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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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Privacy
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
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- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
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- Be nice :)
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GrayJay is still working.
That's ~~proprietary~~ non-libre so not an option unfortunately
Edit: Fixed technicality
It's open source, you just can't fork it.
Edit, I'll rephrase that. You can fork it and do whatever, even remove the "please donate" thing, but if you distribute any spy/malware versions they have legal avenues to force it to get taken down.
That's not open source, it's source-available
Sounds more like open source but not free software?
As confusing as it is, if you're to follow the generally accepted definition from the Open Source Initiative, "open-source" doesn't just mean open source code, but also openness to modification and redistribution - what you called free, others call libre, etc. Just having an open source code, they call "source available".
It annoys me to no end, but it is what it is...
But if "You can fork it and do whatever, even remove the “please donate” thing, but if you distribute any spy/malware versions they have legal avenues to force it to get taken down", that sounds like open source to me? You can indeed modify and redistribute it in almost any way you would like!
That's not a free software license though. Libre software must give you the right to run, study, modify and distribute the code. It doesn't do that to my knowledge.
Correct it does not technically fit into FOSS, however the source code is still open for review, allowing you to run, study and modify the code. The only restriction is distribution.
If your personal model is to strictly use FOSS, then this program is not for you.
However, if your model is more about the ability to make personal modification, or to study the code to verify it is not malicious or spying, then this program allows for that.
It is also worth noting this program isn't technically free (money), but there are no checks if you actually paid. It's up to you and your own morals to pay or not. For me, I consider it no different than an obnoxious "buy me a coffee" button - if it bugs you that much, go delete it from the code you run.
Exactly, I don't want software that doesn't respect the 4 freedoms. It makes forks impossible and still gives the developer unjustified power.
TBH it's not proprietary either. I'm OK with such licensing because it helps the developers fuck the clowns over who try to take their code without even a thanks. The source is available to audit if you'd like. That's what I really care about.
you can keep your proprietary trash for yourself
The amount of FOSS snobbery in this community is hilarious. You typed that comment on a proprietary device with proprietary hardware, probably running proprietary software (unless you're on Linux, truly using ALL open source stuff, including RISC-V hardware, FOSS browser and network stack). But God forbid an app is just source available instead of truly FOSS. Gasp! The horror! You should complain about it using one of the completely closed-source Android/iPhone apps that you use every day.
LMAO
I mean, this is a privacy community. The best way to ensure privacy is to be able (in theory) to inspect and modify without restriction the source of everything you are using. Seems natural and unsurprising that people who care about privacy would overwhelmingly prefer FOSS.
Sure, I get the preference. But these people are acting like GrayJay is somehow worse than completely closed-source software that they use every day. It's obviously not as good as FOSS, but being able to audit the code makes it a lot more useful and safe than your average closed-source software.
If I had said something about ReVanced, which is a FOSS project that only repackages a completely closed-source app (YouTube) then nobody would have said anything negative. But because I mentioned GrayJay instead, I get gatekeeping responses about "proprietary trash".
It's so stupid.
The person who called your suggestion "trash" was definitely being needlessly antagonistic, I'm with you there. There's no reason why you making a helpful suggestion that isn't 100% perfect deserves responses like that. At least you're trying to help, they're just being an ass.
I think it's more that people think of it in terms of what kind of software do they want to add to their daily habits? Regardless of whatever apps they use already that are privacy nightmares, the goal is probably to try only adding new apps that are great for privacy. It's not necessarily hypocritical to not have replaced everything yet, and still refuse to install new privacy concerns, even if they are less concerning than existing apps.
I run GNU/Linux on a Corebooted laptop. That's my main device and the one I normally use to access Lemmy.
And FYI, I don't run any proprietary app on my phone which runs a free software build of Android. Everything is installed from F-Droid.
It's true that it runs proprietary firmware, but there's currently no way around it. Unlike Grayjay, which is proprietary just because their greedy creators didn't want people forking their app.
Fortunately, Invidious, Piped, Libretube and Newpipe all exist and work flawlessly so there's no excuse to use proprietary trash like that.
Greedy? Lmao the app is free to use. My point is that you make compromises elsewhere with proprietary hardware and software, just like everybody else here, but you decide to draw the line at GrayJay just because it's only source available? That's silly, you're just making yourself feel good with holier-than-thou bullshit.
Also, for the record, I've tried all the fully FOSS alternatives and they all have crap UX. GrayJay just works, like a good app should, and you can plug multiple accounts in from different platforms. It's an excellent product, and it shows what excellent developers are capable of doing in a short time. It's impressively stable for an app this young. But I guess you'll never see for yourself because it's "proprietary trash". Lol.
I draw the line at the firmware level, yes, because sadly it's insanely difficult to get a device that can be 100% free software. But from the OS level and up, everything that runs in my devices is free software. That of course includes apps. And Grayjay is no exception to that.
Source available or proprietary is the same to me, it restricts my freedoms as a computer user to not be able to freely modify and distribute my programs as I please.
Actually, I'd prefer for the Grayjay devs just to make it fully proprietary instead of falsely claiming it to be "open source" and using it as marketing. I have no problem with people using proprietary or source available programs. What bothers me are the misleading claims of the creator calling Grayjay open source, when clearly it is not.
Can't you still modify and distribute Grayjay, just not commercially? I understand that still prevents the app from being considered open source, but their reasoning is valid IMO (to prevent people from making ad-infested clones on the play store, which has happened with NewPipe before).
Isn't the very point of this post that Invidious and Piped don't work flawlessly?
for OP. But there are multiple comments saying they are working normally.
I don't use Piped a lot, but I can verify that Invidious and Newpipe are working as normal.
I've been using FreeTube since Piped was very inconsistent for me, but I guess that's just the nature of these services. I'll have to check out Invidious again, last time I tried it was several years ago and I stopped using it after the main instance shut down. Is it still under active development? I remember its development status being unclear, partially because the language it uses is not super mainstream, but it's probably changed since then.
Another fosstard