Free Software vs Proprietary Software ( contrast ) Windows vs Linux ( contrast ) selfhosted vs externally hosted services ( contrast ) Libre vs Proprietary Services ( contrast )
If I go Libre vs Proprietary Services:
Companies love your data. Extracting data from you is many companies primary business model, and they use that data to build a profile on you and serve you targeted advertisements. Most apps you use do this, even if you pay for them. According to a wired article on how much data spotify specifically mines, ” Everything you do in Spotify’s web player and desktop and mobile apps is tracked. Every tap, song start, playlist listen, search, shuffle, and pause is logged. “. People who are uncomfortable with the amount of data services like Spotify mine often look into Free asin Freedom or, “Libre” alternatives to these services, when in reality, they are an entirely different idea than their proprietary counterparts.
These Open Source alternatives tend to add a layer of complexity which paying for the service would not involve. There are of course exceptions to this, but generally, with a open source spotify alternative, you have to source all the music files yourself, or with a open source netflix alternative, you have to source all the movies yourself. This can be greatly convenient, as you can add music that isn’t on spotify, or movies that aren’t on netflix, but it can also be annoying to find a download for a movie just to watch it when it would have been instant with netflix. This sourcing of material can also be automated through other open source solutions, but doing that automation is again, more complexity.
The focus of an Open Source implementation is very rarely the same as the focus of the proprietary one. At Netflix, their mission statement is “We want to entertain the world”, while with jellyfin, an open source alternative to netflix, the goal stated in their github is to “put you in control of managing and streaming your media”. The focus across most open source projects is on that control. You, the user, get to do whatever you want, and are likely to be opinionated about little thinks about the program. With Netflix, they assume you the user do not particularly care about the program itself, but care about the movies, and having a good experience watching the movies. Jellyfin’s developer team is not really worried about entertaining the whole world, but is only focused on the small subset of people who wish to be in control of managing their own media. Though Jellyfin looks a lot like Netflix or Hulu, and can be used to watch tv shows and movies, it’s intended user is a very different person from who Netflix and Hulu are targeting.