Grayjay - Follow Creators, Not Platforms
grayjay.app
Grayjay is a unique media application that revolutionizes the relationship between content creators and their audience. Our app democratizes the content delivery process, shifting the focus from platforms to creators themselves.

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.

  • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    1041·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      292·
      11 months ago

      Exactly. Beware of the inevitable enshittification down the line. Once they have the market share, they have no reason not to close their source

      • Piers@beehaw.orgEnglish
        41·
        11 months ago

        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.

        • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          8·
          11 months ago

          Words are cheap. Google used to write “don’t be evil”. If they are a billionaire, they could easily afford to make this FOSS.

    • pontata@lemmy.world
      151·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • Coasting0942@reddthat.com
        142·
        11 months ago

        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

        • pontata@lemmy.world
          9·
          11 months ago

          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?

          • roembol@lemmy.roembol.nl
            2·
            11 months ago

            Sideloading on iOS is free but a total PITA. There is little incentive to build an app for such a small userbase

        • silicon_reverie@lemmy.world
          1·
          11 months ago

          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.

    • Fallenwout@lemmy.world
      32·
      11 months ago

      He says in the video it is this way so they can legally pursue forks with malware and advertisements.

      • Mubelotix@jlai.lu
        3·
        11 months ago

        Youtube fails to fight its clones and you think they will succeed? It’s only disuasive

    • ToxicWaste@lemm.eeOP
      1325·
      11 months ago

      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…

      • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
        18·
        11 months ago

        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.

    • MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works
      171·
      11 months ago

      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.

        • CosmicTurtle@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          11 months ago

          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.

        • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world
          56·
          11 months ago

          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.

            • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world
              51·
              11 months ago

              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.

              https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Rossmann

                • ToxicWaste@lemm.eeOP
                  7·
                  11 months ago

                  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.

              • Aatube@kbin.social
                2·
                11 months ago

                Ah, so that’s why everyone was so hyped when he developed a €169 software to calibrate the MacBook orientation sensor

  • Skimmer@lemmy.zip
    15·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz
      5·
      11 months ago

      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?

      • Skimmer@lemmy.zip
        9·
        11 months ago

        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.

        • PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz
          3·
          11 months ago

          Yeah a Piped option would be pretty great tbh, and probably most people wouldn’t notice the additional latency maybe?

    • LainOfTheWired@lemy.lolEnglish
      5·
      11 months ago

      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

  • navi@lemmy.tespia.org
    164·
    11 months ago

    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. 😅

    • LainOfTheWired@lemy.lolEnglish
      62·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • Piers@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        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.

    • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world
      124·
      11 months ago

      Software simply being FOSS does not equal trust. It never has, and never should.

      A free program certainly doesn’t make it trustworthy.

      edit: as pointed out, free stands for liberty to do as you please, not the financial definition. With that in mind, I definitely wouldn’t call Grayjoy FOSS due to the license. I like my made up classification, but maybe this would work better; ROSS, “restricted open source software.”

      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.

      • WeLoveCastingSpellz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        31·
        11 months ago

        I would like to point out that free in FOSS doesn’t mean free as in gratis. It means free as in libre, means independent. Open source independent software. And I trust no software that isn’t truly FOSS as a personal principle. I don’t care if it’s FUTO, Louis or even goddamn Facebook. Not open? No go. I will stick to Foss alternatives

    • filcuk@lemmy.zip
      94·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • ram@bookwormstory.socialEnglish
        61·
        11 months ago

        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.

  • hperrin@lemmy.world
    6·
    11 months ago

    The app looks cool, but why did you post this in c/privacy? Does this have some extra privacy related features?

      • ToxicWaste@lemm.eeOP
        81·
        11 months ago

        Exactly this. Bonus points: this time privacy is more convenient than the native apps.

  • RandomStickman@kbin.social
    3·
    11 months ago

    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?

    • LainOfTheWired@lemy.lolEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      You’ll probably want to report that to the devs. It is in alpha so there is a lot to add, fix, and tweak.

    • normal_user@lemmy.one
      11·
      11 months ago

      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.

  • K4sum1@lemmy.zipEnglish
    41·
    11 months ago

    If only it didn’t require you to have a new phone to run it. (Minimum Android 10)

  • hatchet@sh.itjust.works
    41·
    11 months ago

    I literally just watched the video from Louis Rossman, and came straight here. Pleased to see everyone already talking about it!

    • winterayars@sh.itjust.works
      31·
      11 months ago

      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.