to streamline things the winget for new strawberry with latest update that paywalled is live https://winstall.app/apps/WetOtter44.StrawberryMusicPlayer.MSVC
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
38 points (95.2% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
60204 readers
973 users here now
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):
🏴☠️ Other communities
Torrenting/P2P:
Gaming:
💰 Please help cover server costs.
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Ko-fi | Liberapay |
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I'm a bit surprised that this request is creating so much friction. This to me, is just a run of the mill "help me find a free download of this software" request that shows up all the time here.
I'm not comfortable trying to build this myself. I am happy to just use the inactive Clementine media player this is forked off of if people are really so offended by my request.
I totally understand why the dev wants to be paid, I'm just not going to be the one to do it.
Yeah I don't have an answer for the thing you're actually asking (sorry) but this is 100% a reasonable take and honestly I fully approve of their approach here. Strawberry is licensed under the GPL, it is libre software and can be packaged in any FOSS operating system without issue. This adds to the free software community. They are explicitly only selling to people who don't value free software enough to use a free operating system.
And to be clear, I can guarantee that no one loses sleep over piracy of their GPL software, otherwise it wouldn't be GPL. I see it more as a way for the devs to wash their hands of troubleshooting for operating systems they don't want to care about - anyone on windows/mac who cares enough about strawberry to pay gets listened to, but otherwise you've created an easy excuse for ignoring the extra work.
As an aside it's my preferred player on linux, good software.
Download the source code and build it?
And a music player probably doesn't need to be bleeding edge either. So it's pretty much a one off thing.
Jesus fucking Christ ....GitHub actions is free for open source.
And they still put their binaries behind a paywall?
Is there a particular reason why you want strawberry? It looks ugly why not go for something like musicbee
Originally I just wanted to try a FOSS media player and found Clementine to be the most reliable when it came to importing music and reading the tags. This was especially true when grabbing old music files off an iPod then importing them.
When I realized clementine is basically dead, wanted to see how strawberry compared.
Side note, I enjoy the outdated aesthetic. 😋
I would probably use MediaMonkey if I was going to go the non FOSS route.
How about Quod Libet then?🙃
If you are planning to use it via WSL, you'll need to setup pulse audio server for audio and X server for GUI both of which ain't hard and you can access files on your windows system from the path something like "/mnt/d/music/".
Clementine still maintained and last update is last month. Wdym? https://github.com/clementine-player/Clementine/releases/tag/1.4.1-38-g1fc7fe0e1
If you look at the releases they are just translation fixes. There hasn't been any real development in some time.
I found better alternative and it works locally as well. try this https://github.com/digimezzo/dopamine/tags
"Access to macOS and Windows releases are currently restricted to sponsors, a 5 USD monthly sponsorship is required."
Really scummy on their part.
You should be able to build from source yourself to get a Windows version, although the process looks like a pain in the ass.
Curse whoever floated the idea to lock releases behind paywalls. We should not encourage this behavior.
Do not give them your money.
we also have to pay for a Apple developer account for signed macOS releases
Sounds like you should blame Apple, not the dev.
Great point.
Now, are they using this as an excuse to not provide a Windows version?
Not specifically. It sounds like they're not really interested in maintaining a Windows version, so for that they charge. Generally I think people should be compensated for their labor, even though that might be an unpopular opinion in this community.
So, why even mention apple if you're going to justify the developer's actions anyways?
I'm going to go back to blaming the devs now. Nice try defending the people taking money from you. They're banking on your low standards.
They’re banking on your low standards.
Yeah this is unfortunately common, and many people are quick to defend developers like that making excuses.
They also don't have to sign it.
Maybe I've just used MacOS so long that I'm out of touch, but installing unsigned applications is effectively a mild annoyance.
To each their own.
I think its reasonable that a one man dev team wants a bit of money for their time. They gave good reasons as to why and as others have said you could compile it yourself. I just don't know how and am a bit intimidated by the tutorial.
To me, personally, paying for this type of program when my use case is very casual, isn't worth it to me.
See, you people keep trying to excuse those who are taking you for a ride.
It's fine to "want" money. This isn't about "wanting" money. It's about lowering people's standards and contributing to a 'new normal.'
This isn't an issue with the vast majority of other projects, why should this one get a pass?
Don't be a useful idiot. Even among piracy communities, useful idiots are the norm.
give me your work for free
Geez. Just build it yourself, you lazy leech.
Is it that hard to compile from source on Windows? I've been on Linux for 20 years, so I genuinely don't know.
I don't think compiling from source is easy even on Linux. Whenever I try it whatever program I'm trying to compile just refuses to compile, even though I seem to have all of the necessary programs for it. I can't recall successfully compiling anything other than suckless tools, which have basically no dependencies.
I don't know. The only time I've had significant issues was with Arch. Debian has always been good to me inbthat regard.
No idea. Haven't used Windows for anything other than games for around 20 years either. How hard it is isn't really the point, though.
Stop being a useful idiot.
As soon as you stop being a useless idiot.
Really scummy on their part.
Anyone is free to build it themselves. Someone could even distribute their own build from the same source under a different name completely legally.
They bank on users being lazy and then pay for the convenience.
Anyone is free to build it themselves. Someone could even distribute their own build from the same source under a different name completely legally.
You could just as easily in the spirit of this community do it with the same name and code, same way they do it for cracked games. Don't tell me it's not done because there are security concerns, you have no way to tell if cracked games contain secret malware in them yet people still distribute and download those.
They bank on users being lazy and then pay for the convenience.
And also pirates to not outright rip them off, which seems to be working for some reason...
You could just as easily in the spirit of this community do it with the same name and code, same way they do it for cracked games.
You could, and unless you're trying to profit off it the original devs likely won't care.
And also [bank on] pirates to not outright rip them off, which seems to be working for some reason...
They already publish it under GPLv3, they want it to be free (as in freedom) software.
I don't care about any security concerns. If someone does not want to build it themselves or download from a third party they can buy it for their convenience. Or they can take the risk or find another way to install it.
~~For example I looked up whether Strawberry is on Winget, the Microsoft package manager for Windows. And look at that, it's completely free to download by the original developer [1].~~ @[email protected]
~~They only ask users who are too lazy and want to download through the Microsoft store for payment. I get why you don't like there being no binaries on their site by them, but they do provide free ways to install it. They just don't tell you about it.~~
[1] https://winget.run/pkg/StrawberryMusicPlayer/Strawberry
~~Edit: For anyone who does not want to click the link: winget install -e --id StrawberryMusicPlayer.Strawberry installs Strawberry on any Windows computer. Officially.~~
I got a "no package found matching input criteria" using this method.
It also appears to only offer version 1.0.15 whereas the newest version is 1.2.10
If I'm not mistaken, 1.0.15 was the last windows / Mac version released before the dev paywalled them.
I don't think that's true, correct me if I am wrong though. There are still other requirements you have to follow for the GPL3 license if you wanted to distribute it legally.
GPLv3 is a copy left license. If you legally acquire the source code (it's public already, so anyone does), GPLv3 does not put any restrictions on you when it comes to building, selling, distributing, modifying the code.
I pointed out the name because trademark law is seperate.
And yes, GPLv3 has some requirements like attribution (mention the original developer somewhere), and you have to point out where to get the source code (already public in this case). Also, if you make any changes to the source code you must provide those changes to anyone you distribute too under the same license.
These restrictions apply to eg. UNIT3D too. Some (most) torrent trackers seem to violate the requirement to provide their changes to their users and want to keep them private. But I never asked them whether they'd provide me their source.
Otherwise GPLv3 does not pose much restrictions on it's users, especially not on distribution.
I understand restricting the macOS version because it costs money but doing this for Windows is just a scumbag tactic, to be sure.