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Sytten
wizhi
Is this any different from other alternate YouTube apps like NewPipe?
tcfhgj
Can't you use the APIs without accepting the TOS?
_5ygc
I’m not sure about these specific platforms, but we consume a lot of APIs at work for which we must agree to specific conditions of these APIs. That seems reasonable, otherwise the TOS cannot be enforced (because they can be ignored).
hiccuphippo
If you start using something without ever reading the ToS, did you accept it?
desmond373
Been using it today, if they want mass adoption theyll need to gind a way to import subscriptions from youtube and find some slightly better way to recommend videos. They arent going for mass adoption right now so ill say that it works just as expected and is a very smooth experiance. Maybe a few ui tweeks(let me sub from search results please) and some fixes to the loading screens but i can see myself using this on and off for the forseeable future.
koen31
You can click source -> YouTube -> Login followed by import subscriptions.
p4thogenesis
Looks like there's a bug when importing subs where only a whole page worth amount of subs will load only allowing you to import a small amount. This also applies to Playlist imports.
judiisis
It is not Open Source as claimed by Louis Rossmann https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay/-/blob/master...
Sytten
At the end of the day that is why I decided to not be open for my business. Even if you try to be on the good side its hard and you have the eternal source available vs open source debate.
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.
alexvoda
They can use whatever licence they want. It's their software. They should only call it open source if they use an OSI-approved licence. Doing otherwise is openwashing and is frowned upon.
squigz
I wonder if one reason particular groups of people have a hard time getting others to care about some issues is this tendency to make up words in order to make things sound more malicious than they are. Usually it just ends up sounding silly.
tcfhgj
It would be open washing if you couldn't look at the source code, but you can.
orlandohill
The PolyForm Project has a suite of standardized, source available licenses for when using an OSI-approved open source license is inappropriate. They probably could have used PolyForm Noncommercial instead of drafting their own license.
alexvoda
> One could strike a balance between full OSS and legitimate needs of the producer to live off their creation.
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.
yreg
>and you have the eternal source available vs open source debate.
How has this stopped you from being source available for your business? :)
alexvoda
I told him directly on his channel that this is the case and that calling non-OSI licences open source is openwashing. And I recommended the Mozilla model of trademark + MPL for their purposes.
He replied to my comment but didn't seem to care about the issue.
otikik
This is addressed on the video here:
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.
Timshel
Note: the forked app in question is NewPipe and not done by them.
> 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.
alexvoda
After looking a bit more at the license, I am not even sure it is possible to use it for the intended purpose.
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.
undefined
yreg
Seems like the server is down, can you post the license if you have it loaded?
aiddun
The Gitlab is back up now.
There's also another discussion of the license on this thread that hasn't been merged yet
judiisis
dang can you merge this thread with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37925416 please
koen31
We are working on a Github mirror for the source code as soon as the Gitlab instance is back up.
geraltofrivia
I'm not super technical but if someone knows, I would love to know how does it pull the video from Youtube/Twitch in the first place? Like wouldn't Youtube try and block sending data to this application somehow? Wouldn't twitch? If not today then when it pops up on their radar, and has a meaningful dataplace.
tarruda
Also not certain about details of how it works, but there are open source youtube frontends that manage to do this, while also adblocking:
- 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.
viraptor
I'm curious if this reports playback to YT properly. I'm playing for premium and I'd like that money to go to the correct channels. They do mention the paid/unpaid mix, but explicitly call out only Patreon. Same for Nebula (with subscription) and Twitch (time watched, ads "viewed").
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.
koen31
By default sending tracking data to YouTube is disabled, but it can be enabled in the settings for the plugin (after you login). This way your money will go to the correct channels.
NEN-
Also wish they had more of a presence on Lemmy
nik736
Soo, this is basically a platform as well, right?
bryanrasmussen
https://xkcd.com/927/ you know the drill
ilaksh
I wish this was a web app.
koen31
As one of the devs of the project, I will try to answer your questions as much as possible.
alexvoda
Please tell Louis he is damaging the project by calling it open source when it is not.
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.
pbasista
> calling it open source when it is not
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.
dre_bot
Christ, no one goddamn cares if it's open source or not! It's an app sourly needed right now.
alexvoda
Your statement is obliviously false. People care about different things.
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.
tcfhgj
He called it open source, not floss, didn't he?
It's not shared source, since anyone is able to inspect the source code, not just a subset of people
alexvoda
This is a settled debate. You will not convince anyone to use your definitions. We had this debate when MongoDB switched, when CockroachDB switched and for many others. And nothing has changed.
Open source means OSI-approved licence and that will not change.
This is shared source or source-available, not open source.
philipwhiuk
Given YouTube's business model is reliant on ads and serving a stream of multiple videos how long do you seriously expect to remain unblocked?
Sytten
For the plugin I would add an API to let the developer define user settings. For example look at what Xtra (https://github.com/crackededed/Xtra) offers for twitch. The most important is to be able to set a proxy to retrieve the feed in countries without ads and even bypass country geo-locks for content. Now I would probably not ship this in the official plugin, but my point is that you need to be able to expose those settings in the plugin.
Lycake
Some creators have already branched out and are posting some of their content to multiple platforms (maybe with different titles/thumbnails targeted for the specific platform). That would show up in my feed multiple times and I would have to click on each to find out I've already watched it. Do you try to deal with that in any way?
koen31
Creators can create a polycentric identity and link their platforms together using the Harbor app. 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.
There are also very simple dedup algorithms to try and deduplicate your feed. However, they can probably still be improved.
yieldcrv
on occasion I like to watch the creator's simulcast, but different angles
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.
koen31
The first step (which is now already working) is that creators can create a polycentric identity and link their platforms together using the Harbor app.
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.
TT-392
How does the app get the youtube videos, and their info. Is it scraping, like newpipe. Using official api's, maybe something closer to what youtube vanced did?
Would it just stop working when WEI is implemented?
Lycake
Can't install, only ever get "Problem parsing the package" with the universal and the specific apk. What is the minimum required Android version? I'm still on 9
koen31
We are minimal SDK 29 right now (https://developer.android.com/tools/releases/platforms) we will look into lowering the requirement to Android 9, there seem to be quite a lot of requests for that.
Lycake
Thank you. Not really surprising to see a lot of those request. A lot of the audience is coming from Louis at the moment. Seeing his ongoing fight for right to repair, I'd expect there to be a lot of people with older phones with older android versions
IYasha
So, I'm out of luck with by Android 5 and 8? :((((((
moonleay
Will there be support for streaming videos from Piped instances?
koen31
The plugin is not in the pipeline right now. However, anybody can make a plugin (see https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/plugins for examples). We will also publish more docs soon to help people get started (heres a small getting started doc https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay/-/blob/master...).
Perhaps in the future once we have a bit more time we can spend more time adding platforms.
zakki
What is the license for the plugin?
adevopsguy
Interesting project. Too bad it doesn't (yet?) support iOS.
yreg
I have some doubts whether this would be permitted on the App Store.
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.
mx20
Maybe that changes in a few Month when Apple has to open up at least in Europe to other App Stores.
EarthAmbassador
It would be very nice if once all those sources are aggregated with this tool, including hopefully all YouTube, X, and FB lists, saved items, histories, and browser histories, that all of this can be downloaded as a .CSV we can use to train our own local LLMs.
Getting our data out of these platforms is a feat!
Ym7K8KUf
I am surprised how polished this app seems, especially for such an early stage! This is the future <3
jgtrosh
In case people are wondering which architecture their Android is (to avoid downloading the bulky universal APK), I found mine is aarch64 with `lscpu` on Termux. Not sure if there's a more straightforward & universal way of finding that out!
Retr0id
The universal way of finding out is to download their "universal" APK and not worry about finding out at all, I guess.
But, if in doubt, you're probably aarch64
koen31
Even if you download the universal APK, the app will detect which architecture you have, and the next update it will install the architecture specific one, reducing the bundle size.
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Their plugin system is interesting, they embedded a V8 engine to run JavaScript to then make some api calls to the various platforms. I am 99% sure this is against each platform ToS and that they will get sued by Twitch, YouTube, etc. Especially since they are asking people to pay. But I wish they good luck!