Selfhosted

You can use a VPS to make it accessible without VPN via the internet: https://codeberg.org/skjalli/jellyfin-vps-setup

Old guy here. Never, ever, ever fall for the lifetime pass deal.

Old school is still the most sacred path.

I'm very much with you.

Never understood why Plex, a once open source fork of XBMC, was seen as a positive thing when they switched to the closed source, SaaS model.

I also don't understand the love for Tailscale when Wireguard exists.

But, anyway, the same people who are reacting shocked to Plex can be shocked when Tailscale does the same.

They'll probably hop on Discord to vent their frustrations before there, too, they find themselves spurred by a company with no clear plan on monetization finding out that offering hosted services at a yearly loss can only exist for so long.

Open source isn't just about idealogy, it's about longevity for software that can't be clearly monetized - harken back to "amazing" services like Keybase that worked great for a few years until their VCs started asking for return of investment.

Use the shit that was made for you, not to exploit you. And if that shit isn't up to your standard, learn to contribute, or just enjoy the corporate graveyard in which you choose to live.

(so sorry for the pseudo-unhinged rant, but between the recent Win11, Discord controversies - and now, this - I'm just fed up with all the shocked_pikachu.jpg posts I'm seeing on Lemmy)

I have definitely seen worries about tailscale in other threads related to a recent VC funding round, I suppose they haven't aggressively started the enshittification journey (yet), and it is also a bonus that most of tailscale is open source, e.g. headscale exists.

If tailscale started reducing the free service # of devices/users to push people towards their paid 'personal plus' plan then maybe we'd see a similar backlash. I say this as a tailscale user myself.

Every for profit company will eventually go to shit, that's a given, it's only a matter of time. You use their services till they benefit you and when they go to shit you switch to the next best option.

Some points as someone who does not use Tailscale:

• Tailscale the software is under a BSD license. Plex is proprietary.
• The discussion in this thread about Jellyfin is less corporate versus non-corporate (where in the context of proprietary software this would be payware versus freeware) and more FOSS versus proprietary software.
• To be clear, Tailscale is proudly doing the same Series C venture capital bullshit as Plex. They're seemingly just as corporate as Plex, but at minimum, the software as it exists right now isn't tied down to Tailscale.
• Additionally, this isn't Tailscale versus Plex; it's Jellyfin + Tailscale versus Plex.
• Jellyfin + Tailscale means that you're using Jellyfin, which is FOSS. Using FOSS doesn't just benefit you but also everyone else using it because it benefits greatly from the network effect. Any money that goes to Jellyfin that would've otherwise gone to Plex is given back to the community and hard-working developers rather than lining some soulless venture capitalist's pocket.
• With Jellyfin + Tailscale, everything you're using locally is FOSS. With Plex, none of it is. And even taking corporate into account, with Jellyfin + Tailscale, most of what you're using locally is non-corporate. With Plex, all of it is corporate.
• Tailscale is giving you a real service through use of their VPN. Because Plex is run on the end user's infrastructure and barely touches Plex's server for remote streaming, they're basically just making you pay them a "fuck you, that's why" subscription fee.

TL;DR: This isn't a binary "corporate versus non-corporate".

It has been a few years since I last used Plex but I always liked their interface, their tech stack is fairly modern, they have apps for pretty much every device, their title matching for content works really well and there was not much wrong with it back in the day other than it lacking local authentication.

I switched over long ago when they started pushing streaming services to my users that I couldn't deactivate server side.

The wife / parent appeal of simplicity.

Otherwise just use JellyFin.