Which is hilarious. A frontend has to be open-source, but a password manager can get away with being proprietary.
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Maybe that has something to do with E2EE mattering more than just the source availability?
This type of thinking can apply to any app. If we say that âX matters more than source availability,â then we might as well get rid of the open-source requirement on all the pages.
I personally would like PG to continue pushing for and advocating for true open source software rather than whatever this source available nonsense is. Maybe open source could be a suggested criteria so only non open source options that are significantly better can be put on the site?
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Source First is literally just open source until youâre trying to profit on their software, then you have to pay for it to make money. If you want an idea of why this matters. Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIr8Bk8QOHE
FUTO, my job, and frustrations with the vocal minority of FOSS cancer - Invidious?
Edit: What Source First is FUTO Statement on Open Source
Well yeah criteria are often crafted also based on âthe best availableâ. But i am following your agruments and yes I agree grayjay should probably added.
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I understand what source first is, I just donât like it because IMO, it doesnât give the users true freedom over use of the software. If they wanted to make sure corporations couldnât profit off of it without giving anything back, they could use a copyleft license like GPL. It also hampers to progress of software as a whole since it means others are far less likely to develop it or fork it.
In my view, open source software doesnât belong to anybody, rather it belongs to the community. With Source First, the software belongs to FUTO and not to the community.
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i used every youtube frontend and now my main is Grayjay
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I believe in the case of Grayjay, the concern isnât that corporations will use the code without giving back.
Rather it seems that Rossmann wants to avoid a situation like that of NewPipe, where there are numerous imitation apps using the NewPipe branding as a way to fool people into installing and sometimes paying for their app (some of which are filled with ads, or are otherwise malicious).
So it seems that Grayjay and Futo more generally are in favor of open source, they just have intellectual property concerns considering their investment.
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There are Open Source licenses that prevent the use of trademarked branding, thus forestalling the issue of legal imitators
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Thatâs a great argument, itâs traditional to protect your investments. What do you think, is there an audit mechanism that can ensure confidentiality through a non-disclosure agreement in a way that will protect the project management and at the same time satisfy the vested interest of the users of the product?
Perhaps it all depends on how high a percentage of the total user pool wants the audit results.
I do think some sort of independent audit of FUTO apps would ease some of the concerns potential user (particularly privacy minded users) may have.
As for maintaining confidentiality, i am unsure the stance an auditor would take on this. An agreement would have to be made between the auditor and FUTO with regards to confidentiality.
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Anyone can audit the code though, its open for modifications, you can fork it if you want. You just canât make money from it. Why is this so hard for people to understand, Rosmann has even said that if google wanted to try and block them they could look at the code to see how theyâre doing it because its all visible.
Youâve touched on an important topic, and itâs quite philosophical: weâre dealing with a balance between protecting software from exploitation with a growth perspective and adapting the product for a broader audience.
Each license has its pros and cons, the choice depends primarily on the software creators and here the consideration of user needs can be considered from different prisms. Perhaps, in addition to profit and exclusivity of being the only party that earns money from Grayjay, it is important for them to have a high level of support and realization of the product (this requires a lot of money, especially if it is necessary to retain talented employees who can be attracted by the same Google.
Regarding the issue of contributions and forks, the point is that if specialists realize in advance that they wonât be able to get a deserved reward for their efforts and precious time, the motivation will remain only for a small number of selected people.
I donât disagree with you. I just wanted to say that personally i have observed a desire from the Privacy Guides community to see formalized audits of open source projects.
This desire for formal audits stems (in my understanding) from the belief that open source projects with very few eyes on them could in essence act like a closed source project, and push potentially unwanted or malicious changes without end users noticing.
Third party audits provide this insight into the inter workings of otherwise desirable projects, with far more detail than the average user of the software could.
Again i am not inherently against the FUTO license, i just wanted to clarify why a formal audit may be desirable.
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To limit scope of discussion to this tool, I donât think any other YouTube front end has a formal audit. With that, the source code is still available for audit.
I think audits are much more relevant for applications dealing with sensitive and high risk data (i.e. password managers). Proxy front ends are not what I would consider sensitive and high risk.
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IANAL but Trademark/Copyright law should protect against that independently of whether the source code is open or closed.
There are many examples of open source projects, developing open source software that are protective of their brand and logo and brand identity, and use existing legal methods to protect that brand identity.
Debian, Mozilla, Signal, Brave, Proton and Even the Free Software Foundation are examples of organizations that protect their brand identities without conflicting with their commitment to open source software.
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I hope not to detract too much regarding the license talk, but I hope to clear the air. TLDR: This license, as a non commercial end user, gives me the same confidence as any other non-AGPL license, albeit only slightly more confidence.
To iterate, AGPL is the only license which legally obligates source code to be provided over a network - not even GPLv3 can do that.
If someone is hosting this specific software and they modify it for non commercial purposes but start collecting user data, well thatâs entirely a legal gray area, but they arenât required to provide the source code to the end user over a network. With that, I doubt many of those who host this software wish to modify it under fear of breaking the license if FUTO wishes to pursue legal action. That is, if it can be proven that collection of data is used for commercial purposes. Itâs not a FOSS attitude, but that isnât a requirement for a software license.
Lastly, almost any other non-AGPL FOSS license will let you modify the code and host it without repercussion. This is a legal attack vector if someone changes such code to start collecting your data (or whatever) such that no one can audit it legally.
However if you self host, many of these problems go away, and the benefits of non-AGPL FOSS licenses can be evaluated more thoroughly.
FOSS isnât a free ticket. Understand what the license means as a consumer of software that isnât ran by you.
Fun fact: BSL, or business source license, has the same teeth as AGPL, but is meant to solve the companies profiting off your software problem that FUTO also tries to address. See the drama with Redis or MongoDB. It is not considered FOSS as it restricts freedom. For copy left reasons, I consider BSL > FUTO at this time.
With this long winded ramble, I see a benefit of creating a dedicated page of common software licensing and what it means as an end userâŚ
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The CEO of the company is literally on video saying that you can do whatever you want with the code, but if you want to monetize it, talk to them. This is a net good development for developers, but so many people either donât like the idea of it not being a free way for them to try and make some money, or are deluded into thinking that everyone has a right to everything for free and that being denied that is offensive. I really donât see coherent arguments beyond those because it the arguments always seem to reflect a flawed belief system or exploitation, mostly the belief system.
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