A good fork

I discovered SPlayerX while looking for an alternative to MPlayerX. MPlayerX abandoned the Mac App Store because they felt the sandboxing requirements Apple imposed were too strict and the installer on their website now bundles crapware making that project something I cannot recommend to anyone.

SPlayerX fills that void. It is a fork of MPlayerX (not a copycat), which makes this a GPLv2 piece of software. It is a continuation of MPlayerX by another developer. In spite of some peoples misconceptions, it is appropriate to sell compiled programs under GPLv2 so long as the developer still makes the source code available which the author does on bitbucket. The only item of debatable ethics here is whether its appropriate to distribute GPL programs on the Mac App Store, a debate Im content ignoring.

For anyone curious about external subtitle situation. Its not supported and probably never will be. Thats a Mac App Store restriction and nothing the developer can do anything about.

Overall, Im pleased with the developers here deciding to charge a small amount of money to fund work on this MPlayerX fork. Id rather pay a dollar than have the installer try and push crapware on me.

anthonyryan1 about SPlayer - Simple and Powerful, v1.2.4