this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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and it's not free software. only source available with a license that doesn't allow forking.
And they do it so they can take down malicious copycats on Google Play
Which they could already do, with basic trademark law and just forcing all derivatives to be non-commercial. Cyrptominers are commercial.
Forcing all derivatives work to be non-commercial is incompatible with being open source.
https://opensource.org/osd/
Though I agree that they can already prevent usage of their app name with trademark laws.
So what's the actual problem is? It's just a front end to other platforms, they will not lock you in and than break the app. You can use it and if it goes bad you switch to other front end. I would understand the 'not free' objections if it was a tool you introduce into our workflow that would later be hard to replace. Here there's no lock in. What do you care if it can be forked?
Some people (including me) care about software freedom. The ability to fork and redistribute software while continuing to publish any changes to the code is great.
Not using an open source license but a source available license is not something that I like to see, but it's their right to do so. There're enough open source YouTube frontends like NewPipe and LibreTube.
PS: What I really don't like is them using the term open source. Open source is a well known term that's well defined. Source available describes exactly what this app is without implying the freedoms associated with open source.
https://opensource.org/osd/
With some tools open source has many advantages, with others it's mostly about transparency. IMHO this case is the latter case. You won't gain much by being able to fork it. I don't like it when people criticize projects only because those don't align with their personal philosophy. Don't use it if you don't like it but there's really no good reason for others to avoid it.
All people have their priorities. For most people on this community it's probably being free of cost but for some freedom is also important.
I also don't recommend against using software that's not perfect according to my personal philosophy, but I think it's important to point out any advantages and disadvanages so that anyone can decide for themselves. As I said, most people on here won't care about the difference between source available and open source.
Good point. If they'd use the term source available I'd have nothing to say. The reason I'm so pedantic is because increasingly businesses try to gain good publicity by calling their software open source while using Business Source License and similar, which are source available licenses.
I'll definitly follow this project and look where it's going.