• Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
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    18 hours ago

    Really scummy on their part.

    Anyone is free to build it themselves. Someone could even distribute their own build from the same source under a different name completely legally.

    They bank on users being lazy and then pay for the convenience.

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      15 hours ago

      Anyone is free to build it themselves. Someone could even distribute their own build from the same source under a different name completely legally.

      You could just as easily in the spirit of this community do it with the same name and code, same way they do it for cracked games. Don’t tell me it’s not done because there are security concerns, you have no way to tell if cracked games contain secret malware in them yet people still distribute and download those.

      They bank on users being lazy and then pay for the convenience.

      And also pirates to not outright rip them off, which seems to be working for some reason…

      • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
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        9 hours ago

        You could just as easily in the spirit of this community do it with the same name and code, same way they do it for cracked games.

        You could, and unless you’re trying to profit off it the original devs likely won’t care.

        And also [bank on] pirates to not outright rip them off, which seems to be working for some reason…

        They already publish it under GPLv3, they want it to be free (as in freedom) software.

        I don’t care about any security concerns. If someone does not want to build it themselves or download from a third party they can buy it for their convenience. Or they can take the risk or find another way to install it.

        For example I looked up whether Strawberry is on Winget, the Microsoft package manager for Windows. And look at that, it’s completely free to download by the original developer [1]. @upstroke4448@lemmy.dbzer0.com

        They only ask users who are too lazy and want to download through the Microsoft store for payment. I get why you don’t like there being no binaries on their site by them, but they do provide free ways to install it. They just don’t tell you about it.

        [1] https://winget.run/pkg/StrawberryMusicPlayer/Strawberry

        Edit: For anyone who does not want to click the link: winget install -e --id StrawberryMusicPlayer.Strawberry installs Strawberry on any Windows computer. Officially.

        • upstroke4448@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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          2 hours ago

          I got a “no package found matching input criteria” using this method.

          It also appears to only offer version 1.0.15 whereas the newest version is 1.2.10

          If I’m not mistaken, 1.0.15 was the last windows / Mac version released before the dev paywalled them.

    • upstroke4448@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      16 hours ago

      I don’t think that’s true, correct me if I am wrong though. There are still other requirements you have to follow for the GPL3 license if you wanted to distribute it legally.

      • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
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        9 hours ago

        GPLv3 is a copy left license. If you legally acquire the source code (it’s public already, so anyone does), GPLv3 does not put any restrictions on you when it comes to building, selling, distributing, modifying the code.

        I pointed out the name because trademark law is seperate.

        And yes, GPLv3 has some requirements like attribution (mention the original developer somewhere), and you have to point out where to get the source code (already public in this case). Also, if you make any changes to the source code you must provide those changes to anyone you distribute too under the same license.

        These restrictions apply to eg. UNIT3D too. Some (most) torrent trackers seem to violate the requirement to provide their changes to their users and want to keep them private. But I never asked them whether they’d provide me their source.

        Otherwise GPLv3 does not pose much restrictions on it’s users, especially not on distribution.