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YOINK
Ha ha ha, playing your cards close. Only three steps away from profit.
And now I’m curious how Winamp actually makes money.
**Edit
Just went to the website, it’s a subscription Spotify knock off now. Still doesn’t explain who are the people that actually pay for this.
The same ones who still pay for AOL
Winamp you were relevant for just a moment and then… well, back you go to cute memes about the olden times
Even outside of this obviously either clueless or AI-fabricated post, I’m still not convinced that it’ll be OSS, in the way that we expect it to be. The phrasing used in announcement leads me to believing that they’ll use some license, that allows them draconian control over the source. It’ll be “open” as in being able to see it, but not really fork, or meaningfully contribute.
Reverse engineer it.
Make an open source version that does the same.
Ai now makes it possible, since ai generated content is not copyright able
There’s countless desktop music players out there, so there’s no real need to reverse engineer it
And it’s not a particularly interesting application anyway. I’d only want to hack on it for nostalgia, and if there are any barriers to doing that, I’ll just use a different app.
WinAmp making their source code ‘source available’ instead of open source, and then dropping this phrase:
The release of the Winamp player’s source code will enable developers from all over the world to actively participate in its evolution and improvement.
Yeah I don’t think so
Oooooh they were just looking for free labor! Pass
It’s simple. They want the free labor provided by the community with the ability to keep all of the profits they can potentially reap from said labor.
Yup, as much as I like Grayjay, I’m not going to help development much because it’s “source available” instead of open source. There was an annoying bug I wanted fixed, and I was willing to go set up my dev environment and track it down, but they don’t seem interested in contributions, so I won’t make the effort.
Likewise for WinAmp. The main benefit to it being “source available” is that I can recompile it and researchers can look for bugs. That’s it. They’re not going to get developers interested.
Even if they accept patches, contributing still sounds like a bad deal. It’s free labor for some company. FOSS at minimum means the right to fork, precisely what “source available” seeks to deny.
Leaving aside the question of winamp vs comparable programs, does anyone even care about desktop music players any more? I’m a throwback and use command line players, but I thought the cool kids these days use phones for stuff like that.
I understand there is some technical obstacle to porting Rockbox to Android, but idk what it is and haven’t tried to look into it.
I look at ‘source available’ software as the right to review the code yourself to ensure there’s no malicious behavior, not for community development.
You mean if you build it yourself? I guess that is something, but it is still conceivable to sneak stuff in. Look at that xzlib backdoor from a few weeks ago.
Yep. I will happily contribute to something with community ownership that I believe in. I will not, under any circumstances, provide free labor to a private entity.
What are some projects which have “source available”? Can someone get the source and upload or will it violate some NDA? And what kind of licence is associated with this?
For example terraform changed their license to a non open-source license, and everyone hated it. Then a fork was created, which used the code before the license change which was still licensed under an open source license. The fork “OpenTOFU” is now ‘owned’ by the Linux Foundation
https://opentofu.org/blog/opentofu-announces-fork-of-terraform/
Same for redis, there is also a fork called Valkey now, which is also ‘owned’ by the Linux Foundation:
https://redis.io/blog/redis-adopts-dual-source-available-licensing/
Unreal Engine is a major example, you get access to a private repo containing the engine’s source code but you’re bound by an agreement regarding what you can do with it IIRC. Of course anyone is allowed to apply for access though
That does not whip the llamas ass.
It’s a little bit sad to me that Winamp collapsed just a year or two before smart phones really took off because it’s interface and customizability were pretty well suited to the app format of smart phones. And now that the code and design are owned by a company that’s being run by greedy morons there is likely never going to be anything resembling the original available for the phone app market.
I just use VLC on my phone these days. It works, no bullshit ads, and no glitches.
VLC is always respectable. I’ve been using AIMP. It lets you import folders as playlists and there’s not an ad in sight, so it won me over.
I personally use Metro. I’m a sucker for that material you look.
its* interface and customizability were
OMG, I CANT BELIEVE I FORGOT TO TAKE OUT THE APOSTROPHE WHEN I VOICE TO TEXT MY COMMENT!!! IM THE ABSOLUTE WORST!
I’m making my farts open source 😉
talk about burying the lede. the title should’ve been: WINAMP STILL EXISTS (also not going open source)
Guess I’ll stick with foobar!
Milkdrop even works in foobar!
Same… I’ve had Foobar set up the way I like for about a decade now.
Been wanting to flip to the x64 version, but USF components (N64 music) doesn’t play.
Why would you want to switch? Legitimate question. 32-bit version seems to be working just fine, I doubt a music player needs the extra juice a 64-bit version provides.
Same reason for switching every other app to 64-bit I suppose; logical evolution.
I absolutely don’t need to though. Especially for something light weight like a music player.
probably because it’s a piece of shit and so they would have to rewrite it
And it’s available on Linux!
I had no idea that xmms died and got forked. Thanks for the tip
I love it on the surface. It sadly has major issues with scaling and the window controls not allowing you to drag it about (at least on Wayland).
it’s immersive
Maybe someone can explain to me why Winamp is still so popular?
I have used Winamp 2, 3 and 5 around 2000ish, and it was a fine player, but nothing really special. After Winamp I think I switched to MediaMonkey, which IMO was easier to manage my music collection. Then I used VirtualDJ, which supported cross fading between music with synchronized beats. I think I also used foobar2000 a bit.
Winamp was an okayish player, but there where much more powerful Software around at that time. It this just sentimentals or is there really something that people miss today that Winamp provided or still provides?
It’s still popular because it was popular.
Also, it was simple and modular.
It was largely succeeded by monolithic and enshittified versions of iTunes, which have zero appeal these days. So it’s still remembered fondly for not enshittifying and not trying to build a walled garden.
I can use it to update my ipod.
- Better interface than Windows Media player
- 100s of cool and edgy skins
- Nice looking graphic equalizer
- Nice music visualizer
- Easy to make playlists
- Tiny looking player which gelled with the early-mid 2000s vibe
And most importantly, it really whips the Llama’s ass. TBH, there aren’t a lot of serious reasons. It was just slightly better than the default music player. I personally feel the skins played a significant part.
I wasn’t that much a fan of the skins and found the interface of winamp very small and fiddly.
The milkdrop plugin however was rather nice though.
ProjectM is a thing :)
Yeah, but we are talking 2000-2005 or so.
I don’t think it’s actually still popular, but I’m just talking out of my ass here. I remember it made some waves a few months ago about finally having a new release after so long, and my feeling was a shitload of nostalgia brought it back into the internet spotlight, regardless of how many people are actually using it.
I gave it a spin again, purely for nostalgia. I could find no compelling reason to use it over my actual preferred player, foobar
