this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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WinAmp's Open Source Story Is Over (linuxiac.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 86 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Here's the story:
Company buys the rights to Winamp, tries to get the community to do their dev work for free, fails. That's it.

The 'Winamp source license' was absurdly restrictive. There was nothing open about it. You were not allowed to fork the repo, or distribute the source code or any binaries generated from it. Any patches you wrote became the property of Llama Group without attribution, and you were prohibited from distributing them in either source or binary form.

There were also a couple of surprises in the source code, like improperly included GPL code and some proprietary Dolby source code that never should have been released. The source code to Shoutcast server was also in there, which Llama group doesn't actually own the rights to.

This was a lame attempt to get the community to modernize Winamp for free, and it failed.

Of course many copies of the source code have been made, they just can't be legally used or distributed.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

improperly included GPL code

Shouldn't that force a GPL release of the rest of the code, at least the bits they had the rights to?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Not necessarily. It means that Llama group, and perhaps the original Nullsoft, have violated the license of whatever open source developer wrote that code originally. So the only ones who could actually go after them to force anything are the ones who originally wrote that GPL code. They would basically have to sue Llama group, and they might also have a case against Nullsoft / AOL (who bought Nullsoft) for unjust enrichment over the years Winamp was popular.

Chances are it would get settled out of court, they would basically get paid a couple thousand bucks to go away. Even if they did have a legal resources to take it all the way to a trial, it is unlikely the end result would be compelling a GPL release of all of the Winamp source. Would be entertaining to see them try though.

Complicating that however, is the fact that if it's a common open source library that was included, there may be dozens of 'authors' and it would take many or all of them to agree to any sort of settlement.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

So the only ones who could actually go after them to force anything are the ones who originally wrote that GPL code

Not necessarily, the SFC is involved in a big case regarding Vizio about this right now. The FSF was brought in to explain the intended interpretation and spirit of the GPL.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah but I'm not gonna sue or risk getting sued over it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Unless you are one of the original developers who wrote the GPL code included in Winamp, you have no standing to sue them anyway.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago

Wouldn't an end user of something that should be GPLed be able to request the source?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

The former developers really want to publish it as OSS. This was ignored and the developers gradually dropped out. Then the management decided "anyway, a former developer had a good PR idea, let's do it" and there was no one left to check etc. They just released it and started the shit show.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 19 hours ago

What a shitty company

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 day ago (2 children)

For one is was under a license what not only not Foss but completely violated Github TOS.

Also the repo had a bunch of code they didn't own the rights to like the Adobe stuff.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago

Yeah, like one of the few things GitHub actually requires you to let people do is press the dang fork button.

[–] phoneymouse 17 points 23 hours ago

I like how they were like “you can’t fork this repo” and it’s like — actually yes I can.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah well, VLC has been open source for 23 years.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 20 hours ago (5 children)

Do people really use VLC to listen to music?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 15 hours ago

Yes in android

[–] [email protected] 4 points 17 hours ago

I used to, 15 years ago.

Good times.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago

Yes. I mostly use it for video though, but since my Video and Music libraries are side by side, I play my music in it too. I'm not really interested in the visualizer stuff so I'm not looking directly at the player, but I think I know what you are going to say, that it's organization and search capabilities for music has a lot of room for improvement, ha.

[–] FlyingSquid 2 points 15 hours ago

Music, no. All sorts of other audio like BBC radio dramas, yes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

I used, but today I use Clementine (is still alive) and sometimes QMMP with some winamp skin

VLC It's a good Music player if you only need to play music

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I understand the nostalgia surrounding Winamp—I loved it too. But with old versions still available, maybe it’s time to let it rest and look forward. Rather than holding onto the past, we have an opportunity to create new, modern tools that fit our needs today—and we can make sure they’re free and remain open-source from the start. This whole situation offers a valuable lesson: instead of relying on companies or commercial interests, we can build software as a community, ensuring it stays accessible for everyone. With over 8 billion people on the planet and so many resources available, including AI advancements, we’re more capable than ever of creating tools like Winamp—and beyond. I guess I am not understanding what the problem is here, also, someone in this thread has already pointed out that we still have VLC, which IMO works exceptionally well!

[–] FlyingSquid 4 points 15 hours ago

Between VLC and butterchurnviz.com if I want a visualizer, I'm pretty set.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That's the sad part. If there's one thing that the open-source community produces an abundance of, it's definitely text editors, but music players are a close second.

Previously, we've had XMMS as an open-source project that supported WinAmp skins.
And right now, perfectly actively maintained, there is QMMP.

I'd bet money that the code quality of QMMP is a lot higher than that of WinAmp. So, if anyone wanted an open-source WinAmp, it was there all along.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 15 hours ago

See! I had not heard of QMMP, it looks great, thanks for sharing that :)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

QMMP is great. Personally I don't care much for Winamp-style music players (Strawberry Music and Tauon Music Box are my favourites right now) but QMMP opens anything I ask it to, has an alright default skin, and is obviously heavily customizable with afaik Winamp skin compatibility. It was time to leave Winamp over a decade ago.

[–] daggermoon 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Strawberry is really great. It's the only music player I use anymore. Only bummer is no DSD support. I get it though. There isn't enough developers to maintain such a thing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago

Tauon is my favorite music player. Don't hear about it much. Handles large libraries really well. Pretty sure it will play DSD too. https://github.com/Taiko2k/Tauon or https://flathub.org/apps/com.github.taiko2k.tauonmb

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Statement from dev about the shit show

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That truly is a shitshow

[–] [email protected] 7 points 18 hours ago

Yep, but I think it's good for the former dev's to see what crap the management is making and instead of taking credit, they're more likely to get a shitstorm.

Just sad for the work of the dev's.

[–] [email protected] 98 points 1 day ago (3 children)

If we can synthesize the idea of WinAmp owners, it would sound like, “Please contribute your free labor in an attempt to monetize the app in pursuit of our financial goals.”

[–] [email protected] 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

WinAmp owners

I'm a visual person so I need to put a face to these windowlickers to laugh at in my head.

Is it this guy?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

I don't know. Try visualising him with Milkdrop.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 day ago

I've made a comment like that somewhere. They wanted free labor to make some money, that's all. Lol. It was a failed attempt at exploiting people's emotions.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's astonishing that they were so open about it. They didn't even hide to try to hide it

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago

That license was laughable and blatant

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

And it makes no mention that they were modifying and using GPL code prior to making their code "open source".

Id argue that this story is not over until the GPL code can be confirmed removed by a third party

[–] greedytacothief 33 points 1 day ago

I watched a video a little while ago , I think the only value winamp has is nostalgic and historical. If it was really open source maybe we could get a really good fork and that's about it, I think. Maybe I'm missing the point, let me know I'm not very smart at this stuff.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Maybe WinAmp was the llama all along.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

WinAmp hurt itself while slapping

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Would anyone care if they did? I didn't see anyone reviving xmms and that is open source.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well, qmmp is very much alive: https://qmmp.ylsoftware.com

[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

That is pretty cool actually - I didn't know about that!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

And besides QMMP, Audacious also traces its code roots back to XMMS.

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