It seems like the FOSS community is continuing to grow, and FOSS apps keep getting better (Immich reallh blew my mind recently), which is a big win 😎 but there are still many apps I use that I would kill for an open source alternative. I am curious what you guys think? Are there any apps you’d love alternatives for?
YouTube, and one technically exists in the form of PeerTube, with PlasmaTube being a good client for PeerTube.
YouTube really isn’t anything without the content and I’m not sure how open source will solve that.
In the case of PeerTube, not worrying about Google age-gating or straight-up yanking your content if you tick them off is a good start, basically, you’d actually own your content posting on PeerTube instead of YT.
That is a good thing but at the end of the day that makes someone money how? The platform has to work for everyone even the professional creators.
YT’s ad revenue only pays out fractions of a penny, if you want to make money on content creation, you’re better off doing that through crowdfunding eg. with BuyMeACoffee, and that revenue stream is platform-agnostic.
Also, PeerTube’s design basically allowing you to own your content can work out well for hobbyists which already have some other income source as well, better than being at the mercy of Google.
It’s a chicken or the egg situation. However you make your money you need eyeballs and they’re currently not on PeerTube. Millions of people visit YouTube everyday. That’s a lot of chances for discovery. It’s a very small percentage of people willing to limit their exposure for the things you mentioned and without loads of content it’s hard to grow and truly be an alternative to YouTube.