Alternative: https://flathub.org/apps/rocks.shy.VacuumTube
The UI is regular YouTube for TV but bundles plugins such as SposorBlock.
lol, this is kinda confusing.
Never seen something on steam that says “coming soon” and also “no longer available on steam” before.
Schrödinger’s front end
The more I hear about Louis Rossman and Futo the less I trust either of them. I used to like Louis for his right to repair conversations, but Futo is a very shady organization. They act like they promote open source but refuse to adopt actual FOSS licensing and try to be overly corporate while also trying to play the pro-consumer side. I don’t like it. There are YouTube frontends made by actual FOSS developers with proper FOSS licenses, so I’m not sure why anyone should support or use Grayjay.
Rossman doesn’t work for FUTO anymore. FUTO has done some weird shit and Rossman has made some missteps in the past, but at least for him his heart seems to be in the right place. I don’t think it’s in his nature to want to screw you over so to speak.
Did he quit? I don’t see any concrete references online, just vague form conversations about it.
Not sure if he quit or was fired, but he updated his employment status with FUTO on LinkedIn.
Why though?
Probably for additional exposure to the public and to monetize via paid DLC as a ‘supporter tier’ style offering (with limited or no added features).
Grayjay is donationware - “FOSS”, but with a strong encouragement to donate if you use it regularly and have the means to support.
I put FOSS in quotes because Grayjay is not really OSS. It has a custom license that does not allow commercial reuse of its code.
This has caused significant discussion of concerns and ire from some.
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/grayjay-frontend/14616
https://github.com/futo-org/grayjay-android/issues/18
https://hiphish.github.io/blog/2023/10/18/grayjay-is-not-open-source/
P. S. Grayjay is great software, I use it a lot and have reported several bugs which the dev team have been super responsive to and resolved all. I have supported them with a donation purely on the aforementioned, but their license is a bummer. I’d like to see other projects be able to reuse their code widely as true OSS. I also personally have concerns with the example screenshots they show on site having a bunch of RW content creators / grifters, and their support of the Rumble service as an official plugin, but I understand they are free-speech aligned and trying to be apolitical in their approach. I personally think they could do that without giving RW figures free advertising in their screenshots, and allowing a third-party to create the Rumble plugin rather than dedicating dev work to support it officially, but it’s just a red flag to me more than a dealbreaker.
(Edit - see comments below, Futo is worse than I was aware).
And Futo’s ties to Curtis Yarvin, red flag or dealbreaker?
Fuck all that shit, wtf
I wasn’t t aware of the Curtis Yarvin link at all. I’ve just read that blog article and it’s not possible to remain cautiously optimistic or give them benefit of the doubt… the FUTO founder (Eron Wolf) seems very clearly ideologically-aligned with fascists.
Well, now I’m really hoping they change their license to true open source, so a group less ideologically disastrous can fork it and take the helm for interested contributors and supporters to join.
