Maybe also check out Ente. They went open source relatively recently, but have been developing it for a while with their SaaS platform.
They have a free tier (5GB) if you wanted to test it very quickly.
On Android you can install the ListenBrainz app and it will detect Tidal. For browsers, you can use this addon for scrobbling. There's also a desktop repack of Tidal (Tidal HiFi) that does scrobbling to ListenBrainz.
The VLC thing is specifically about software patents on AVC, HEVC and other codecs. Most of Europe doesn't recognize software patents, so anyone can implement an AVC or HEVC encoder and decoder if they want to.
Mikrotik is great for features, but their UI definitely feels ancient and you will sometimes question why something takes this many steps.
However, I've never had an plan I couldn't replicate with their routers.
Freedom of speech only applies against the government. Private companies are free to throw you off their platforms for any reason or no reason at all.