Yeah, I've definitely gotten a huge amount of value out of plex lifetime. The problem with plex is the same as all commercial software. The profit motive is guaranteed to enshittify all of them eventually. Even companies that strike a good balance (e.g. Valve) are only a few deaths or bad decisions away from vultures and parasites taking over and destroying it for short term profit. I've personally experienced this over a dozen times in the last ~20 years, across most classes of software. That's why I refuse to pay for most closed software. All of plex's decisions over the last 5-10 years indicate it's only a matter of time before they completely destroy the value proposition. I also won't pay them a cent more, because of this trend.

The major problem with FOSS is the funding mechanisms available. Most require subscriptions too high to justify monthly when you want to donate to 10 projects, let alone 100; most don't even do yearly, or require some large minimum (like $50 or $100). I assume this is entirely because of the banking fees involved. Most are also built on top of other FOSS that nobody ever donates to. IMO the only long term solution is for legislation that forces all banking and payments for FOSS/charities to be zero fee – for all parties – plus the development of a FOSS payment platform where you can setup a single recurring sub that is split among as many projects as you choose, but also splits a sub-portion among all FOSS dependencies. The platform could even provide a script that users can run to periodically update their donation list. I don't want to donate to every FOSS dependency used in Jellyfin. I want all those dependencies to receive their cut, and for that to be the FOSS industry standard.

FYI I believe Jellyfin is cashed up and recommends donating elsewhere. I personally dropped $100 on VLC last year because I realised I'd never done that in 25 years of being a mainstay.

Wont be long before the terms change on what Plex considers "lifetime"