Citation needed.

No citation needed. They’ll either do it one day or the software will languish behind in obscurity.

Anyway, what’s wrong with being left behind?

Nothing I guess, other than the competition getting further and further ahead and your users leaving for them.

We’re not in a race, so I don’t understand how we could get left behind.

You definitely are. JellyFin doesn’t exist in a vaccuum. You might not feel like its competition, but the jellyfin software competes with all the other media streaming software out there.

I always see this and I have to ask: why do you care?

Because OP is scared of losing their users because of their incorrect thinking that Plex was requiring them all to buy a remote streaming pass, so clearly OPs goal is to not lose their users, right?

OP asked, we’re answering. That’s kinda the whole point of this thing called Lemmy. We don’t care per se, we’re just telling OP our opinions and thoughts on their questions and proposed solutions.

Have to agree with the other comment that asks why do you need to use a vpn. Fax

If you don’t use a VPN you’re putting yourself at risk. There’s no real way around it with Jellyfin, as others have said.

I find it hard to believe that there are bots scanning for jellyfin exploits

You are very, very naive and uneducated on what bad actors do on the internet then. Basically any popular service that exposes a port to the internet WILL have bots scanning for that port specifically.

Literally nothing changes for me, the plex server host, or any of the people streaming from my server though. Nothing at all. Nothing is ruined, nothing has started to be ruined. I don’t have to pay any more money, none of my friends and family have to pay any money.

And no, jellyfin won’t do anything like this because they don’t have control over how you use it and don’t force their cloud on you.

Until Jellyfin no longer maintain it and change to a closed source product that they want to make money from.

Plex’s own “cloud” that they “force” on you is part of what makes Plex the success that it is, and it costs them money to maintain.

They are not a company.

They definitely are.

Nothing changes for anyone that isn’t HOSTING a plex server, and most of those people would already have a Plex Pass due to the benefits it gives.

Factor in having to instruct everyone to download the app and create an account rather than just go to a URL you can access from any device anywhere and put in your show/movie/song and in a few minutes you have it.

You don’t have to download an app for Overseerr to add things. It’s just a URL you can access from any device anywhere (assuming you’ve got a domain etc like you must for your web app) and put in your show/movie and in a few minutes you have it.

Overseerr doesn’t monitor my services either, or whatever else I want to do.

It does when you set it up.

No skin off my back, don’t use it for all I care - I was just pointing out that a fantastic ready made service already exists for that.

It’s like the difference between using Plex and a file browser to find a movie/show to watch.

Set up Overseerr.

This is a complete false equivalence and I feel that you know that. The idea of a console is to expand it by buying new games. That’s not unexpected.

It’s not though. The idea of self hosting isn’t to not have any software costs associated with it. Domain names aren’t free. VPNs (that you use to aquire content) aren’t free. Cloud backups aren’t free. Would you prefer everything was free? Absolutely. Do you sometimes have to pay to get the best software for the job? Absolutely, and Plex is that software.

I am a software developer.

Same here! That makes your argument even crazier to me! Someone demanding that your software should be free and should never be changed to be paid even if it means the company goes under is bananas.

The argument is that this is an exceptionally poor business model and as a developer I’m disgusted that people are defending it.

The business model of having the people that use their main product that requires the most development and time and resources, Plex Server, pay either a cheap one off fee (that regularly goes on sale for half price) or a monthly subscription fee in order to use it, is “exceptionally poor”? How so? Is it just that it was free? This business model has been around for eternity. Get people in the door and hooked by offering it for free, then start charging for it. It’s one of the actual best business models around, not “exceptionally poor” lol. You’re looking at it from the “I want it to be free forever” point of view, not the “We need it to be a viable business with revenue to be able to sustain it” point of view.

until there’s no such thing as free software anymore.

That will never happen, because people will always be making free software to put out there for people to try and to use - and many of them will then transition to PAID because it’s not sustainable otherwise. For software to thrive you often have to have full time developers working on it, and full time developers need to be paid.

At the end of the day you’re paying twice to avoid buying IP. Just fucking buy the IP if you’re going to be stupid. Movies are like $12. At $250 you’re paying $2.10/mo in addition to your hosting costs.

Just go buy 20 movies for the same price. It’s so dumb.

I paid ~$100 ~10 years ago for Plex Pass. It paid for itself instantly as I was simply supporting the developers of the software. As a software developer I have no problem doing that. I wasn’t forced to buy it, but I did.

I’m not quite sure where you got this $250 figure from though? What is that, the monthly remote pass x 12? Also most people running a plex server get far more than 20 movies a year lol. Pretty sure I got 20 movies last night.

I paid $100 to play Forza Horizon on my own device too - should that have been free?

This is a profoundly absurd statement.

That no other solution exists that is as easy and secure as Plex? That’s not just absurd, but profoundly absurd? What other solution is there that is?

Your entire argument seems to be that software should be free if it’s on your own device, which is a profoundly absurd statement. The only paid software should be on hardware you don’t own?

Jellyfin isn’t yet. It will if they ever want to actually compete and make a living from it.

It’d fit the privilege of using someone else’s software.

Adding extra tiers that only the people who already bought a Plex pass would buy? If you run a Plex server and haven’t got a Plex pass by now, you were never going to unless they did what they’re doing now, as it’s basically feature complete.

You don’t really seem to understand that businesses need revenue and profit to survive, publicly traded or private. You’d rather see Plex die than have their most hardcore users have to pay a tiny fee?

I really don’t give a shit if a corporation needs more revenue to satisfy their infinite growthTM.

Oh so they don’t deserve to be paid for their work, the only reason they’d be after money is for “infinite growthTM”?

What’s not fine is taking something away people used to get for free

I agree that’s never good, but what’s the alternative? Go out of business? Insert ads into your streaming of local content? Another way rip look at it is that they’ve been giving away their product for free due the last 10+ years that they should have been charging for.

I mention JellyFin because at some stage it will become a business and they’ll start charging too, or it will get left behind because it’s free. People can fork all they want, but businesses that provide services can’t do so for free for eternity.

Is there even anyone that runs a plex server who doesn’t have a lifetime plex pass these days? I’ve had one for 10+ years at this stage. I bought it to support the devs as they made this amazing software that I’ve used for probably hundreds of thousands of hours of streaming from my server. I paid like $100. I pay less than that much in 1 month to my ISP.

IMO it’s a fair change, because the product has always been worthy of being a paid product.

People are free to go elsewhere, but they’ll quickly realize that the one off plex pass price is cheap for what you get.

Nah. How would you get Uncle Bob to use tailscale on his PS5 to watch Jellyfin, for example?

“Shitty move by a corporation”? You mean requiring the person that’s using their flagship all encompassing flagship software product to pay a one off fee? A one off fee that seemingly most people who host a Plex server already bought?

Software costs money to make and maintain. You’re not entitled to it for free. Plex’s software is legitimately great and is the only software on the market that does what it does and makes it as easy as it is.

and evidently has no costs associated to the corp

As has been pointed out many times in here, this is wrong. Plex have hardware that is used when many, probably most, people stream remotely. Also developers cost money to employ. Developers make the software that is regularly updated. They deserve to be paid, don’t they?

It is pretty damn obvious how this will continue.

So you agree the same thing will happen to JellyFin then, right? So why even bother getting Jellyfin set up now when it will inevitably happen there too?

No Jellyfin app on AppleTV or PS5.

Insert virus on your server.

My next NAS might not be by Synology due to their recent announcement about supported hard drives,

Just on this - this was widely misrepresented just like this plex announcement is. Just so you are aware of the actual truth - the new + Synology NAS’s do not require Synology branded drives. They will still accept and work with all drives including WD, Iron Wolf, Seagate, etc.

All that is changing is that only the Synology branded drives will get some of the “smart health” monitoring features and easy firmware updating (of the hdd). Nothing else is changing. You will still be able to buy all of the new Synology devices and plug in whatever HDDs you want and they’ll work fine.