What is Grayjay?
Grayjay is a cutting-edge app that serves as a video player and source aggregator. It allows you to stream and organize videos from various sources, providing a unified platform for your entertainment needs.
It’s mostly used as a YouTube frontend^. However, it is now launching as a desktop app for Linux, Mac and Windows.
U hate it when companies start with those mental gymnastics exercises to pretend they’re open source so they can get more people that way
You’re open source or you’re not. In this case, you’re not, so stop pretending. It makes me want to try your app even less.
They have talked a bit about what they are trying to do. It’s backed by Silicon Valley billionaire Eron Wolf, and he has talked about his frustration with everyone putting their blood, sweat, and tears into the software and then someone like Facebook comes along and makes billions from the work of others.
I get it’s frustrating, but personally I think it fails to see that Facebook is part of the ecosystem, but also so are many small companies, and many of these are contributing back to the software. If you remove the companies then you have removed a significant source of help. Eron wants to replace this with an expectation that people pay for their software, he wants to normalise paying for OSS so OSS doesn’t have to rely on the companies. You can see this in how FUTO keyboard using language implying you need to pay to get a license, but also it holds no features back from you and doesn’t nag if you don’t pay.
Personally I welcome new ways of thinking but even if the pay for your OSS thing works I think companies are uniquely placed to contribute in ways that a small team relying on purchases is never going to be able to replicate.
I don’t hold any ill will though, I think their heart is in the right place, albeit having missed what makes FOSS special.