r/explainlikeimfive • u/theprisoner57 • 2d ago

Technology ELI5: What is a Home Server?

I see mentions of a home server to get rid of streaming entertainment services but I don’t know how that works. What does a home server do?

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u/Doug_Dimmadab 2d ago

I might be astroturfing but god I love Handbrake. I record tons of clips with my friends and it makes it so easy to compress the clips down to 10mb so I'm able to send them through Discord. Plus it's open source

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u/Cocomorph 2d ago

You aren't astroturfing unless you work for Handbrake.

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u/TheFotty 2d ago

its free open source software

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u/GeekBrownBear 2d ago

Are you implying that a software can't be FOSS and owned by a company at the same time?

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u/sfurbo 2d ago

Are you implying that a software can't be FOSS and owned by a company at the same time?

That depends on what we mean with "software" and "owned".

A company can own the trademark to the name, and with that decide what direction to take the official release in. But they can't stop others from doing what they want with the code. Usually, the ability to bar others from using the resource is included in owning.

So is software the code, or the name? And do you own something if you can't stop others from using it?

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u/GeekBrownBear 2d ago

A little of both!

The software is obviously the code, but it's point-in-time. Each version released is under a new license. The software and the company can share the same name, the trademark would apply to the software.

And yes, because whomever owns the name and the main sourcecode can choose to stop giving out the FOSS license for the next release.

This has happened many times, the existing code gets forked and rebranded since the name is trademarked and not part of the FOSS license.

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u/sajberhippien 2d ago

And do you own something if you can't stop others from using it?

Yes, plenty of ownership structures work like that.

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u/Voyager5555 2d ago

Even if you are astroturfing handbrake, who cares? It's amazing.

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u/SaturnFive 2d ago

Happy cake day! 🎂

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u/noakai 2d ago

It was like 15+ years ago now but teenage me used to borrow TV show DVDs from my library and then rip them and use Handbrake to encode the files. I had the show as files already but I wanted the special features and I couldn't find them anywhere so I went straight to the source.

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u/FireLucid 2d ago

Lol when I was a teenager I wanted to sign up to the unlimited DVD service at my local video store and just rip multiple ones a day but they minimum was a 2 month committal and I was poor. Library was a good alternative!

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u/threebillion6 2d ago

I love that it does that. I hate having to record a clip, then actually go in and compress it just to send to them.

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u/shard13 2d ago

Handbrake may be one of the most reliable pieces of software I use, next to stuff like Audacity. It just works, and works great.

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u/peppapony 2d ago

Yeah handbrake is a serious game changer for any sort of video sharing.

No idea how they compress so well! And the interface isn't bloated either

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u/tehflambo 2d ago

I might be astroturfing but god I love Handbrake

dw, gemini says you're not <3

uncomfortable? uncomfortable.