Comment on Junk Store 2.0 has released
PlasticExistence@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I guess I’ll be the black sheep here.
I like Junk Store. I’ve had a better experience with the Decky Loader plugin than I have had with Heroic, namely Heroic made it difficult to login to my accounts and refused to stay logged in. I’m not criticizing Heroic, and I’m appreciative of it as an open source project. Perhaps those issues have even been resolved since I last used it. At the time though, I wanted to stop logging into my accounts each time I wanted to see my libraries, so I gave Junk Store a chance.
I still use it, and I just decided to try out this new version. I’ve been using Linux since the late 90s, and it’s been my primary OS on all my systems since 2008. I’m no longer accustomed to paying for a lot of software (games aside), but doing so will help keep the free (and open source) Decky Loader version going for everyone.
I understand not liking subscriptions, and $40 is a bit high, but keep in mind it’s optional. The plugin version remains and will remain free according to the husband and wife team behind Junk Store. They’re very easy people to talk to if you need anything at all, and they have a passion for what they’re doing. I think it’s super shitty to call them greedy because they’re offering a paid option alongside the free one.
Localhorst86@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
I’d like to point out, that the subscription to JS 2.0 is absolutely not there to keep the free version free. In their own FAQ on discord they are already on record stating that if the paid GOG plugin drops of in sales (not usage!), they are going to stop adding to the paid plugin as well as the decky version of JS.
Image
PlasticExistence@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Thanks for that. I’m not a Discord user, so I hadn’t seen that. It’s not a total reversal of their previous position, but that is a little different. They didn’t say they’re definitely going to stop the open source plugin, but that is certainly not a commitment to it either.
I would say that open source means anyone is free to fork their work and continue on with it if they can’t. They’re trying to make a living like anyone else, and they’re trying to be self employed. The reality of that situation is that most of their decisions need to be through the lens of how they feed and clothe themselves.
Localhorst86@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Personally, that reads to me that there already is en expiration date on the plugin version as well as the GOG extension.
Either way, while they are free to charge what they see fit, I was flabbergasted by the high price and it being a subscription. I’d argue it should never be their bread and butter. I see the target audience to be too niche for this to be a fulltime gig, I dont believe there’s going to be enough users for this to be sustainable, which is (I guess) the reason they went for a SAAS subscription model.
Yes, the plugin version is open source, but I don’t believe anyone is going to bother to fork it. Simply because there already is a sophisticated, quite advanced community project (Heroic) that does the job well on a steam deck, also works very well on the desktop, and uses the same backends (legendary, gogdl, nile) as JS.
And it really irks me, that they rely on free, open-source components for their proprietary, closed-source software to function. From what i understand, they are not in breach of the GPL license if they just invoke the binaries, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.