Grayjay – Follow Creators Not Platforms
grayjay.app
grayjay.app
There's also another discussion of the license on this thread that hasn't been merged yet
He replied to my comment but didn't seem to care about the issue.
I wish they would develop a license friendly to both businesses that want to ship software that is source available and users of that software. One could strike a balance between full OSS and legitimate needs of the producer to live off their creation.
If it is not using and OSI-approved license and claims to be open source it is open washing. Call it shared source or something else.
This is a long since settled debate.
OSI isn't authoritative of the term.
Regardless of what other uses the word open has/had, "open source" was defined by OSI and they are authoritative over the term.
If I define climate neutral as climate positive, climate neutral doesn't become climate positive nor do I get authority of the term climate neutral.
Some terms were defined by a community and their use defended. Others were defined by a community, appropriated by others, distorted by others and subsequently abandoned by the original community. And yet others, were abandoned and then reclaimed by the original community.
"Open Source" is in the first category, defined by OSI and defended by the FLOSS community. It is actively being defended, and fish much bigger than you have failed to topple the community.
Nope it's what you and OSI try to do.
Is this a hill you really want to die on?
It doesn’t matter at all.
The “can see code” = “must be open source” argument is stupid because it’s entirely opinion based. You cannot be right about it.
It depends what you choose to define “open source” as. If you define it as some arbitrary thing (eg. I can read the source code) then of course you’re right. …but you can’t force other people to accept your arbitrary definition.
You can only have an opinion about it.
Same as anyone else.
Is it really worth the argument?
Source available is unambiguous, being explicit (“source can be download from GitHub”) I means you don’t have to waste your time on arguments like this for, what seems, truely trivial reasons.
How does it?
"Source available is unambiguous"
It's not, because it could be hidden behind a pay wall.
But you may call source-available software whatever you want, just not open source unless it's under and OSI-approved license.
You can use any words other than the phrase "open source" to be as unambiguous as you want.
If you feel it’s not explicit enough be more explicit (source is available from xxx of you login or whatever).
If you want a legal opinion, get a lawyer, that’s what they do.
If you just want to do what’s “normal”, take a successful project (eg. Unreal) and do what they do.
It seems like a total non issue.
EDIT: See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
Microsoft gave up and now only calls OSI-approved licenses open source.
Open Source means OSI-approved.
If you can read the source code but it's not OSI-approved, than it's source-available or shared source or something else.
Proprietary software and closed source refer to the same thing.
Most people you've interacted are wrong. sorry...
Maybe there's some hidden point you're trying to make by associating these concepts but it'd be easier if you said it plainly.
Other than that I think you find that people in real life don't tend to be exact in their use of language all the time, and calling understandable imprecisions "wrong" tends to decrease the number of friends you get.
The history of the term is very clear. The term was coined by Christine Peterson in a group session in 1998 with Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Michael Tiemann, and Eric S. Raymond. Months later the OSI was created by the same people in order to manage that definition. There is nothing unclear here. "Open source" is defined by OSI and it has been defined by them from the very start.
If communities let others distort words, those words loose their meaning. As a well known example, the word "woke" which has long been abandoned by the community that coined it.
"Open source" is an actively defended term by the organisation that originally defined it and the community around them.
The web is full of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript you can see the source for; and for which you can be sued by copying for your own commercial gain. By your definition, websites are open source; and yet, they are proprietary work. Something having its source open doesn’t make it Open Source.
This kind of doublespeak reeks of Reddit-grade corporate astroturfing.
The Open Source licenses are defined and protected in a certain way. You can’t just say “oh, me and my friends don’t think of it like that” and expect to be correct. I can’t build an app scamming people out of currency by abusing ISO 4217, and then excuse myself under “me and the people I know disagree with ISO”. OSI protects the licenses, the Vegan Society certifies what ‘vegan’ means, ISO does ISO things, and so on.
It’s okay to admit we’re wrong or ignorant, so I won’t pretend I’m an expert in this area. I also wouldn’t call anyone Stallman just because they are defending a term that deserves protection. “Source available” but not under the terms of an OSI license is NOT compliant with the term.
I'm sorry, I thought it was obvious.
As "proprietary software" and "closed source" refer to the same it wouldn't be logical to use the opposite "open source" to refer to "proprietary software".
People don't have to be exact in their language, the point is for the other to understand what you mean.
I consider it the most polite and the most constructive to use the definition from the believers themselves.
Academic, as in relating to education and scholarship. Anarchy, as in without Archons. Archons, as in leaders of ancient Greek city-states. Let the communist define what it is, let the socialist, let the Jew, let the ufologist etc
There is the Open Source Initiative, the page starts with what they consider Open Source. https://opensource.org/osd/
Besides practicality the website also states: Never use or register any trademarks that are confusingly similar to, or a play on, the OSI or OSI Logo. An example of unacceptable is given: "Open Source Project"
- only grants the right "to access and use the code solely for the purposes of review, compilation and non-commercial distribution."
- only grants the right "provide the code to anyone else and publish excerpts of it for the purposes of review, compilation and non-commercial distribution"
- "you are not entitled to use or do anything with the code for any commercial or other purpose, other than review, compilation and non-commercial distribution"
This breaks all 4 freedoms the free software definition and at least aspects 1,3,4 and 6 of the OSD.
From a legal POV, this project is unforkable. You are not allowed to modify this in any way (even just for your own use).
Furthermore, you are not even allowed to use this internally (unmodified and without ever distributing it). I am not even sure it is possible to legally be a user of the software for its intended purpose. The license states clearly that "other than review, compilation and non-commercial distribution" you "are not entitled to use or do anything" and that includes using the compiled result to watch videos. This is about as restrictive as the MS-RSL.
Basically, the only thing you can do with it is archive it and look at it. (and wait lifetime + 70 years until it becomes public domain)
How has this stopped you from being source available for your business? :)
That is what the BSL is for. It is not an open source license but it is a source available licence that automatically transitions to an open source license after a predetermined amount of time.
https://youtu.be/5DePDzfyWkw?t=628
TLDR: they used an OSI-approved version on a previous app, someone forked it, filled it with ads, and published it in the app store trying to make it look like the original one. They are ok with people modifying the app, just not doing that.
I am not saying that this is the best approach, but that is their justification at least.
To me personally, as long as I can see the source and modify it, it is open source. OSI-certified is a subset of that. OSI clains that they "define" Open Source, and I think that is mostly true, just not 100%.
The fact that OSI doesn't have a license which prevents the malicious forking mentioned above seems like an indication that they won't (or can't) cover some cases that I believe are open source.
> They are ok with people modifying the app, just not doing that.
And the license is more restrictive than that I believe. If they drop the project without changing the license I'm not sure you could fork it while asking for donation (Depends on how you interpret: "directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation").
As for malicious forking as other mentioned you can use trademark to prevent it.
It clearly states "you are not entitled to use or do anything with the code for any commercial or other purpose, other than review, compilation and non-commercial distribution".
That means that if you compile it unmodified, you are NOT entitled to use the compiled binary to watch videos. You are not entitled to install or execute the binary. You are not entitled to use it in any way other than reviewing it.
This is what happens when idiots get creative with licenses.
- https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped - https://newpipe.net/
IIRC piped uses a network of proxies which is exposed as a service, so youtube is not even aware of what clients are watching.
Also, I find it a bit funny that with their goals and target initial audience, they have social presence on Twitter but not mastodon/bluesky.
like, the Youtube/Twitch feed be their main content with a camera directly on the creator with them superimposed on a screen recording, and the TikTok feed might be a different angle. But the comments and interactions are wildly different. The main purpose is to funnel towards either one, or yet another platform for payment, but this can be entertaining on its own to watch both.
does your app solve anything for that use case, or have any aspirations to? I think its useful to just be able to follow someone around, I have always contended that social graphs are easily exportable and the platform doesn't matter and I'd like to see social graphs as a first class citizen as opposed to being happenstance behind social media company's newfangled platforms.
If you are then subscribed to their YouTube channel, you will also see content they post on any other platform like Patreon, etc.
You subscribe to the creator, not the platform identity.
We cannot easily provide social graphs for platforms we cannot control. However, we also offer the option to make Polycentric comments where you as the commenter own your comment, rather than the platform owning the comment.
Polycentric is an open protocol https://docs.polycentric.io/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLoCtRzTkJQ&t=0s and you are free to create any social graph you might want to.
I hope this answers your question sufficiently.
Perhaps in the future once we have a bit more time we can spend more time adding platforms.
Would it just stop working when WEI is implemented?
If you want to be Free Libre Open Source Software then use an OSI and FSF approved licence.
If you want to be FLOSS and protect your brand from people cloning your app, do like Mozilla and use a trademark + MPL.
If you don't want to be open source don't call it open source, it's shared source or something else.
I told him and he did not seem to consider it a big deal.
It's not shared source, since anyone is able to inspect the source code, not just a subset of people
Open source means OSI-approved licence and that will not change.
This is shared source or source-available, not open source.
And, obviously, thanks to your comments, the debate doesn't seem to be settled.
It's also not the only deceptive Adventisten. He also claimed that you can use it how you want the only use case they want prevent is injecting ads into their app. But that could be better solved with a trademark.
At first please define "open source".
1. Do you use this term as an alias for "The Open Source Definition" [0] as presented by the Open Source Initiative? In such case, the Grayjay project's license seems to not meet this definition.
2. Do you use it in a more general sense to mean any software whose source code is publicly available? In such case, the Grayjay project fully meets this definition.
[0] https://opensource.org/osd/
I would be very cautious to assume that the term "open source" must always and in all contexts be interpreted as having the meaning described by the definition 1.
Some people do not care about using pirated versions of Office.
Some people care very much about whether software is or isn't open source especially when it is claimed to be but isn't.
Being open source means that if FUTO goes bankrupt or is purchased or abandons GrayJay due to unprofitability or decides to pivot and become anti-user or etc. etc., then the app can be forked.
The current licences is so stupid that not only does it not allow forking, it actually does not allow using the app for it's intended purpose. This is egregious open-washing.
You subscribe to the creator, not the platform identity.
There are also very simple dedup algorithms to try and deduplicate your feed. However, they can probably still be improved.
YouTube could argue that this is piracy and Apple might side with them.
Still, they could distribute the package (and let people side load it on jailbroken devices or through XCode if they are developers). Grayjay is not on the Play Store either, afterall. But the audience is probably too small to bother.
Getting our data out of these platforms is a feat!
But, if in doubt, you're probably aarch64
1. not open source.
2. has pay-to unlock feature but no idea what is behind the paywall. the website doesn't mention having to pay for it
3. does not have sponsorblock or anything related to that in the settings
edit: i don't care about "OSI compliant is only open source", rather i am fine with any free license