I remember being excited when it first came out, but then as we know capitalism happened and ruined it. Im all jellyfin now. But was plex originally starting out to be a good thing or was it just to trick us into being locked into their service after we all got on it?
Plex has been around for a while, long before “capitalism happened” as you put it. At the time it spawned a whole lot of different alternatives, it also triggered how we interact with our media libraries. I recall having to set-up my own server and client before I could start to import and manage my own media. That wasn’t trivial, least of which caused by needing to rip DVD without the high speed access to internet acting as a source.