• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    31
    ·
    5 months ago

    Yup, as much as I like Grayjay, I’m not going to help development much because it’s “source available” instead of open source. There was an annoying bug I wanted fixed, and I was willing to go set up my dev environment and track it down, but they don’t seem interested in contributions, so I won’t make the effort.

    Likewise for WinAmp. The main benefit to it being “source available” is that I can recompile it and researchers can look for bugs. That’s it. They’re not going to get developers interested.

    • solrize@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      5 months ago

      Even if they accept patches, contributing still sounds like a bad deal. It’s free labor for some company. FOSS at minimum means the right to fork, precisely what “source available” seeks to deny.

      Leaving aside the question of winamp vs comparable programs, does anyone even care about desktop music players any more? I’m a throwback and use command line players, but I thought the cool kids these days use phones for stuff like that.

      I understand there is some technical obstacle to porting Rockbox to Android, but idk what it is and haven’t tried to look into it.

      • sorghum@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        5 months ago

        I look at ‘source available’ software as the right to review the code yourself to ensure there’s no malicious behavior, not for community development.

        • solrize@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          5 months ago

          You mean if you build it yourself? I guess that is something, but it is still conceivable to sneak stuff in. Look at that xzlib backdoor from a few weeks ago.

    • Veraxus@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      5 months ago

      Yep. I will happily contribute to something with community ownership that I believe in. I will not, under any circumstances, provide free labor to a private entity.