The value of youtube-dl wasn't the software. It was the community. It was the ability to respond, within hours, to a change made on any given site. I.e. youtube-dl stopped working? No problem, file an issue, wait a day, solved.
That is now gone. And the world is simply going to have to accept that it is gone, or figure out a way to get it back. Because that was the sole reason youtube-dl mattered. Not the software.
Yes, this youtube-dl2 thing is certainly ... clever. I guess that's the point, right? "Look! youtube-dl can still be downloaded!" That's why it has 34 upvotes right now, right?
... But so what? In a day, no one will remember it, and it won't have any impact. There's no community here. The community was the key.
I just don't understand why people will do ten thousand mental backflips to avoid admitting defeat here. Yes, go ahead and clone this software far and wide. Make three youtube-dl templates! Etc.
In three months, after youtube-dl is broken on most websites, no one will know where to turn, or how to update it, or how to file issues, or any of the things that made youtube-dl special. Because youtube-dl wasn't software. It was people; the combined effort of hundreds (thousands?) of people. That collaborative space is now gone.
I am mortified to hear myself speak so negatively, with not one positive thing to say. I used to despise people like that. And here I am, doing the same thing.
But you know what? You, personally, can solve this problem. You have the power to build The Next Thing. The thing that doesn't suffer this same fate.
The tech can exist. I urge you to (a) think about a long-term solution, and then (b) devote years of your life to making it a reality.
Until then, though, just accept that youtube-dl is gone, and be done with it.