All over the article you posted:

and since Floorp currently has no advertising, my own salary is, of course, zero. It’s just not going to last.

I have made many plans, including earning development money on this projects, but all have been derailed by open source projects.

There is some code in the closed source code to prepare for this. If these are forked, my hundreds of hours will have been wasted.

The purpose is to learn how to publish code that cannot be used for forking as open source.

I have to obligate the folks to choose whether they want to pay me or help me code.

So hes forked the open source Firefox, added some polish, and is now miffed that others have taken his forked project and forked it themselves, because it cuts off a possible income stream he had planned. That code, the things he intended to profit from, is whats hidden in the “closed source” part of the repo. He says he will open source it eventually, likely after he figures out a way to profit from all of the code Mozilla kindly let him fork for free.

He doesnt want anyone else to profit from the hundreds of hours of code hes added to the millions of hours of free code hes currently trying to profit from. This is of course a very reasonable and consistent moral stance in line with common open source principles.

Self hosting and syncing data to a 3rd party would give you total control of your data and data resiliency.

Sounds like a good combo that’s lacking now.

Simple to use NAS software. Has a unique raid model that allows adding as few or as many discs as you like of whatever size. You can start with 3 and add 1, 2 or more to the array, no issues. The parity model also lets you add as many parity discs as you like, as long as they are the same size as the largest disk.

Had early docker support as well, so it’s easy to spin up and integrate docker apps on the same server.

Lastly, they used to sell an excellent 8 bay standalone case. Think its been some years since they did.

There are knock offs in the $100 range on amazon. Bring your own raspi4 though.

I dont personally use this feature, but I know it’s supported.

I would try a different ripped format. They should be .iso files, which is a direct copy of the disc. Kodi will load them like a virtual bluray drive.

This thread may also help you if you run into menu issues.

Kodi can play discs if you rip them directly, menus and all.

If you already have plex setup, add the “plexkodiconnector” addon. It replaces kodis inbuilt, standalone media db with Plex, which gives some nice features like media sync between devices and intro skipping.

Jellyfin can do this with its kodi plugin as well.

Protecting

They have an "all in one" docker installer for the above because you are far from alone here.

They host incredibly tiny text files. We are talking in the single KB range. Even serving millions of these a day is minor load to current hosting environments.

Most modern webpages load the equivalent of 1000s of subtitles to every user on every page load, including small sites like personal blogs.

I would be surprised if their hosting costs were even in the $1000s/month instead of $100s.

Thats the likely reason they don’t share the costs. It’s that cheap to run. Even asking for donations might be pushing it. Demanding payment? Bullshit.

They just need a paid account and they can keep appending to it.

"Open"subtitles has like a 1k dowload/day limit, which should cover most media.

Kodi has a plugin called “plexkodiconnect” that uses plex as the media backend for kodi front ends. It basically replaces the kodi media db, giving you updates/sync/resume/intro skip/etc the same way plex does. Plex runs on a server as normal, and can be used however you normally use it as well. Youre still able to use plex apps on whatever devices you like.

You get the best of both worlds with some light setup.

Id say they did argue that is IP not being ID, as the gist if the argument is that “yes the IP shows the subscriber, and yes the subscribers IP did violate copyright, but you have not proven whether it was the subscriber or someone else that shared the movie.” They even go further in saying that the “subscriber is not liable for other peoples actions just because it’s their connection.”

So you’re comparing the new pi with one 2 generations back that runs at 1/4th the performance and assuming they work the same?

I’m betting a decent amount of them are used as media PCs. The x265 decoding, 4kx60hz output, 2x speed ram and better wifi are much appreciated for that application.