A few days ago the source code for the popular Winamp music player was released into the world, with as we reported at the time, a licence that left a lot to be desired. Since then it seems some of the criticism has caught up with the company, for not only have they modified their terms to allow forking, they’ve reacted to a bunch of claimed GPL violations by removing offending files. Perhaps How-To-Geek are right in describing it all as an absolute mess.
The forking amendment means that with luck we’ll start seeing a few modified players descending from the Winamp code, and it seems that the GPL violations are more embarrassing technicalities than show-stoppers, but we have to wornder whether or not this makes for something with any more than historical interest. Perhaps its value stands in a lesson for corporate entities in how not to release their source, which sadly we expect will be taken by other organisations as an excuse not to do so.
If you’re following the Winamp source code saga you can read our coverage from when it came out. It will be interesting to see where this story goes.
Good on them for acting on feedback and being responsive to GPL violation claims.
damn it really is impossible to tell if someone is being sarcastic on the internet
😂 that is not what happened. They were threatened with a bunch of lawsuits because they 1. distributed unredistributable code and 2. distributed code that was GPL licensed as share and share alike and refused to share alike.
I think the idea here is that forks will cause compatibility issues, because Winamp is largely modular. Almost all major functions like audio output or playlist handling are actually plugins that simply ship with the standard package. Break direct binary compatibility, whoops, now you have N different versions of Winamp that are each broken in their unique way and there’s no concerted effort to fix the faults or bring the improvements back into a single release – just like what happens with Linux and many of the open source software suites…
What they’re saying is, if you’re making modifications, you can develop on your own but if you want to distribute it then bring it out through us.
So the problem is that even contributing is still a violation of the license in this state — in order to contribute to their repo, modified code must be published as a fork on GitHub: distributing a modified version of the software in source form.
There’s also still the fact that they’re claiming it’s copyleft and open-source when it’s neither.
That’s my issue. How the heck do I contribute if I don’t fork first? I don’t see them inviting people to actually join the main repo.
What’s it like working for winamp?
They’re wanting to prevent forks (initially) and distribution to make sure their legacy /namesake is maintained, instead of lost into obscurity. Because a simple copyright inclusion in the distributed source is not good enough.
Winamp is still one of the best players if you have tens of thousands of mp3s.
Idk does Foobar2000 have any sort ofbissues with that many?
No
Single word opinions do not really contribute to a conversation. I happen to partially agree with @Dummy that WinAmp is one of the best audio players for folks with a large amount of mp3s. The interface is pretty intuitive, the audio playback is great, and when it can out it beat every other audio player at the time.
You might even say it really whipped the llama’s ass.
It really forks the llamas ass
ive tried other media libraries and only winamp sorts things right. granted your files have to be tagged right to begin with.
I have used Winamp since before they sold to AOL. Large MP3 libraries were never an issue. Customizable EQ, skins, playlists, ID3 tags were always what kept me coming back to it, even with Jellyfin and Plex now serving my media.
I use it for the chip tune plug-ins it supports. Been frustrated with how bloated it’s become so looking forward to ripping out all the fluff and having a much tidier package.
Corporations; don’t bother releasing code as a goodwill gesture. The internet will crucify you for it.
Corporations: Do release your source as a goodwill gesture. Just don’t be breaking GPL and make the license something a little nicer.
Thanks for the free horse, now wait a minute while I count it’s teeth.
Hmm, this is the horse you stole from me.
And now you’re showing me the horse you stole from me, while still claiming it’s yours and not mine “You can’t have it – I stole it from you fair and square!”
It’s not really much effort to check your code up-front for license violations. There are even software packages for that, they can analyse your source code for the use of open-source code. They compile a list of matches, which you must manually check for false positives, and will generate a full report of used open source code, with their license and everything. We were using such software at TomTom already some 12 years ago.
There is an open-source version: ScanCode: https://github.com/aboutcode-org/scancode-toolkit
Small effort, which would have covered their asses.
Corporations: Don’t expect that you can just throw code out for PR. You need to make the code at least legal. Also, people care about open source; don’t claim you’re open source if you’re not. You can half-ass it, but you still need to do the basics.
This wasn’t a goodwill gesture. This was trying to eke free work out of volunteers while basking in the rewards of it.
Plenty of companies release their source code and get praise. Acting like WinAmp (now owned by NFT bros) was somehow the good guys here is rich.
The internet will crucify you for everything and anything.
So they’ve freed the Llamas ass?
A git clone url is kind of hard to stop 😄
You haven’t looked into what they did, have you. This isn’t just GPL, the source contained unredistributable code from other companies too.
Did you actually investigate this? They released proprietary code they never owned. It’d have made more sense to do some basic research before posting
So where did they release the code ? Where can someone get a copy? Why not a link to said code , it would be nice to take a look and see what is actually there.
Go to Google and type in “WinAmp GitHub.” It’s sure to pop right up.
Didn’t bother clicking the links provided, but plated anyway huh?
Winamp is still my mp3 player of choice on my PC. I was listening to tunes last night with it in fact. I use it on my Windows 7 and Windows 10 machines. Some of those late 90s programs are just timeless by nature.
Geeze, what a cluster….
Winamp is a happy memory for me.
I think I prefer to leave it as one.
I was all switched over to X11Amp as of 1990-something!