this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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Can I ask why nobody recommends Emby? I've been using it for years with zero issues. The only thing I can think of is that Jellyfin exists and is free. Emby is sort of a middleground between Plex and Jellyfin; it has a paid license (lifetime option exists), but it's closer to Jellyfin than Plex on the whole.
Emby rugpulled their users, that's why jellyfin exists at all.
Do you mind elaborating on that? It sounds like I got in on Emby after the rugpull. It works fine for me and I use it without the Connect (online account) feature.
For one, they moved from open source to closed source without notice.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181212104719/https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby/issues/3479
Thanks for the info. I'm sure it'll also be useful to others reading the comments.
This sucks because, functionally-wise I have zero issues with Emby. But morally, this bothers me a lot. I thought it was going to just be because of the license (I think I paid $99 around Christmas a few years ago for a Lifetime license).
Guess I'll be switching to Jellyfin then and donating to the project. If I paid for Emby, there's no reason I can't donate to a free, open-source project being developed and maintained by volunteers.
Found a good one ☝️
Seeing the person chewing out folks for calling for a fork is pretty funny in hindsight. They aren't wrong, but now they're the recorded naysayer in a pivotal moment for a major open source project. It's like anyone who said Open Office shouldn't be forked when Open Office was purchased by Oracle. Now Open Office is abandonware with only functionally useless commits and multiple unpatched security issues and Libre Office has completely replaced it