From Plex to Jellyfin Media Server

Plex is one of the reasons I now always choose open source over closed source but free as in beer. They start out great but as financial constraints creep in the compromises are made that create a very unpleasant experience. For example, I'd love to use Obsidian, which is an amazing app, but who knows what will happen to it in the future.

With Obsidian the thing that made me ok with this was it's all just markdown. I have all my data stored locally in an ubiquitous file format

This is the primary motivating factor for why I like https://prose.sh

You store your markdown files locally and then copy them to your hosted blog.

But there's an entire workflow embedded in the use of Obsidian. It's not "just markdown". That's like saying you could move from vscode to notepad because it's "just text".

Yup and that is my problem with startups like supabase too. I have just started using pocketbase for that reason.

I posted about Foam, an open source alternative to Obsidian that run in VSCode, just yesterday [0]. It can work interoperable with Obsidian on the same files and folders, if that's your preference.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33561876

It’s not unreasonable to say I could build my own without having to reverse engineer the data format though.

I only lose the convenience of Obsidian, not the data I spent years building.

Yeah this. Would it suck? Yes. Would I be as fucked as some other platforms? No.

I don’t use Obsidian, but their bustiness model seems simple and honest. Hopefully, I think the worst that can happen is that they will get acquired by a larger company to be sunset.

> I now always choose open source over closed source but free as in beer.

> They start out great but as financial constraints creep in

Funny how you talk about financial constraints, and still refuse to pay for software.

How does supabase not qualify as open source?

Their stack is primarily comprised of other independent open source projects. The one component that isn't is their "realtime" server that serves updates from postgres' WAL over websockets, but that is open sourced[0] under Apache 2.0. From my understanding the primary part that has not been open sourced is their database browser / web UI. There are plenty of alternative management tools for postgres though. As you can export your database what else would you need to ensure your portability and independence?

Granted they make their docs fairly opaque for trying to self host. Presumably to encourage you to just use their hosted service. Hosting open sourced projects seems like a very ecosystem friendly way of monetizing.

[0] https://github.com/supabase/realtime

Paying won't guarantee you the soft you pay for won't switch business model for subscription, or sell to a bigger company that will extinguish it.

lol, wasn't it the same with Plex? They just built lots of features around locally stored data.

What's the workflow beyond opening up the app and starting to type in a new or existing document?

Not paying for software all but guarantees that it will be abandoned at one point. People want to eat, after all.

(The dichotomy between "I must earn a gazillion dollars because I'm a senior dev" and "I will not pay money (that pays those salaries) for software" that's so prevalent on HN is mind boggling)

For all we know, OP is donating to all the projects they use that accept donations.

I paid $75 for plex 9 years ago and have gotten way more than my monies worth. Their shift to monetization In my opinion is over blown. You can simply go and turn that crap off. Having my media on any device at any time is a life changer. Especially with small kids.

Just like Obsidian, right?

Yep except instead of it being a note-taking app, it's a blog platform.

Your question is the equivalent to "how does Obsidian differ from a minimalist Markdown editor."

That's a non sequitur. I was talking about financial constraints of the company, not the user. I'd have no problem paying for a piece of critical software if they contractually guaranteed that they wouldn't break the functionality and/or litter it with ads, or at least make it open source if they do. It has nothing to do with my personal financial constraints. That's a misinterpretation on your part.

Yes Linux and Vim are dead. There are also no other examples of long lived open source projects that are free.

From what I've been told a lot of the frustration is that you can't simply turn it off for your server, all your users have to do it individually. If you've set it up for non-techie people who don't live nearby I can see how that'd be pretty annoying to deal with.

Linux is primarily developed by large corporations.

And there are significantly more projects that have stagnated and disappeared than those that survived.

"Financial constraints" of a company, any company, are such that:

- development costs money

- workplaces cost money

- people want to eat

You can pay for Plex with money (Plex Pass). And while I sort of dislike them pushing their own content and monetization, it can be easily switched off in settings.

> From my understanding the primary part that has not been open sourced is their database browser / web UI.

FYI, this is also open source: https://github.com/supabase/supabase/tree/master/studio

Apparently a free model works perfectly well. I am using Jellyfin happily. Why should I use Plex when Jellyfin works without all the cruft? The developers working on Jellyfin are doing perfectly fine in their endeavors. Is your suggestion that a project is deserving of more use if it is paid for rather than free? Are free projects poisoning the well for all of us trying to make money off of software? Not sure what point you are trying to make.

Whether a project is free or not is not the only consideration as to whether I adopt it for my workflow, just a core one.

> The developers working on Jellyfin are doing perfectly fine in their endeavors.

As long as they have something to keep them above poverty line: https://staltz.com/software-below-the-poverty-line.html (among other articles, the question of how free open source isn't sustainable is discussed often)

Exactly. Actually, this blog post is about how it’s not very painful to migrate.

I have some copy pasta with screen shots on how to turn that stuff off I spent a bit making. Just send that out and let people know respectfully that I’m not providing tech support and I hope they enjoy the service. I don’t have anyone bug me ever.

Logseq is what I use for that reason. https://logseq.com/

Org Roam calls to thee. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyhPmypHDEw