cross-posted from: https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/2333639
I was just forwarded this someone in my household who watches our server. Thatās it folks. Iāve been a hold out for a long time, but this is honestly it.
They want me to pay to stream content that I bought from my hardware transcoded also on my hardware.
Iāll say it. As of today, I say Plex is dead. Luckily Iāve been setting up Jellyfin, I guess itās time to make it production ready.
Edit: I have a Plex Pass. More comments saying āJust buy a plex passā are seriously not getting it. I have a Plex Pass and my users are still getting this.
And for the thousandth person who wants to say the same things to me:
- YES I know Iām unaffected as a Plex Pass owner.
- My users were immediately angry at it, which made me angry. Our users donāt understand what plex pass is, and they shouldnāt have to, thatās why I had it. The fact that they were pinged even though it should have kept working is horribly sloppy
- Plex is still removing functionality. I donāt care that āPeople should pay their fair shareā. If Plex wants to put every new feature behind a paywall, thatās completely okay. They are removing functionality.
- āBut they have cloud costsā. Remote streaming is negligible to them. Itās a dynamic DNS service. Plex client logs in, asks where server is, plex cloud responds with the IP and port of where server is located. Thatās it.
- āGood luck finding another remote streamingā - Again, Plex just opens up an IP and port. Jellyfin also just opens up an IP and port (Hold on jellyfin folks I know, security, thatās a separate conversation). All āremote streamingā is is their dynamic dns. Literal pennies to them. Know what actually is costing them money? Hosting all of that ad-supported āfreeā content that theyāre probably losing money on.
In short, I donāt care how you justify it. Plex is doing something shitty. Theyāre removing functionality that has been free for years. Iām not responding to any more of your comments repeating the same arguments over and over.
Entrenchment. This is a profoundly absurd statement.
You paid $100 to access software hosted on your own devices. Thatās wonderful you think thatās a great idea. Iām sure the Plex devs love you and would kiss you right on the mouth.
Because youāre vendor locked inā¦ lol.
I paid $100 to play Forza Horizon on my own device too - should that have been free?
That no other solution exists that is as easy and secure as Plex? Thatās 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 itās on your own device, which is a profoundly absurd statement. The only paid software should be on hardware you donāt own?
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. Thatās not unexpected.
I am a software developer. The argument isnāt that software should be free. The argument is that this is an exceptionally poor business model and as a developer Iām disgusted that people are defending it. The VC which owns Plex and other VCs will use this ālogicā that you have to move the goal posts further, and further, and further, and further until thereās no such thing as free software anymore. And I think thatās fucked up.
At the end of the day youāre paying twice to avoid buying IP. Just fucking buy the IP if youāre going to be stupid. Movies are like $12. At $250 youāre paying $2.10/mo in addition to your hosting costs.
Just go buy 20 movies for the same price. Itās so dumb.
Itās not though. The idea of self hosting isnāt to not have any software costs associated with it. Domain names arenāt free. VPNs (that you use to aquire content) arenāt free. Cloud backups arenāt 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.
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 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 āexceptionally poorā? 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. Itās one of the actual best business models around, not āexceptionally poorā lol. Youāre looking at it from the āI want it to be free foreverā point of view, not the āWe need it to be a viable business with revenue to be able to sustain itā point of view.
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 itās 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.
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 wasnāt forced to buy it, but I did.
Iām 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.