Reasoning about forking instead of contributing

[mattiamari]

As stated in the title, what's the reason of this fork? Why not just contribute to the original Jellyfin project? Seems to me that cloud storage libraries could easily be a feature integrated into Jellyfin so that the existing Jellyfin community can benefit from it without having to jump to yet another Emby fork. Am I missing something?

[dannymichel]

As stated in the title, what's the reason of this fork? Why not just contribute to the original Jellyfin project? Seems to me that cloud storage libraries could easily be a feature integrated into Jellyfin so that the existing Jellyfin community can benefit from it without having to jump to yet another Emby fork. Am I missing something?

Thanks for your question.
Some of the goals for this fork:
[1/a] Improved discovery and consideration for those with large libraries
Why not contribute to jellyfin? I have. On that note, my most recent contribution to jellyfin was adding the option to sort your library at random. Discovery of one's own library I feel is an experience media servers haven't yet tapped into with the exception of plex and a few of their newest features. Which leads me to itm number [1/a]
[1/b] A focus on trailers
Something we've heard time and time again is along the lines of we're not trying to be netflix or we're not trying to be plex. My question is why not? One of the best features on netflix is their focus on trailers and discovery. You hover or click something and a triler pops up. Trailers are at the forefront of the user's experience. We'd like to emulate that experience with this project in a big way. This would introduce drastic changes to jellyfin which i'm affraid won't be met with open consideration.
[2] Extra consideration for cloud mounted users
One of the major issues with any media server or similar software with the exception of plex is that scans etc. are UX blocking, meaning if it’s scanning or making changes, most other things lock up or don’t continue. Even infuse is included in this. One major goal is to improve on that, which means database improvements in the future. This is a major change that could not be accomplished with a plug-in. Scans can take days on cloud mounts. I'm looking to implement multi-part scans. Phase one, which focuses on just the names of files, phase 2 which digs deeper via ffmpeg. Etc. etc. Phase 2 would happen as a background task that shouldn't effect performance.
This is another huge proposed change to jellyfin.

[mattiamari]

Thank you for responding. I'll give you my 2 cents.

From a developer standpoint, I get that forking gives you much more freedom and room for drastic changes BUT from a Jellyfin user point of view, I don't know if I would jump ship to a less supported fork.

2-phase scan is an improvement that I'm sure Jellyfin maintainers will appreciate (along with all the low-end hardware users) meaning that I don't think it calls for a whole fork.

On the other hand, the trailers feature may be harder to integrate if, as you said, they're not trying to be netflix, but I think you should try to make a somewhat formal proposal to the Jellyfin community and see if it may be added as an opt-in feature or an alternative frontend altogether.

I'm saying this because I'd rather not see good features (and development time) wasted on a fork that may or may not gain traction. Still, do with this advice what you will because I don't have any background in this situation and maybe you already tried all that.

Peace ✌️

[BoomHedgehog]

I think they have the wrong idea with the "Trailer Feature". The primary reason to use something like Jellyfin over Plex is "I want to access my library, nothing else". It's actually the entire reason I cancelled my plex subscription and moved to Jellyfin.

[dannymichel]

I think they have the wrong idea with the "Trailer Feature". The primary reason to use something like Jellyfin over Plex is "I want to access my library, nothing else". It's actually the entire reason I cancelled my plex subscription and moved to Jellyfin.

Definitely, I feel like plex' continued sort of in your face 'here are things outside of your library' is annoying. When i reference trailers and discovery i'm speaking of trailers and discovery for items within your library.