Just being an user of a FOSS system is already a huge contribution. It provides a good feedback loop for developers and brings motivation for the teams to solve issues that are sidelined when no one seems to care.

Granted, FOSS developers don't live off user feedback alone, but if you depend on 1% of your user base becoming faithful financial backers, the more users you have, the better it is.

jellyfin is good but lots of bugs need help. "just being user" like me is not helping very much

It is not just about solving bugs, it is also about gaining mindshare. If a user comes to me and (politely) says "I want to use your product, but while issue X is not solved I will have to stay with your competitor", guess what will get prioritized in the backlog?

As a Jellyfin maintainer, I can confirm that these messages are never polite and are not prioritized.

What about the polite ones?

Or perhaps I should also add "reasonable" to the list of qualifiers? I can see that a larger project might be overflowing with well-meaning but mostly clueless people with unreasonable requests.

How are the ones who don't come to you contributing, though? You said merely using it is a huge contribution, but this example goes beyond just using it.

The one that is using without contributing any feedback is at the very least not using the competitor.

If someone asks them "what are you using to solve problem X" and the answer involves my product, it's my product that gets exposed to another user, who might be interested in contributing...

- no auto sync of content like plex/netflix is the biggest one for me - if the server isn't accessible, the entire app just doesn't work on android. It would be cool to have your shows on the go - metadata/initial content library setup took ages (read 10+ hours) for me (12+TB content) - no live-tv over tvheadend.. but that should be similar to plex

overall, not quite ready, but on it's way

> How difficult is the transition from Plex to Jellyfin

You obviously need to setup a some new software, optionally on a new server/container, and need to reconfigure all your libraries.

Not a big deal IMO.

> do you lose any capabilities?

I had issues with HDR-output to my TV (on my AppleTV 4K), and that for me was a show-stopper. Also the application is generally not as smooth or polished.

It might improve though, so I'm sure I'll check it out again some time later.

> Also what's the fuzzy feeling you get running FOSS?

You know that the people making it want to solve the same problems you do. That they are not desperately seeking a way to make money, because that can often severely affect the direction the software is taking.

- no Samsung Tizen app yet, have to use FireTV/Roku app/DLNA streaming. Have not tried development version (https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-tizen)

- no offline download in iOS app. Can use browser UI and download mkv to device.