OBS creators (streamlabs) bought by Logitech

Community Tech Policy & News
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So yeah… OBS is now Logitech exclusive :smiley:

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OBS is different from Streamlabs OBS. Streamlabs OSB uses OBS and adds features on top of it dedicated to streamers like advanced layouts, dashboard, animations on sub and donation and so forth. OBS will still be free for everyone and they just have Logitech as a sponsor. On the other hand Streamlabs OBS will be acquired by Logitech and who knows what will happen after that.

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Interesting side note, while looking into the Streamlabs vs OBS thing I saw on OBSs website that xSplit are a sponsor? Sponsoring a rival that does it for free?

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This means STREAMLABS is bought by Logitech. Not the OBS project itself.

Streamlabs is just a proprietary skin with additional proprietary Electron functionality on top of OBS. OBS Vanilla won’t be as affected.

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The upside of this is that this may potentially provide a trickle down revenue stream to the open OBS development. Not directly but in terms of getting paid and supported eyes looking at the code.

If Logitech plays this right and keeps running the Streamlabs OBS project in the same way as it previously did this can only mean good things for Streamlabs OBS users.

Logitech is really able to give such a project a financially and organizationally solid foundation. I’m not clued in to how Streamlabs was doing, but if they decided to sell there must have been good reasons.

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I guess 90 Million Dollars is a good reason to sell no matter how it’s going. That’s a lot of money…

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Has Logitech had anything in this area before? Might be an interesting expansion and some interesting integration to come?

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Nope.

You might want to change the title.

Streamlabs =/= OBS.

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They have made peripherals for this sort of stuff that works with OBS and the like and have sponsored OBS the project for a while.

But to actually own the company that packages streaming software I think is new to them.

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That’s a bold move.

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I wonder if they do it to get free ideas. :thinking:

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That’s kind of what make it odd to me, it is all ready open source and free so they can look all they want. I am sure there is good reasoning for it but it feels like paying your competitor to help them do a better job than you.

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If you actually follow the link on the XSplit Logo it directs you to a page for an XSplit plugin for OBS so… duh?

Also XSplit and OBS target different markets. XSplit was always meant to be more “professional”. If it actually is is a different story.

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Okay I did not click, honestly did not even think to try.

I wonder what a pluging for a streaming service… for a streaming services actually does now. That has made me even more confused. I know I have it wrong but sounds like stream from one software on your PC to a second software on the same PC then to the streaming service, like I said I am clueless and even more confused now so I will look into it but yeah. And they are still a supporter so there is money or support changing hands and that is still odd to me, paying to eat your own market.

I know you say they target different things but OBS has both OBS which is typically used for games, and OBS Studio which is aimed at more professional.

Xsplit does both and at least in the common though is recognised for its games use more anyway. So if anything OBS has positioned its self as the more professional tool by having a dedicated version for that.

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From what I can tell from the linked page this is just a virtual green screen and nothing more. And from the looks of it it’s nothing more then a virtual webcam driver that picks up a real webcam and does its thing in the background, so it could be used for anything. Didn’t try it out obviously.

Uh what? No? There is only OBS Studio, that can be used for anything. There was the “old” OBS that was just called Open Broadcaster Software, but that has long since been discontinued. OBS Multiplatform was the new version which was later renamed to OBS Studio.

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Ah okay, again my mistake, I read the bottom.of the site and assumed both were still going.

OBS and OBS Studio are created and maintained by Jim.

Made it sound like they still had both. Not used it in a long time and there were both then, sorry.

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Here is the license for Streamlabs OBS (the product that was acquired by Logitech)

Here is a decent summation of GPLv3

So, Logitech can fork the version they purchased, or attempt to reverse engineer and develop an in-house version, but they cannot “close source” this product. That’s not how it works, there are legal ramifications if this happens and the FSF pursues legal actual regularly.

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Even if XSplit or Logitech or whoever had bad intentions, there would be another fork within minutes of it being known.

See also: LibreOffice.

A project as big as OBS doesn’t die so easily just because something happened along the way.