Despite its name, half the value of `youtube-dl` is that it Just Works on every (free-as-in-beer, and non-DRMed) video site known to man. Every obscure Youtube alternative, every local news station's dogshit CMS, every porn site, Twitter, Twitch, HGTV, you name it.
The far bigger part of the job would be rewriting all 800 custom extractors, then perpetually maintaining them against constant, silent, often adversarial breaking changes in each one.
Using Rust instead of Python would cut the very fat long tail of contributions that makes most of this viable, and would doom this project more than most.
The far bigger part of the job would be rewriting all 800 custom extractors, then perpetually maintaining them against constant, silent, often adversarial breaking changes in each one.
Using Rust instead of Python would cut the very fat long tail of contributions that makes most of this viable, and would doom this project more than most.