Comment on That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing
derry@midwest.social 3 days ago
I see some posts taking about jellyfin and tailscale and I find it interesting that it’s not mentioned tailscale is a private company. Why are they not being held to the same standard as Plex? How long before it becomes enshittified? I saw they have a free plan but give it time until they realize the number of users in the free tier are large enough to monetize.
I have definitely seen worries about tailscale in other threads related to a recent VC funding round, I suppose they haven’t aggressively started the enshittification journey (yet), and it is also a bonus that most of tailscale is open source, e.g. headscale exists.
If tailscale started reducing the free service # of devices/users to push people towards their paid ‘personal plus’ plan then maybe we’d see a similar backlash. I say this as a tailscale user myself.
I’m very much with you.
Never understood why Plex, a once open source fork of XBMC, was seen as a positive thing when they switched to the closed source, SaaS model.
I also don’t understand the love for Tailscale when Wireguard exists.
But, anyway, the same people who are rezcting shocked to Plex can be shocked when Tailscale does the same.
They’ll probably hop on Discord to vent their frustrations before there, too, they find themselves spurred by a company with no clear plan on monetization finding out that offering hosted services at a yearly loss can only exist for so long.
Open source isn’t just about idealogy, it’s about longevity for software that can’t be clearly monetized - harken back to “amazing” services like Keybase that worked great for a few years until their VCs started asking for return of investment.
Use the shit that was made for you, not to exploit you. And if that shit isn’t up to your standard, learn to contribute, or just enjoy the corporate graveyard in which you choose to live.
(so sorry for the pseudo-unhinged rant, but between the recent Win11, Discord controversies - and now, this - I’m just fed up with all the shocked_pikachu.jpg posts I’m seeing on Lemmy)
Every for profit company will eventually go to shit, that’s a given, it’s only a matter of time. You use their services till they benefit you and when they go to shit you switch to the next best option.
The client is open source and can be administered using the open source Headscale server. I use it with Keycloak as an auth gateway.
Tailscale hasn’t removed features yet. When they do, I’m sure there will be a similar outrage.
Deuces at the ready
Tailscale and Netbird are foss software so they can always be forked. There are also. alternatives like Wireguard and Hyperspace. (Never tried hyperspace)
Tail scale already has a bunch of limitations for unpaid users but it’s only an extra step to set up wireguard in a container.
I’m not a plex/jellyfin user, but I have a server and did try setting up Wireguard (as well as headscale). Could not get either of them to work. I use containers pretty often, so no issues there, but debugging networking issues is just above my pay grade. Tailscale just worked in like 5 clicks. It was stupid easy. If the alternatives get any easier to use, I would love to switch over to FOSS.
Their free tier has always been about the same IRRC. ACL’s are basic only. Limited, but still generous users and devices.
If the drop device counts on free or eliminate ACL’s we’d also advocate leaving them.
I have never used Tailscale. I have also Jever seen anyone in the wild recommend it and explain what exactly the use-case is beyond plain, old, reliable, open source WireGuard.
So yeah, agreed.
Also I have been hosting Jellyfin publicly accessible for years with zero issues, so idk… I also dint k ow what the “you have to use Tailscale for jellyfin” people are doing with TVs/Firesticks/… in hotels, airbnbs,…
Can you point me in the direction of doing this in jellyfin? I keep finding guides and things for tailscale and whatnot but I too would like to just be able to install jellyfin on something and connect to my server.
What are you talking about? This is a post about Plex. Nobody is gonna think about bringing up Tailscale for criticism. Tailscale gets plenty of skepticism in the self hosted community, whenever I see someone recomend Tailscale I usually see someone bring up that it can be a victim of enshitification. It doesn’t get hate (yet) because they haven’t fallen to enshitification (again, yet). But the main reason is probably because you dont NEED Tailscale for Jellyfin. When it does shit the bed, use headscale, netbird, wireguard, or any other vpn if you are really are so apposed to Tailscale.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Some points as someone who does not use Tailscale:
TL;DR: This isn’t a binary “corporate versus non-corporate”.
rumba@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
Everything you said is true.
Also of note, tailscale is making a shit load off money off corporate America. Every one of us who are deciding engineers that dips our toes in goes holy fuck that’s cool and immediately pushes to implement it in a professional capacity.
And, when Tailscale reduces its free offering, it’ll be time to move to Headscale (or elsewhere).
We (most) are not advocating leaving Plex because it is not FOSS. We’re advocating leaving them because they are changing the terms in ways that have repeatedly suggested that it is circling the drain and feasting on its current userbase in a very Google/Apple/Microsoft way.
We’re not getting anything out of people leaving Plex. There’s no stock here, the community is not so small that it needs all the people from Plex. It’s a humanitarian effort, probably a neurodivergent one, but still humanitarian.
derry@midwest.social 3 days ago
Thank you for the detailed reply, appreciate it.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Erm… AFAIK Plex doesn’t work offline, so you are open to the internet. And BTW what Plex does is very similar to what Jellyfin+Tailscale would do
derry@midwest.social 2 days ago
That was my point, saying that Plex was bad and then using jellyfin with tailscale to be functional equivalent on a feature didn’t make sense to me because tailscale has a company backing it instead of a community. That company at some point will most likely do similar things that Plex is doing. Someone that owns that company is going to want more money out of it.