossmann says in regards to profit and maintenance. The app is moderated/worked-on by (I think paid) professionals and we should pay a license of $9.99 yet the app is also unprofitable and may never turn a profit. So, what’s the point in paying for the app?
Rossmann has a millionaire backing up his repair business among other things. So, is some of this being funded by that person and other investors of FUTO or is our money the only thing keeping this afloat? How are these workers getting paid if it’s a one time payment and the money is uncertain? How is the platform going to stay up and pay fair wages? The app is niche and I can’t see too many people paying for a license. I also can’t see too many workers staying unless they are passionate. Something isn’t adding up unless I’m wrong.
There are plenty of projects that take donations/payments that don’t make profit but stay afloat, normally through the team behind it paying the bills. I guess it depends what the running costs actually are, and if it’s for people or e.g. servers.
However, I’m worried about what Rossmann says in regards to profit and maintenance. The app is moderated/worked-on by (I think paid) professionals and we should pay a license of $9.99 yet the app is also unprofitable and may never turn a profit. So, what’s the point in paying for the app?
By paying for the app, you’re merely donating to FUTO. As Rossmann mentioned in his video, it is completely optional to pay.
There’s nothing wrong with any app being unprofitable IMO. Public transport and car infrastructure is unprofitable and we don’t have a problem with those… heck even my personal website is unprofitable, that’s about $200-300 a year being funnelled into something nobody uses or visits.
Rossmann has a millionaire backing up his repair business
This is incorrect
Rossmann’s personal repair business is financially independent from his employer, FUTO, who only partially sponsors Rossmann’s R2R advocacy with the assistance of community donations. Rossmann frequently publishes hour long videos on his main channel crawling through the finances, and has spreadsheets online for public viewing where viewers can do an audit themselves
So, is some of this being funded by that person and other investors of FUTO or is our money the only thing keeping this afloat
AFAICT, FUTO is comparable to organisations like NLNET - the same people at sponsor the Lemmy devs. The aim is generally not to fund projects forever, but to eventually open source them after they’ve been developed to the agreed level of functionality. Seeing as this app is mainly a Rossmann initiative there could be an exception here though - such as Rossmann donating his own money towards development.
The app is niche and I can’t see too many people paying for a license
I also can’t see too many workers staying unless they are passionate. Something isn’t adding up unless I’m wrong.
A lot of people who follow Rossmann are passionate about R2R, actually owning what you pay for, and not giving excessive control to monopolies like Google.
Grayjay is more along the lines of this spirit, and as soon as they have their DHT video hosting thing ready I’ll gladly donate some of my storage space towards it 👌
Yep. And a right libertarian. I stopped watching him when he went from repair content to months long complaining about taxes and talking up Florida and Texas as some great place. Honestly, I am 100% convinced that the only reason he even cares about right to repair is for his work. He has shown no signs of caring about anyone else other than himself in any of the dozens of hours of content I watched of his.
I’m so glad I trained under Jessa at iPad Rehab instead of taking his course.
He’s always felt off to me. And it’s not just because I’m into Apple products. I find it hard to articulate. But I see I’m not alone, thanks for sharing.
Yeah I was in the industry when he got big, and it was hard not to love his anger towards Apple, but eventually it became apparent he was just an angry person and Apple was only his current target. Once he had secured his platform, he felt more comfortable to share his absurd views, and I fear he influenced many impressionable people towards the right with his rhetoric. Dude is not who I want representing the repair community.
the only reason he even cares about right to repair is for his work
This is exactly it. I appreciate that he’s a strong advocate for it, and he’s a single issue voter/lobbyist, but he really wouldn’t care about it if it wasn’t his business. As can be seen in how, while he so strongly believes in a right for third parties to maintain hardware, he very clearly doesn’t believe in a right for third parties to maintain software with this app being source-available and not FLOSS.
Rossmann has a millionaire backing up his repair business among other things.
Why does everybody seem to know all of this dirt about Louis except me? I’ve seen this “be suspicious of anything Rossman is involved in” comment a few times in the past few days. I’m out of the loop.
ReVanced taps into my history with microg. When I watch stuff on desktop with Firefox and uBlock Origin, I want those videos to show as watched on my phone when I open ReVanced so I don’t get recommended the same stuff. That works.
GrayJay can’t do this. It’s not better. It’s a good idea, but it’s a side grade.
As lemann pointed out there’s a setting for that in the YT add-on im the sources tab, not the app settings. Also myself and others have had loading issues with Revanced. It’ll start playing, suddenly start buffering and never stops. Grayjay works as it should and still has the settings I want from Revanced. Not to argue, just want to let others in my situation know Grayjay is the upgrade we need.
That’s what I saw in a reddit post way back but updating and reinstall never fixed it. I was using YT on browser for a while just because it was more reliable and didn’t have ads. UI sucked ass though. Ky biggest critique on Grayjay so far is the lack of vertical swipes to adjust volume/brightness.
This is why I’m excited for it. Alternatives simply do not have the breadth nor depth of videos YouTube does, but if the same content is found on either platform, you bet I’ll pick an alternative. It’s an onramp to other services.
the point of this is a new youtube is unlikely to take off because people can’t start using it without missing all their regular content.
this means you can keep all your regular content and add new sources, with the same creators, which means they can start to move to new platforms and take their followers. that’s how we’ll replace youtube.
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.
Yeah FOSS or FLOSS (your teeth ^^) is the only viable solution we have found that really works. It’s like Democracy IMO, criticize them all you want but that’s the only ones that works over time.
You just described why subscriptions are rampant in the software industry.
We use to have upgrade pricing and paid major revisions for software. But things changed to progressive models. And then things like what you described came along over extended periods of time.
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.
The source is literally not “open”. It doesn’t make sense to say that without referring to open source.
Saying the source is available to see, that makes sense though.
There have always been multiple definitions of “open source”. That’s why it’s always best to specify. If you mean FOSS, say FOSS. Don’t use an ambiguous term like “open source”.
Open source is not an ambiguous term. FOSS stands for “free and open source software”. It extends the word you claim is ambiguous with the word “free”. That word actually is ambiguous as in other cases it could mean “gratis” and not “it grants it’s users freedom”.
How is that better than the more established term with the very clear definition by the OSI? It’s okay if you mixed these terms up. I just don’t understand what you’re trying to do here.
No, you’re telling people they’re wrong and it is open source. Not to use other, more precise terms. I hate to have to explain your own argument to you, but you seem to not know what you’re saying.
Well luckily there’s no arguments necessary, as we have the definition by the OSI. I actually rarely see any discussion about that, and when I do it’s mostly ill-informed comment sections.
They can get forks taken down from legit places like GitHub, but this is the piracy community, isn’t it?
Anyway, have you actually used the app? It’s fucking amazing, it works flawlessly in my experience. I played with it for an hour and immediately gave them ten bucks, it’s better than NewPipe, ReVanced, everything I’ve tried.
The patching is meant to convey that message of never paying, by removing the option and prompts + nags to pay, as well as create the experience of an app that is entirely free without such nags. Such patches exist for WinRAR as well to enhance user experience.
Have you used it? It’s like NewPipe except that it’s better in almost every way. The ONLY downside is that it’s just old-fashioned open source instead of FOSS.
Incorrect. People have been calling random software open source since the 80s, because it’s a very vague term. The new definition that you think is gospel wasn’t invented until the OSI was formed in '98.
It is open source but you can’t publish modified code (this is to ensure there will be no malicious forks like there was with newpipe)
that is not open source. That is source available.
because we all know that license agreements are a line that trojan distributors will not cross. Not malware distribution, not hacking laws, but copyright infringement. They'd never do that at all.
because we all know that license agreements are a line that trojan distributors will not cross. Not malware distribution, not hacking laws, but copyright infringement. They’d never do that at all.
I believe it would be significantly easier to submit a takedown request for copyright issues, compared to reporting an app for being malicious.
That's not the case at all. These kind of Trojan operations are fly-by-night setups, and have the advantage of being able to react far faster than the official Devs. By the time you as the dev even know of the app's existence, they've already infected hundreds. And when you do get round to filing a takedown notice, they'll be back up the next day under a different name.
Even Nintendo can't get copyright infringing shit off Play Store in any fast capacity. Heck, Google will even run ads for people blatantly breaking copyright laws.
Edit: and that's before considering that Google won't let them onto play store and being only source available excludes them from eligibility for official F-Droid repos. They're going to have an absolute bitch of a time dealing with fakes and Trojans, even if they didn't release the source code at all
Open source licenses must allow free redistribution. FTL allows license suspension and termination at any time, without notice, for any or no reason.
Open source licenses must allow source code distribution. FTL allows restrictions to access the code at any time, without notice, for any or no reason.
Open source licenses must allow modifications. FTL allows modifications only for non-commercial use, or maybe not even that. FTL dodges the word modifications here, no clue.
Open source licenses must explicitly allow distribution of software built from modified source code. FTL forbids distribution of software built from modified source code for commercial use.
Open source licenses must not discriminate against persons/groups and fields of endeavor. FTL allows license suspension and termination at any time, without notice, for any or no reason.
The FTL enables the following practices:
Copyright holders can change the license terms.
Copyright holders can re-license everything.
Copyright holders can target specific groups and individuals with discriminatory license terms.
Copyright holders can close source everything.
Copyright holders can forbid specific groups and individuals from using their work.
I guess it’s understandable to be concerned about licensing when putting money and work into a project like this, but I still hope they change their mind.
That’s not the problem. The question is, stopping actors that put ads and paywalls behind modified source, which technically isn’t malicious, it’s just being a jerk and this licensing makes it much easier to take down. Ofc, if he actually wanted it to be open source, he’d just force all derivatives to be non commercial.
The point is, that anyone who tries to make money by ad-bombing the app and adding it to the playstore will be punished. If you post your virus-infected fork in the far-behind edge of internet-nowhere Louis would not care about that. Otherwise: why do you not ask him yourself if you want to post your own fork and under which conditions that should be possible. If you ride principles, then develop your own app that is much much better and FOSS than grayjay. Nobody stops you.
There are no ad blocking YouTube apps on iOS so I suspect Apple blocks them. The DMA will soon let us in the EU install whatever we like, but fuck Apple.
Publishing on iOS creates a whole plethora of hurdles because everything you install has to first be approved by Apple. This is an Apple problem. The founder of the company has said he doesn’t like developing for iOS for this reason.
grayjay.app
Hot