On Saturday, December 20, 2025 2:56:19 PM Mountain Standard Time Wookey wrote: > On 2025-12-20 02:51 +0000, John Scott wrote: > >. Users of Debian who want to watch YouTube with free software may > > > > think this is genuinely a good option that's reasonable to everyone > > when it isn't. > > But it is (a genuinely good option). When a provider does not provide > a free-software interface to their service, it is a good thing when > someone else does. I'm quite surprised to see people in Debian > disagreeing with this view as we are big fans of software freedom here. > > Re-implementations that talk to APIs are fine. So yes pipe-viewer in > debian is entirely appropriate IMHO. > > Yes it's possible to write software to abuse a service, but watching > video on youtube is not abusing the service - that's what it's for. > > I don't think your analogy with respect to Salsa is equivalent. Yes > Google could upload files to Salsa and people could download > them. Fine, so long as those files are free software, and something to > do with Debian, that's what the service is for. If they were using it > for non-free or non-debian files that would be abusing the service. We > certainly don't care what client people use to do that downloading. I agree. Only supporting client software that conforms to a service’s Terms of Service seems antithetical to DFSG #6: "No discrimination against fields of endeavor, like commercial use.” The core of DFSG #6 is that you cannot restrict what users do with the software, including using it contrary to some service’s Terms of Service. This is especially salient give that many companies claim rights they do not possess or restrictions they cannot legally enforce in their Terms of Service. This is a common tactic in the commercial business world: Make intellectual property claims that you know are not true or are not legal for you to enforce to scare users into thinking they are breaking the law when they aren't. In this regard, using a free-software client to view videos on YouTube is a lot like using an ad blocker when browsing the internet. There is nothing illegal about it, even though lots of big companies would like it to be so and some of them claim you are infringing on their rights or breaking their Terms of Service. -- Soren Stoutner soren@debian.org
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