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.”
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.
It's astonishing that they were so open about it. They didn't even hide to try to hide it
That license was laughable and blatant
Yeah well, VLC has been open source for 23 years.
Do people really use VLC to listen to music?
Yes in android
I used to, 15 years ago.
Good times.
Music, no. All sorts of other audio like BBC radio dramas, yes.
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.
Statement from dev about the shit show
That truly is a shitshow
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.
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.
I like how they were like “you can’t fork this repo” and it’s like — actually yes I can.
Yeah, like one of the few things GitHub actually requires you to let people do is press the dang fork button.
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
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.
For those that want some additional details Brodie Robertson created a video on what was happening 3 weeks ago on how things were going into the lead up to this. Here's the link. It's 16 minutes long and kind of funny. It shows how mismanaged things were from the beginning
What a shitty company
Legal issues aside, are there any publicly available forks of the repo?
Repository ownership appearently got transferred to "alexfreud"; my fork on GitHub of the original repo redirects to it.
https://github.com/alexfreud/winamp
For reference, the fork I made
Same here.
Not Open-Source, but there's a fork called WACUP, which is Winamp with modern features.
Website states: "It is however not being done as an open source project & there are other options out there if that's something you need your software to be. It does rely on open source libraries & a number of modified plug-ins for which their changes are being provided to comply with their code licensing requirements.
Ultimately I don't want to spend the time to run a properly done open source project when there's no guarantee of any assistance vs the overhead involved & my time management isn't great so spending more time on project management isn't imho a good use of my time."
I also hold to the view that source code without at least 1 developer is pointless & implies a dead / abandoned project. I do appreciate that it does allow for taking things on if it's then entered into such a state without any developer(s) attached as I've done with some of the plug-ins which has benefited WACUP. So whilst I'm in a position to keep making WACUP I don't intend on open sourcing all of it & view doing that as the end of my time developing it.
Same weird non-sequiturs chain that foobar2000 author uses.
They could’ve honestly said “I don’t wanna”, and that would be the end of it.
The FOSS story, yes. But the code is out there. Even the stuff they weren't supposed to share.
Can you name any userbase more ready to pirate the shit out of a third-party fork? Maybe the people still using Media Player Classic.
Inwish i could control spotify from winamp man
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
See! I had not heard of QMMP, it looks great, thanks for sharing that :)
Between VLC and butterchurnviz.com if I want a visualizer, I'm pretty set.
Would anyone care if they did? I didn't see anyone reviving xmms and that is open source.
Well, qmmp is very much alive: https://qmmp.ylsoftware.com
That is pretty cool actually - I didn't know about that!
And besides QMMP, Audacious also traces its code roots back to XMMS.
well that was... something
AIMP ^[Windows/Android]^ has been my Winamp replacement for ~15 years. I've never found a player that comes close to rivalling it.
P.S. I have no idea what the licence is for AIMP, I just know it's free and is excellent. You don't need Winamp.
What about jet audio? Is it FOSS? I can't find anything about that. I used it after Winamp started disappointing with it's media support.
I've been using it on Android because of its seamlessly crossfade feature (i.e. the next music/replay gets faded in as the current music is approaching the end). I made some loops with Audacity and it's the only music player that manages to play them endlessly with no gaps.
TIL Winamp was still active as a project
It wasn't, really. It was passed around as IP for a long time like a used car everyone wanted to fix & sell, but no one wanted to do anything with.
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