this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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I believe the intent of the license is to protect against someone just reskinng it and selling it for $14.99 as their own thing.
Privately, we can do whatever we want, but don't redistribute it for profit or with malware.
Seems reasonable to me.
If you actually watch the OP, he talks about this. They don't want the app to be copied and then have ads and tracking injected and then slapped onto the Play Store to exploit users like NewPipe has right now.
The issue here isn't open source, its that google forbids newpipe to be in the play store, so there is a artificial market gap created by googles policies. These clones exist because google takes time to remove apps, such as newpipe clones.
The cloners are exploiting bureaucratic inefficiency, and they are providing a service the play store users, making forbidden software available to them, even if temporarily.
The real solution should be to get the app stores to be neutral, but thats not a fight any of us can win, I realize.
I think it's the "temporary" part of the licence where the trouble comes. Yes, you're allowed to do whatever you want privately...until you're not. I mean Louis Rossman is (in my view) a very trustworthy individual, so "trust me bro" legitimately does carry a lot of weight when he's involved on the project, but "we can take away your licence at any time for no reason at all" is not something seen in the open source world.
Yeah that seems fair