Plex isn’t perfect by any means but giving them $100 8 years ago was not unreasonable. If you get a ton of use out of Jellyfin then you really should be giving them at least that much for building you a media center with all those features. The alternatives are much more expensive than that. Also, software doesn’t develop itself. Give back to the people who make your life better or prepare for them to stop doing so.
Yeah, I’ve definitely gotten a huge amount of value out of plex lifetime. The problem with plex is the same as all commercial software. The profit motive is guaranteed to enshittify all of them eventually. Even companies that strike a good balance (e.g. Valve) are only a few deaths or bad decisions away from vultures and parasites taking over and destroying it for short term profit. I’ve personally experienced this over a dozen times in the last ~20 years, across most classes of software. That’s why I refuse to pay for most closed software. All of plex’s decisions over the last 5-10 years indicate it’s only a matter of time before they completely destroy the value proposition. I also won’t pay them a cent more, because of this trend.
The major problem with FOSS is the funding mechanisms available. Most require subscriptions too high to justify monthly when you want to donate to 10 projects, let alone 100; most don’t even do yearly, or require some large minimum (like $50 or $100). I assume this is entirely because of the banking fees involved. Most are also built on top of other FOSS that nobody ever donates to. IMO the only long term solution is for legislation that forces all banking and payments for FOSS/charities to be zero fee – for all parties – plus the development of a FOSS payment platform where you can setup a single recurring sub that is split among as many projects as you choose, but also splits a sub-portion among all FOSS dependencies. The platform could even provide a script that users can run to periodically update their donation list. I don’t want to donate to every FOSS dependency used in Jellyfin. I want all those dependencies to receive their cut, and for that to be the FOSS industry standard.
FYI I believe Jellyfin is cashed up and recommends donating elsewhere. I personally dropped $100 on VLC last year because I realised I’d never done that in 25 years of being a mainstay.
Could be, but that doesn’t remove the value I’ve gotten from it in the last 8 years. There’s no guarantee Jellyfin won’t enshittify or disappear either. That’s life, nothing is certain.
Plex isn’t perfect by any means but giving them $100 8 years ago was not unreasonable. If you get a ton of use out of Jellyfin then you really should be giving them at least that much for building you a media center with all those features. The alternatives are much more expensive than that. Also, software doesn’t develop itself. Give back to the people who make your life better or prepare for them to stop doing so.
Yeah, I’ve definitely gotten a huge amount of value out of plex lifetime. The problem with plex is the same as all commercial software. The profit motive is guaranteed to enshittify all of them eventually. Even companies that strike a good balance (e.g. Valve) are only a few deaths or bad decisions away from vultures and parasites taking over and destroying it for short term profit. I’ve personally experienced this over a dozen times in the last ~20 years, across most classes of software. That’s why I refuse to pay for most closed software. All of plex’s decisions over the last 5-10 years indicate it’s only a matter of time before they completely destroy the value proposition. I also won’t pay them a cent more, because of this trend.
The major problem with FOSS is the funding mechanisms available. Most require subscriptions too high to justify monthly when you want to donate to 10 projects, let alone 100; most don’t even do yearly, or require some large minimum (like $50 or $100). I assume this is entirely because of the banking fees involved. Most are also built on top of other FOSS that nobody ever donates to. IMO the only long term solution is for legislation that forces all banking and payments for FOSS/charities to be zero fee – for all parties – plus the development of a FOSS payment platform where you can setup a single recurring sub that is split among as many projects as you choose, but also splits a sub-portion among all FOSS dependencies. The platform could even provide a script that users can run to periodically update their donation list. I don’t want to donate to every FOSS dependency used in Jellyfin. I want all those dependencies to receive their cut, and for that to be the FOSS industry standard.
FYI I believe Jellyfin is cashed up and recommends donating elsewhere. I personally dropped $100 on VLC last year because I realised I’d never done that in 25 years of being a mainstay.
Wont be long before the terms change on what Plex considers “lifetime”
Could be, but that doesn’t remove the value I’ve gotten from it in the last 8 years. There’s no guarantee Jellyfin won’t enshittify or disappear either. That’s life, nothing is certain.
Well, Jellyfin is released under the GPL license, which may not be a guarantee, but is probably about as good as you can get.
I bet you are really fun at parties.
Typically? Yeah I think so. Wanna come next time?
No I’m not good at parties.