History

Once uppon a time...

hum,

everything started the 20 june 2025

The idea had been on my mind for a while. The project seemed huge (it truly is, trust me), and with the various bad buzz YouTube was going through, I figured someone would inevitably end up creating an alternative.

But month after month, still nothing.

I contacted a friend, we created a Discord server, and about thirty people quickly joined us.

A few weeks later, we already had our first prototype (yes, at the time, the project was called OpenStream).

Okay... let's call a spade a spade.

It wasn't really a video platform.

There was no real backend, just an interface (not exactly pretty, admittedly) that gave a first impression of the project.

So we decided to start over with a new version, this time with a proper API.

You might recognize this interface, it's the one we presented in our very first video.

That version was already much more polished, but it still had many flaws.

The videos were simply served as MP4 files, without a proper streaming system. There were numerous bugs, performance was quite erratic, and the interface still had a lot of room for improvement.

Nevertheless, we decided to present the project to the public, to attract a few developers willing to lend a hand.

We published our first video.

Honestly, we thought we'd get... what? A hundred views? Two hundred, maybe?

A few weeks later, it had over 28,000 views.

Needless to say, we weren't expecting that at all!

But it showed us that there was a real demand for this type of platform.

So: thank you!

Thank you for your support, your feedback, your ideas and all your messages of encouragement. They were extremely important for the rest of the project.

From there, it became obvious: we had to start again on much more solid foundations.

Thanks to the visibility provided by this first video, a contributor proposed a new architecture to us, accompanied by a much cleaner frontend and backend.

This version was much better.

Unfortunately, the chosen tech stack was quite niche, which risked discouraging future contributors.

Since FairPlay is primarily a community project, we opted for more accessible technologies.

So, you guessed it, we... started over again.

Yes, that's a lot of rewrites. But that's what allows us to significantly improve with each iteration, gaining experience along the way.

It was during this period that the interface you know today was born.

Note: The following pages detail the UX and interface choices that guided this new version.

For several months, we continued to improve this foundation.

The user and creator experience now seemed robust enough.

But one area still needed improvement: the developer experience.

That's why a major rewrite of the backend is currently underway.

This new architecture will bring:

• a clearer internal architecture;
• improved error handling;
• greater robustness;
• support for instanced operation;
• comprehensive documentation with Swagger UI;
• automatic SDK generation using OpenAPI.

Development is still underway, but you can already find a preview of this new documentation at:

https://apiv2.fairplayvideo.org/docs

And, as always...

Everything is open source.

Meanwhile, thanks to your donations, we've also been able to acquire our own servers.

This is just the beginning of the adventure!