Seriously this was very surprising. I’ve been experimenting with GrayJay since it was announced and I largely think it’s a pretty sweet app. I know there are concerns over how it isn’t “true open source” but it’s a hell of a lot more open than ReVanced. Plus, I like the general design and philosophy of the app.
I updated the YouTube backend recently and to my surprise and delight they had added support for SponsorBlock. However, when I went to enable it, it warned me “turning this on harms creators” and made me click a box before I could continue.
Bruh, you’re literally an ad-blocking YouTube frontend. What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to be facilitating ad-blocking and then at the same time shame the end-user for using an extension which simply automates seeking ahead in videos. Are you seriously gonna tell me that even without Sponsorblock, if I skip ahead past the sponsored ad read in a video, that I’m “harming the creator”?
For me, terms and definitions are very important. Just like right to repair is often misrepresented to the detriment of consumers, it’s important to only talk about open source if the license actually respects your freedom [1].
Open source has a lot of positive connotations and calling some project open source while only being source available feels like taking advantage of it.
It’s similar to how large corporations talking about being eco friendly with their packaging whilst making the actual devices as hard to repair as possible.
You’re right, the ReVanced project is open source, but the resulting app is not, since it’s modifying the official YouTube app.
[1] https://opensource.org/osd/