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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by thingsiplay@lemmy.ml to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

Edit: To clarify, my question if this is still Open Source wasn't meant literal. But more like "is this software still in the spirit of Open Source?" type of question. The better question would be probably, if we should allow this behavior or not.

Also saved it on Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20260902183330/https://github.com/charmbracelet/vhs/issues/438


So this issue is brought up by me over 2.5 years ago, and nothing changed since then. The issue is now the in top 3 highest upvoted Issue on this repo. At what point is it still open source, if it downloads without your permission a proprietary component that is used to run the software?

It connects to Google server and downloads Google Chrome. One user reported this process cannot be stopped with Ctrl+c (I didn't try that). It does not ask your permission to do so, and on the README nothing about this was (and still is) disclosed. All I asked is to add an information in the README, so anyone is warned and informed about this before installing. After over 2 years, none of the developers and contributors even acknowledge the issue or any comment whatsoever.

Note: vhs is a terminal application to record input and output of your terminal commands, to replay them later without video recording. Cool project and concept, but this is a no go and to me even malicious.

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[-] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 9 points 1 week ago

A program is free software if it gives its users the four freedoms: the freedom to use, share, modify, and share modified copies. However if it depends on a proprietary library, application, or SaaSS to do its function then I don't think it meaningfully counts as free software, because it's unusable without that proprietary component.

I don't understand exactly why this tool requires a web browser, much less Google Chrome specifically. Surely it could use a browser that exists on the system, or if it needs Chromium specifically it could specify that as a dependency and let the user or the system fulfill that. If it's downloading and executing some binary from a remote server without informed consent I would consider that malware regardless of whether this app or the app it's downloading are free or not.

this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2026
49 points (98.0% liked)

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