this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024

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PSA: Grayjay is really good (lemmy.zip)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

39 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/15242858

Saw Louis Rossmans original video on the app and figured (and it may well have been) it would be buggy and awful at that point. Decided to gike it a try, the app has all the options I could want for watching youtube, it's multiplatform to a much greater degree than Newpipe and it's forks.

The reason I don't ever expect to go back to Newpipe or Libretube is the plugins update through the app, meaning I can get bypasses to YouTubes bullshit as fast as they're developed.

Newpipe is usually updated quickly, but in my experience forks like Tubular that include sponsorblocks often delay me from getting that update.

Overall, very good experience so far!

all 42 comments

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Grayjay + Newpipe. Grayjay wont play YouTube Live Streams, but can send yt links to Newpipe, which plays it fine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

i was able to play a livestream on grayjay

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

It's unreliable for me. I'm assume I don't have the bandwidth that the program expects and it doesn't want to reduce the quality.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Even I tried it at release, it wasn't usable when you had a lot of subscriptions. Gave up after a couple weeks of trying it

Did they manage to fix this?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

Options are good.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

Hopefully being a paid app developed full-time by FUTO allows it to be worked on for a long time to come.

[+] [email protected] -14 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Stop promoting non foss software. There are plenty of foss apps

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'm salty at them for diluting the term "Open Source".

And, yes, I'm more aligned with the Free Software movement than the Open Source movement. But in practice, all Open Source software is also Free Software, as long as they're not misusing the term "Open Source" like FUTO recently apologized for. (Though this page still says "All FUTO-funded projects are expected to be open-source or develop a plan to eventually become so." which I think is just a holdover from before they promised to stop misusing the term "Open Source" that they haven't caught and fixed yet.)

But still, their license is kindof shitty. And maybe it's just a narcissism of small diffrences thing, but it feels more nefarious in some ways than just a straight-forwardly proprietary license would be.

Anyway, no chance I'll ever use GrayJay unless they some day decide to put it under a properly FOSS license. Even if only because there's no way I'm going to go to the trouble of side-loading it or any Android app store other than the F-Droid I've got on my no-Google-apps LineageOS phone now.

And just in general purposefully and maliciously misusing terms like "Open Source" and "FOSS" is a pretty transparent capitalist scumbag move. And the "apology" for doing so is hardly an apology. They spend more of the apology casting shade at FOSS than apologizing. And then they have the gall to tell people that their shitty-ass GrayJay license is some panacea of consumer freedom or privacy? It's worse than any Open Source license. If they really wanted to address the consumer privacy and freedom isuses in tech, they'd use AGPL. But no, their "improvement" on the BSD/MIT-style licenses is "don't make any versions without 'pay FUTO money' buttons and don't charge for it." Good fucking job, FUTO, you fixed enshittification.

Bah. Yeah. I'm pissed at FUTO.

Thanks for your post. You're getting lots of downvotes, but I upvoted. Folks ought to know how scummy FUTO is. I don't really blame Rossman directly so much (though, honestly, I haven't really followed him enough to know.) I suspect he may just be kinda clueless about FOSS and got swept up in FUTO's rhetoric (even though there's no substance behind their rhetoric) that they're going to fix the industry or whatever. He just got pissed at Apple about their hostility to device repair (based), but then got hoodwinked by scummy capitalist bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't have any issue with Capitalism. Companies, people and ideas should complete to make them all better. However, the FUTO license is anti capitalistic as it grants GreyJay a monopoly over the software. You can not fork it and retain ownership of the code. The code is owned by them and you can't start a completing organization from a fork. If FUTO were to make GrayJay problematic by doing something such as adding invasive telemetry and ads then you couldn't hard fork the project.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Damn. Am I about to defend FUTO/GrayJay?

The license is a lot better than it was previously. (And by that I mean it's less worse than a basic MIT-style FOSS license, not that it's "good".) Now it does allow derivative works (just not derivative works that remove the "pay FUTO" button, and it doesn't allow selleing GrayJay or derivative works, and it requires a "prominent" notice if you've made changes.)

And the old version had a bit about how FUTO could change the terms at any time for no reason, which basically made it entirely useless.

You can not fork it and retain ownership of the code.

Technically, MIT-style licenses (let alone copy-left licenses) don't either, I'm pretty sure. Though that's more true in one sense of the GrayJay Core License than of Open Source licenses.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The fact that Greyjay prohibits anyone from making money off of means that a fork would be unable to happen.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Depends what you mean by "fork", really. I could clone it down, change something trivial, and run that on my phone for my own personal use. And that would qualify as a "fork" and be allowed by the license.

But I can't disagree that a well-maintained, long-lived, publicly-available fork (like, MPV was forked from MPlayer2 or Libreoffice from OpenOffice) seems very unlikely.

And I'd doubt a third party accepting donations even if they operated on a non-profit basis could be done given the wording.

What theoretically could be done is that a FOSS drop-in replacement for GrayJay (even one compatible with GrayJay plugins, many of which I've heard are actually FOSS.) Though anyone who undertook that would have to be careful to make it happen in a proper well-documented clean-room fashion.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

People like you are the worst enemy of open source, and you really think that you're a staunch ally. It's really Fucking sad.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Grayjay isn't even "open source" according to the OSI. Do your own research instead of just believing what some Youtuber says. I respect what Louis is doing from a consumer protection perspective but he really should be more transparent about licensing

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The source is available. The source is open. OSI can go take a flying leap. Purity testing sycophants such as yourself are a boat anchor on forward movement (source: am an open source developer).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And that is why I dislike the term "open source." It has no meaning in reality and is basically means source code available. Windows XP is open source.

I'll make a post later on explaining why the Grayjay license is problematic. In short you should read the license just like Louis says.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I have read the license. I read it when it first came out. Open source is open source. You don't get to move the goal posts like the OSI has. You wanted the source to be available so that you could have a look at it and make sure nothing nefarious was going on or at least be able to tell what it does. You can, therefore be happy, and be quiet.

All of the stuff that I develop is the type of open source that you like, that said, you don't need to try to browbeat developers into licensing terms that they don't like. If they want to keep their source proprietary then that is fine as long as they make it available for others to have a look at.

Stop purity testing this crap. You do the entire movement a disservice by being a pedantic butthole. Furthermore you make people like me not want to make the source available to people like you. You damage the entire image, and you don't even realize it.

The license isn't the problem. You are.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If anyone is moving the goal posts it would be FUTO. They were the ones who put arbitrary restrictions in the license.

I hate to break it to you but but both Open source and libre software have definitions that Grayjay fails to meet. FUTO now calls the license "source first" which is a bit better as it is at least unique.

Also influencers are a cult. You will fight to defend whatever your favorite idol says without thinking for yourself. I also disagree with people who worship people in free software such as Richard Stallman. I agree and and disagree with Stallman just as I agree and disagree with Louis. You should be critical of anyone who proclaims themselves to be a source of truth. Louis welcomes criticism but he also refuses to accept any disagreement. Power corrupts no matter how good the intentions are. I think Louis has done a lot of good but he is not a saint

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

What the fuck are you on about? I don't follow Rossman, I don't even like him. I do like his product though. Dude has some weird ass libertarian leanings that are "eyebrow raising", if I'm being generous.

The fucking OSI does not get to define open source however it wants. Open source means the the source is open to the public. FULL FUCKING STOP. The OSI co-opted the term open source, and people like you fell in line. What is it with people like you and purity testing software? That's fucking weird.

I'm fucking sick of turbonerds with toxic opinions and zero coding skills telling developers what they need to do with their own code. The fact that they can't code is more or less irrelevant, but it highlights how much more bullshit their stance is. If you want to control a license then write some fucking code and you can license it however the hell you like.

We do agree in one key area though, "influencer" is a cult, or something very close to it. This whole parasocial relationship bullshit is actively harming society at large. You can thank YouTube for fucking these things up btw. Other services have followed, but it's YouTube's (Google's) insatiable lust for power and monopoly that have crippled society and possibly irreversibly damaged it.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No. GrayJay is good and I'm glad I gave FUTO money for two licenses because it is worth paying for; "free" does not necessarily mean "as in dollars".

Also, did the irony of issuing orders to strangers in the very same attempt to "defend" (and I am being generous with that word) the ideals of free and open source software, not give you the slightest pause before posting?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

It isn't free software as in it doesn't have a license that respects the 4 freedoms. If it was under a license that granted its users the irrevocable right to run, study, modify and distribute the source code without restriction then it would be considered foss.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

It's free software as in, it's free. You can continue mumbling your nonsense in the corner of course, the rest of us have bigger issues than whether someone we don't actually know can use word "free" like everybody else.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The free software definition can be found here:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

I have no issue paying for software or donating. What concerns me is the restrictions on the source code. I think Grayjay is popular simply because some YouTube star made it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Or maybe because it's good? Have you tried the Occam's Razor thing? You need to realize that by and large, users could not possibly care any less about source code available if you gave them money for it.

And the software has upsides. Compared to NewPipe (what I had before):

Updates in finite time after Youtube breaks something.
Can actually log in with your youtube account, directly accessing your subscriptions and so on, instead of having go through the complicated export/unzip/import process every time you change your subscriptions and want to resync them.
Includes more sources, and pretty heterogenuous ones at that. Nice all-in-one app.

And keep in mind, nobody who is not a gnu cares whether for some hyper-specific context that this post is not in, "free" can mean the sourcecode is freely available. The english language already uses the word "free" in everyday parlour, and if you use english, you know those uses. One of which being "costs you nothing". Trying to argue around that just makes people less likely to care about source code availability because frankly, you're being a dick to people for no bloody reason.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I just see Grayjay as an imposter. It is less private and completely bans forking to start a new project.

Take a look at what is now the Fossify app suite. It was Simple mobile tools but that was bought out by some Israel firm. It was forked and is now Fossify mobile tools. The old Simple mobile tools is now not on F-droid.

If Grayjay turns into a scam there is no legal way you can fork it. You are completely locked in. That is my primary concern.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah but every few years technology moves on, anyways. I no longer use the same video client I used 5 years ago on my mobile. Maybe in 5 years I'll use another. It's just an app, not a lifestyle. 🤷

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

It's just an app, not a lifestyle. 🤷

Now apply that thought to VLC and how many distros and apps use their libraries.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I guess you're unfamiliar with that user but basically their entire Lemmy existence is just arguing with people about the things they own or use because "my thing is better". They are very active in privacy communities and constantly start pointless arguments by being needlessly oppositional whenever someone dares to recommend or even discuss something that they don't personally use. I don't think it's trolling or bad faith, I think they just genuinely have real difficulty seeing the world from any point of view other than their own. Hence this idea that Grayjay can't possibly have users because people enjoy using it - there must be some other explanation, like that we're all Louis Rossmann fans.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It would be really helpful if grayjay could register as a YouTube.com link handler, that's the only thing stopping me from using it most of the time

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I've got it opening YouTube links by default... At least from within other apps. In Firefox I can also hit "open in app" and it pops right up. Casting works too.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Huh, odd. I can't get it to open YouTube links on any of my devices. I guess I'll have to investigate.

Edit: ahh, the play store version doesn't support link handling

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

If I open the link from Discord it goes straight to NewPipe for some reason but worka through the browser, dunno why

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Ooooh okay. Yeah, I avoided the playstore version. I'm pretty sure I had read somewhere early on that the Playstore version would lack features or otherwise be behind in some ways due to complying with certain Google specific requirements to be allowed on the storefront. Kind of like KDEConnect.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago

Yeah. GrayJay has been my go to for almost a year now. There's been some bugs, but they've gotten most of it worked out. It isn't perfect, but it's definitely worth using.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

I use the Tubular fork as well, love it, however the dev has life things that slow down how fast fixes get merged in ☹️ in the meantime I either watch Nebula (or use Freetube on my HTPC as a backup, they tend to publish a fixed build ridiculously fast).

My fav Grayjay feature has to be "polycentric" comments on Nebula videos, pretty cool to discuss with other Nebula subscribers seeing as the official app has no social features