this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
241 points (97.6% liked)

Fediverse

29917 readers
2233 users here now

A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!

Rules

Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
241
PeerTube is now (properly) supported on GrayJay (feddit.org)
submitted 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
22 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Sorry for the terrible photo, I can only upload 1 so I had to mash all these screenshots together somehow.

If you're not familiar with GrayJay, it's a cross-platform video app. You can watch and search videos from YouTube (YMMV if you use a VPN), Odyssey, Bitchute, Nebula, Kick, Twitch, pretty much anything you can imagine, and aggregates all your subscriptions and searches into 1 cross-platform feed. And if it's not on there you can create your own plugin. There's a repository here.

PeerTube has been supported since day 1 but previously you could only view videos from the instance you added, so you had to add them all individually. It was updated recently and seems to not be tied to any instances at all. You can view comments but it doesn't seem to support login right now so you won't be able to "like" or leave comments. I've asked them to add this functionality.

For PeerTube you'll probably have to go into the sources and enable it. You'll probably also want to enable SepiaSearch at the bottom (this searches across instances, for those who have opted into search).

I don't really know how to explain the monetization model. There's a $10 lifetime license fee. They're adamant that it's not free (as in beer) but if you don't pay for the license, nothing happens πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ I paid for it because it's awesome.

You can download from F-Droid (using FUTO repository) or direct from grayjay.app (the app updates itself).

There's also a desktop version, and your license works for both. Although the desktop version is really nice, it's not yet as polished as the mobile one. It also supports syncing your data over your local network.

Source code here

Enjoy!

all 23 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Can we get a grayjay Android TV app?

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

The value of Grayjay and other similar apps (Freetube, Newpipe) is based on their ability to continue to show Youtube video. If Youtube finds a way to block these apps, they will not be popular.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago

Thank you for the unwarranted explanation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

What's the eta on installing in the main apt repos?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

When will it be available in the main fdroid repos?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 28 minutes ago) (2 children)

GrayJay is an app associated with Louis Rossmann and lot of people seems to like him and therefore has gotten lot of traction lately but there is something you should know. This app is not open source even though source may be available. The app is not licensed in any existing open source license such as GPL, BSD, or MIT, etc. The source license is basically does not allow freedom of redistribution of modified code so therefore it fails the minimal definition of open source. Louis Rossmann has gone on the record on video saying he will sue people if someone were to do something with code he does not approve of whatever that means. Number of people have tried to tell him not to call GrayJay an open source app but he simply ignored them. It's pretty clear he is now just calling this app open source for marketing purposes which I think is misleading and deceptive.

If you want to buy the app because you find it useful and you don't care about open source, that's perfectly fine. However if you believe that supporting an open source ecosystem is part of the reason for supporting GrayJay, then you should know what's really happening here.

EDIT: I did some digging and it appears Louis Rossmann has stopped referring GrayJay as open source app. I tried searching for his original GrayJay announcement video and it appears it's gone. I guess enough people have pestered him about his misconception of open source so he removed all mention of open source. GrayJay does have a source code available and it comes with LICENSE. Good on him to clarify the situation. Just for clarification, it is clearly not open source because of non-commercial limitation. This license is not compatible with open source so using any portion in your open source project is not allowed. The limitation is so broad that it's probably best to just stay far away from it to be safe.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago

The source license is basically does not allow freedom of redistribution of modified code so therefore it fails the minimal definition of open source

That's not correct, you should read it more closely.

Louis Rossmann has gone on the record on video saying he will sue people if someone were to do something with code he does not approve of whatever that means.

He was very explicit that he does not want people doing what they do specifically with NewPipe, which is to redistribute it with ads or malicious code. Which I think is very fair. He also doesn't want companies like Google making billions of dollars on the backs of community projects.

If you're unsure you can contact them about acquiring a license.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 hours ago

If you want to buy the app

GrayJay is free, just FYI

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

What does buying a license get you?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago

You get to whip the greyjay's ass

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 hours ago

a warm fuzzy feeling :D

But seriously it gets you nothing, they're doing the winrar model

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

The warm satisfaction of supporting the developer.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 hours ago

Thats good for about 5 minutes

[–] [email protected] 18 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Warning, GrayJay fails to include a libre software license text file. We do not control it, anti-libre software.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

Not being libre doesn't make it anti-libre.

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

β€˜Open source’ is a very ambiguous, confusing, phrase that makes it too easy to get scammed out of libre software (and 'closed source' and proprietary).

[–] [email protected] 10 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Don't they? I'm aware of the events that took place when they released it. But seems they've solved licensing by now. There is a License.md in that repo since a few months. FUTO seems to even have written blog posts about their licensing, detailing why they do it. In short: They like to call it open source, while it's not. It's source available. Seems from their posts, they mainly want to exclude commercial use, but I'm not sure about their legalese, and the actual license text restricts how people can share and modify it. But the licensing is there by now. It's just not an open source project. But I agree, they still like to confuse users and twist the meaning of words.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Well, any software needs to include a license of some form, if you want it to be usable by others. But if it's not an open-source or libre license, then it's a proprietary license. That's not necessarily a bad thing. At that point, it depends on what's actually written into the license. But it's also not a good thing, as you miss out on various open-source benefits due to there being no proven legal compatibility with open-source licenses. Well, and if I remember correctly, FUTO's license actively prohibits reuse of the code anyways.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

I share your opinion. They seem to have clarified a few things, though. Their license states what kind of reuse is allowed. You need to read it thoroughly. For example you can study the code or adapt it for personal hobby projects, if it's non-commercial and you add the required statements... But I think it's completely unappealing to use GrayJay or contribute to the project. It's not Free Software, so you don't get much in return. They tell you you should send pull requests, but as far as I can see there is no way of logging in to their GitLab. So you somehow need to hunt down their GitHub mirror, and file something there, in the hopes someone is going to read it amongst the hundreds and hundreds of open bugreports... And their phrasing and use of the term "open source" is just annoying and bound to confuse people. I'm not sure what Louis Rossman is doing these days, but when they launched it, he was making videos with lots of outright false claims about the licensing. A lot of that hasn't been ideal. I've sent them some comments back in 2023. But they never replied directly. I believe they took notice of the discussion and promised to step up their game concerning their community. But I don't think they're doing a particularly good job. And I suspect they lack a deeper understanding of what Free Software is, what it's about and good at, how to foster a community that's not just alike what you get on Youtube as a creator.

But I'm not mad at them. As long as they keep Louis' promise of not prosecuting any individual for getting confused by their mixed signals. They seem to be mildly successful with whoever their target audience is. Guess I'm just not a part of that. But I have NewPipe/Tubular, my browser with the proper Ad-blocking in place, so I can live a comfortable life without GrayJay.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 14 hours ago

Nice!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 20 hours ago

It's so cool to see the fediverse taking off and things maturing! :D

I can't wait to see how things develop in a few years.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 20 hours ago

Nice!