My PROBLEM with Open Source (as seen w/ Streamlabs & OBS)

i know hating on stream labs right now is the cool and easy thing to do for a lot of us youtubers or many streamers out there but that's not why i'm doing this i'm i'm making this video because it is a perfect sequel i almost said prequel sequel to the video i recently made the worst take on open source i've ever seen which was an opinion article about why someone dislikes open source but i really kind of tore it apart because that opinion was based on falsehoods and he stated things as facts which were indeed false which would mean they were not facts because it's okay for someone to dislike something or like something but when that opinion is based on falsehoods and you write an entire article about it proving how little you know about open source but you have the strong opinion on it well you're going to get criticized a little bit and that's what i did but one in particular part of that i kind of agreed with and that was how you don't really have that much protection over your code because it is public and if someone wants to take that code and repackage it and not have their product open source how are you going to know that that code is yours if they change it up just enough and there's this whole there's a lot going on there and i discussed it a little bit more in that video and the main argument there is licenses as long as you can enforce those licenses which in whichever country that the two parties are in the original author as well as the person who took the open source software but the license itself allows for a lot of freedom and this directly correlates to the whole stream labs versus obs debacle and if you haven't heard about that we're going to get into that in a second but that's really what this video is about some of the problems with open source and what you can expect from some people some companies who aren't really for open source but they'll gladly take your open source project for their own personal benefit and well that's the main topic i want to talk about in this video as well as some of the other shady stuff streamlabs has done so uh sit back relax and enjoy now i'd like to take a second to talk about the sponsor of today's video privacy.com the whole idea behind privacy.com for those who don't know is for security instead of having your credit or debit card plastered all over the internet going through all these different websites and being stored in these databases who aren't properly encrypting it you only hook up your card to one place and that is privacy.com where you can then create virtual cards for any online purchase you need and i've told you some of my tips that i used privacy.com for in the past to get free trials and not worry about canceling the subscriptions and things of that nature but there is one use case that i've used recently and that is using privacy.com for a central hub for all of my subscriptions i have hulu peacock chess.com a few others and i can easily close them on privacy.com or i can just use privacy.com as an easy way to see what subscriptions i have that way i can go to that website and properly cancel the subscription either way works but at the end of the day the main goal for privacy.com and a big reason why i use it is to maintain the security of your credit card of your debit card whatever it may be so it's not plastered all over the internet if you care about your security or at the very least want five dollars to spend on whatever you want i highly recommend going to privacy.com forrest or clicking the link in the description and signing up today so if you don't know there's this entire controversy around stream labs right now it is brought to light by this company lightstream and how not only did streamlabs rip off their entire product but their entire promotional website which we will get into a little bit later in this video and how streamlabs has actually done this with countless of other companies and that's basically the entire stream labs catalog is ripping off other products but i want to talk about streamlabs obs and obs now keep in mind that streamlabs has now renamed streamlabs obs or slobs as they would call it to remove the obs name so what is obs obs is open broadcasting software that's what it stands for if you've ever seen my camera a little bit off kilter over there where you could actually see my monitors you may have seen something that was basically a duplicate of my main monitor or it was picking up my webcam and from the side and basically that's that's obs it records whatever i want right now it's recording my audio it is recording my screen and if i wanted to i could also activate the webcam so it records that but you can also use it in all the same manner but for live streaming you just hook it up to your twitch or your youtube and you can live stream with it and that's basically what obs is and take the name open broadcast software you can probably come to the conclusion that it is free and open source it's a great piece of software it's the one that i felt was the best after doing all of my research however many years ago when i started using it and it has a gpl license on it so you and i could fork it and create our own version on top of obs adding this feature making this one a little bit different changing the overall look of it whatever it may be and that's exactly what stream labs did legally there above board when it comes to the gpl license ethically on the other hand not so much one of the big things and big problems with it is that they don't care about open source or giving back to the open source community they just wanted an easy way to copy someone's code and this was open source and free so hey let's just copy obs code and change it up a little bit and provide ours free and open source but we're going to upsell our users of the streamlabs obs on all of our other products which again all of their other products are copies of other products but more on that later so that's one of the big problems is that they don't they don't care to improve something and give it back to the open source community and those who are going to use it they just wanted to reskin it maybe add a feature here and there which again i think the regular obs is better than slobs but i guess to each their own but the only reason they did that is to benefit themselves in order to upsell the other products eventually make money with it is what i'm trying to say which when it comes to making money or competition i don't have any problem with that but when it comes to the open source community and just taking advantage of it or copying a product one for one not just the product but the look of the product the features even the promotional page that's where i have a bit of a problem with it but not only did streamlabs copy obs reskin it in order to have their own version of it to upsell their other products but they also marketed it marketed it in a way that it appeared that they were affiliated or even the same thing as obs because they used obs in their name which is what obs is saying hey we said you couldn't use this in your official name but you did so anyway which is a little bit messed up and not only did they disregard obs wishes but if you used to not anymore you typed in obs and google the top search would be an ad like normal but it would be for stream labs obs and they wrote it in a way especially at the end there that it appeared that this was in fact obs or at least affiliated with it which it was not it is just a derivative of it because obs is open source and just to be clear obs did initially give them permission to use obs on their repository name but apparently along the way they asked if they could use obs on their official name and obs said no but they did so anyway streamlabs so not only did they take the obs name and use it for themselves to try to trick individuals but even further proving that they were attempting to trick individuals with this tactic is the ad that i just mentioned which is shady practice and they don't care about providing free and open source software and improved version of the original repository they just wanted it to upsell their other products by basically sending alerts and emails to all the users of streamlabs obs saying hey check out our other product uh check out our other product which actually is a paid product and that's really the problem with open source or at least my main concern with open source because while you can have these licenses and everything like that you can't really control your code because it is in fact open source i understand that's not the idea but there's always going to be someone or some company out there taking advantage of that for their own personal gain while you don't get any of it as a matter of fact streamlabs with the main product being streamlabs obs back in 2019 sold to logitech for what a million dollars that's a lot for just re-skinning and open source project no 89 million dollars 89 million dollars logitech paid for a reskinned version of obs with the name stream labs in front of it and all of this really came to light right now because they copied another product lightstream studio and lightstream studio didn't really take light of that because not only did they copy the product overall but they also copied the promotional website i mean streamlabs can you not like come up with anything unique anyway lightstream put out a tweet in the format of hey hey can i cover your homework yeah i just change it up enough so the teacher doesn't notice and that was this this is the lightstream promotional website for their lightstream studio which as you can see provides a way for people to stream directly from their xbox or their playstation and this is the promotional website for streamlabs studio which as you can see is the same website they just changed up a border radius here a color there but barely any wording anywhere maybe they changed it from playstation and xbox to console but everything else is exactly the same even down to the testimonials the same exact wording it's the same they copy and pasted and they did come out and say actually this was just placeholder text we were going to change it this wasn't meant to go to production which really means that you actually copied and pasted the website like you just admitted to it by saying this was just placeholder text and we meant to change it that doesn't help your case i don't know why they said that that doesn't help to say yeah we're not copying it's like no we meant to change it so y'all wouldn't notice we were copying this wouldn't even come to light if y'all at least made the promotional website your own let alone copying the product itself and you know where i'm going with this this is not the first time streamlabs has done this in fact their entire catalog is just copies of other products so let's quickly go through these there's a company called combo joincombo.com that saves time editing your videos edit your stream content and convert to tick tock youtube and instagram in a few clips it does exactly that here's your stream you clip it out and you're able to easily create that into a nice little clip for those platforms and then streamlabs comes out with uh cross clip convert your twitch clips into tick tock videos instagram reels and you guessed it youtube shorts as you can see it's the exact same thing at least they changed up the website a little bit this time but the product itself it's the same thing and there's another streaming company called restream.io livestream 230 plus platforms simultaneously now i don't think this is the best way to go about streaming i think you should like focus and really be involved in twitch in your twitch chat or youtube and your youtube chat and kind of go about it that way but that's another discussion for another day this is a way for you to go through restream you stream using restream and they put it up to your youtube your twitch your facebook and i guess 27 plus other platforms and those that i just mentioned and then streamlabs comes out with multi-stream reach multiple audiences stream to youtube twitch facebook and more at once it's the same thing and then there's this other video creation platform called frame.io they actually recently sold to adobe for over a billion dollars so there's definitely a market for this and one that streamlabs definitely wants to be a part of and that is why they created oslo video review and collaboration tools for youtubers wait what is this video review and collaboration software so they basically stole that but as you can see this is what frame.io is the actual company that came here first i sold to adobe they have this you know you upload your video and if it's a promotional video you work a part of a team that's creating this commercial for the iphone x or phone x and you can collaborate you can say hey this opening is perfect at this particular time i'll brighten up the shadows here or maybe i don't like this music or we should change this or that whatever it may be it's so you can watch a video give your feedback on that video within your team and then make the changes and go from there and then oslo on the other hand well is the same exact thing with the same exact format it's the same thing and they also have a direct copy of linktree which if you don't know it's a link that you put in your twitter bio or history and bio and it brings you to a landing page that has all of your other links so your youtube link your instagram link your facebook link your website link because you can't link all of that in your bio and they named that willow link tree willow weeping willow is a tree you almost got by me there stream labs but we know what you did we know what you did there it's the same thing and even the name is a willow tree link tree come on and since they're in the streaming biz of course they had to make their own platform where you can buy stream overlays which there are various other ones like nerd or die where you can do the same thing and i can't go without mentioning the simple fact that a lot of this is currently in beta which means a lot of this is happening under logitech and i understand how it works streamlabs is its own company and it just so happens to be owned by logitech because they bought them out two years ago however when it comes to this when it comes to copying a product one for one feature for feature even up to the promotional website logitech needs to have a little bit a little bit more oversight to ensure that they aren't just directly copying unless the logitech is perfectly okay with it they can kind of plead ignorance if they want and say oh we didn't know that streamlabs was doing this we kind of let them work independently to have their creative juices flowing which i don't know what creativity is going on over there since they're just copying one-for-one products anyway streamlabs has always been this type of company that's how they sold to logitech in the first place they rescanned obs maybe changed a little bit here and there and then started using that to gain a user base to sell them other products and that's why they sold to logitech and continuing to copy products open source or not that is their whole entire business model but to be clear i mean i do kind of like logitech products they're pretty good but um have a little bit more oversight over streamlabs streamlabs itself is just obviously not a very um ethical company in regards to the open source community or the developer community because if you're going to be creating software make it your own don't just copy someone else's software and i'm not i don't have a problem with competition in the software space but directly copying feature for feature look for look the exact product for product and even the promotional page for your promotional page and the wording on that promotional page look that's a bit extensive create your own make up your own that's how you should be making it in the developer space in the software space and all that but who am i and this isn't me dragging stream labs through the mud this is streamlabs dragging stream labs through the mud i just happen to be one of the many individuals finally pointing it out because honestly i didn't even know about this until it came to light and until i saw all of these twitter posts and whatnot and all these different articles about it so i just felt like i had to point out all of those other instances of them just i mean this is their entire catalog mind you not like just a few from their catalog of them just copying product for product because i didn't want to just make the video about them copying and selling and a re-skinned version of obs and how they did it in a bit of an unethical manner not even a bit of it a straight up unethical manner they did everything by the book in terms of the open source license but in terms of ethics again not so much but the main point that i really wanted to make i made earlier in this video and that is the problem with open source or at least my biggest concern is that while your intentions are good and most individuals in the community's intentions are good there are always going to be those outliers that take advantage of you providing the open source software just like streamlabs did to obs disregarding any request or wish that obs has of them and then turning around and selling this reskinned open source software for 89 billion dollars i ain't got a problem with people selling their own software like if obs wanted to sell their software i guess for 89 million dollars then did i say billion before 89 billion million dollars then okay or whatever private proprietary software whatever but the way they did it they didn't create the software but somehow they reaped the benefits and the rewards of this software it's just crazy man it's just crazy i just had to talk about it considering we just made that video about open source software and that's that i'm sure i missed some things that i know i wanted to discuss in this video but that's what i have for now so hope you all enjoyed like subscribe hit the bell if you're already subscribed next video should be about improving the dislike count code because right now there's some bugs there's some concerns some issues that i want to discuss and some pull requests that i need to test out to see if i can pull over into the master branch but more on that next video goodbye

Channel: ForrestKnight

Views: 25,484

Keywords: open source, open source software, oss, why i dislike open source, the worst take on open source i've ever seen, coding, programming, software development, web dev, open source community, the biggest mistake a developer could make, developer mistake, the problem with open source, streamlabs, obs

Id: 8gW5cLBaWf0

Length: 17min 32sec (1052 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 29 2021