Winamp Legacy player source code | Hacker News Reader

Winamp Legacy player source code

github.com

717 pointsgjvc328 comments

I'm curious how they expect people to contribute to the project. Section 4 of the license says "Contribution to Project: You are encouraged to contribute improvements, enhancements, and bug fixes back to the project. Contributions must be submitted to the official repository and will be reviewed and incorporated at the discretion of the maintainers." However, the restrictions in Section 5 ban forking the code or distributing modified versions. This means that the standard Github "fork the repo, make your changes in a branch, and send a pull request" workflow for submitting changes would violate the license.

Open an issue and type your patch into the description.

Note that you can't test or debug your patch, because that would mean creating a modified version of the codebase, which is prohibited. Just type that stuff straight in, directly from your fever dreams, unmediated by common practice. If it's good enough for the license, it's good enough for the code.

No, it says: "You are granted the right to Modify the software for private use only. You may make, run, and propagate Covered works that you do not Convey, without conditions, so long as your License otherwise remains in force."

It's clear they don't want you distributing modified versions. The thing people are getting caught up on is "You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the software." They fail to define "forked" but they don't seem to have meant an undistributed modification.

I believe the parent commenter was being deeply sarcastic with their suggestion

Because there are two definitions of fork. One is the button that says fork in Github which is really cloning the repo into your account. Then there is fork meaning "fork the project" which is actively developing and distributing an alternative lineage of the project, likely under a different name. You can use Github's PR workflow, it's fine.

Github is the one with the unfortunate naming here that goes against the already established meaning of fork. It really should be clone.

The Github ToS gives users the right to fork any public repos.

It's not clear that Github's ToS can do such a thing, is it? What gives them the right to overrule the license from Winamp to me?

```Any User-Generated Content you post publicly, including issues, comments, and contributions to other Users' repositories, may be viewed by others. By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and "fork" your repositories (this means that others may make their own copies of Content from your repositories in repositories they control).```

Section D.5

Whoever the user that is posting the content is agreeing to the terms of service. If they don't actually have permission to agree to those terms with the content, then where that liability falls will likely fall to a court, but I'm sure I would argue as a user who forked the content, that I was given permission via the TOS which has to be followed by the user posting the content.

Because Winamp agreed to the ToS of GitHub by uploading their code to GitHub.

Doesn't that just mean that Github should be mad at them? Doesn't seem obvious that it actually gives me a license to do anything.

Pretty much all open source projects on GitHub rely on section D.6 of GitHub TOS (when you submit PR, it's licensed under project license and you have a right to do so).

TOS are not just fluff and paper, but legally binding. Granted, when there is a conflict between two conflicting requirements, it's never clear cut, but it's not just "GitHub will be mad."

The legal system don't work that way.

That ToS is between wimamp and GitHub, not you.

You have to do the due diligence to get the permission from winamp.

You might be able to get away by suing GitHub and have them sue winamp. ..

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/third-party_beneficiary

A repo's license doesn't overrule GitHub's policy.

The implication of this is not what you think. Basically github can go after Winamp and say they violated GitHub terms that is it. Just because winamp violated GitHubs terms of service does not mean they lose their copyright rights

Seems a lot like that would be the other way around, copyright law overrules random company's policy.

So someone steals my source code and posts it on GitHub, now i no longer have copyright rights? The duty is on the copier to ensure they are granted a license.

Open source projects on GitHub rely on D6 section of GitHub TOS. That is the part where a user declares that when s/he makes a contribution to a project, s/he does so under repository license. Also that you have right to do so (e.g. when you are on employer clock, your employer must agree).

It's not just a duty of copier to ensure they are granted a license. Legal stuff is never clear cut, but if someone agreed to TOS, it should be generally (that's a funny word that can mean anything) safe to assume that s/he does abide by it.

In this case, there is an obvious conflict and when there are two conflicting clasuses... that's fun for laywers.

That's obviously not the case. GitHub even has their DMCA takedowns public. You can't redistribute copyrighted material unless it's under a license that allows for it.

On Github. Doesn't give them a license to fork it to their workstation.

One of the many bad things that Github did was to name the button that does the `git clone` action `Fork`.

Like, I get why they did it, but (as we can see) it resulted in this stupid terminology confusion.

A fork is a linked copy, a clone is just a copy. They are not the same.

  Deleting your repository or changing its visibility affects that repository's forks.

Forks predate GitHub and have another almost opposing definition that sets up for a confusion here. By that lingo forks go their own way (like a fork in the road) independently of the upstream and clones are copies of an upstream.

  Deleting your repository or changing its visibility affects that repository's forks.

Sure, but this only matters for 'private' repos. See <https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-...>.

Github does some cute things behind the scenes to save space, but for all 'public' or 'internal' repos, what Github calls a fork is (from a Github user's perspective) identical to what happens when you run 'git clone' on your machine.

Fork, then clone. Simple as.

I guess they mean "fork" in the broader Open Source sense when you fork something to create your own version of it and take it on a different path or do things differently like like NeoVim forked Vim. GitHub uses the term "fork" merely to create a copy of the repo for contributions.

The problem here is, of course, that the definition of "forking" is missing from the license. It is evident that two reasonable definitions for "forking" exist in this context (however you feel about Github's takeover of the term) and will continue to confuse potential contributors until fixed.

They expect people to simply ignore the license.

And most people will.

And they won't set their lawyers on any contributors.

And the world will go on.

That’s not good enough. You can’t put out an open source project and expect to control the community around it to that degree.

Well, it's not an Open Source project. So there's that. ;)

Actually this is open source. This is what the term refers to. What you mean is that it's not free (libre) software, which is most certainly is not. They do not respect you and your rights: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

When people who care about open source talk about "open source", they often mean the Open Source Initiative definition. https://opensource.org/osd

You might want to read the WinAMP license that you're claiming is Open Source.

Though it sounds like you might be misunderstanding things on purpose. (?)

Google does it with Go, Microsoft does it with VS Code. Open source cosplay, with or without an OSI-approved license, is rampant.

1. Forking: The license explicitly prohibits forking. Section 5 states: "No Forking: You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the software."

2. Making changes: You are allowed to make modifications, but only for private use. Section 3 states: "You are granted the right to Modify the software for private use only."

3. Submitting pull requests: While the license doesn't use the term "pull request" specifically, it does encourage contributions. Section 4 states: "Contribution to Project: You are encouraged to contribute improvements, enhancements, and bug fixes back to the project. Contributions must be submitted to the official repository and will be reviewed and incorporated at the discretion of the maintainers."

However, there's a potential conflict here. The license prohibits distributing modified versions (Section 5: "No Distribution of Modified Versions"), which could be interpreted to include submitting a pull request, as that involves sharing your modifications.

In summary, this license: - Does not allow forking - Allows modifications for private use only - Encourages contributions to the official repository - Prohibits distribution of modified versions

Given these terms, you cannot fork the code in the traditional sense. You can make changes locally for private use, and you are encouraged to submit contributions to the official repository. However, the process for doing so is not clearly defined, given the restrictions on distributing modified versions.

If you want to contribute, you would likely need to submit your changes directly to the official repository without creating a public fork. The exact mechanism for this would need to be clarified by the project maintainers.

> If you want to contribute, you would likely need to submit your changes directly to the official repository without creating a public fork. The exact mechanism for this would need to be clarified by the project maintainers.

They probably don't mean it, but the standard, intended mechanism for submitting changes with git is patches sent via e-mail.

As @rollcat said, I suspect this means that people can contribute modifications, but that they cannot be distributed outside of the official sources.

So, while you can send a patch to add a feature, you couldn't release that modified version on its own.

That still contradicts the license as written.

> No Forking: You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the software.

There is no meaningful difference between the words "patch" and "fork"; and the act of creating an edited codebase is explicitly disallowed.

If that isn't what they want, then they had better write more clearly.

There is in other areas of copyright law, like romhacks and action replay codes. Romhacks seem like a very grey area but generally don't get DMCAed when they distribute large binary patch files of the original roms. And "Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc." would imply that the dead simple 16 byte[0] "patch files" in the form of game genie codes are legal.

To take a more practical example. Is there no meaningful difference between the dwm multimon patch files[1] and the full forked repo[2]? For context, lots of suckless software keeps extra features/addons in semi-offical out of tree patches files. The philosophy of suckless is generally to hardcode config options in source code and recompile instead of editing .rc files. This reduces the complexity of the code, so you end up with some very minimalistic easy to patch recompile and code. So it's a natural (if very esoteric) way of implementing plugins.

Obviously this is a bit contrived because all the suckless code is actually open source, so none of this matters to them. But I think it's fair to say that distributing the 7 .patch files at [1] wouldn't count as distributing a forked version of dwm. The patch files contain some context lines ripped straight from the main codebase, but not the main repo. Hell I'd even wonder if there's some kind of fair use argument for patch files. After all, often they boil down to a criticism of the codebase, saying that it's bad because it contains all the lines of code starting with '-' signs and really would be better if it had these extra lines of code after the '+' signs.

The license doesn't seem contradictory to me. Counter-intuitive, unclear, and paradoxical (in the most general sense of the word), yes. But not contradictory.

[0] Looks like the longest codes are 32 digits of hex long: https://archive.org/details/GameGenieSNESCodebookProgramming...

[1] https://dwm.suckless.org/patches/multimon/

[2] https://github.com/garybgenett/.dwm

English is a stupid language ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You can't blame this one on English.

Before the ambiguity of language can get in the way, there has to be a coherent idea that you want to express in the first place.

This license explicitly contradicts itself. It says you are encouraged to contribute changes to the source, and you may not share changes to the source with anyone ever.

It seems like the intent is to encourage giving changes to exclusively the maintainer, and that forking in this context refers to distribution beyond a private communication between the change proposer and the maintainer.

Not really. Legalese is vague on purpose because not every situation can be rigidly defined.

As for English, because of its plain nature, I have little trouble understanding someone who isn't proficient or who has a heavy accent, whereas languages with specific infections or tones might not have that kind of liberty.

Didn't lame do that for years? It was distributed as a patch you could apply to the patent-encumbered MPEG "dist10" reference source code (which as far as I can see, did not even have an explicit license, the distribution only includes disclaimers of warranty)

Not sure...

Someone smarter than me can answer that.

Does anyone else notice the irony of enforcing a license on software whose widest use was probably to play pirated music?

Winamp existed before piracy was well-organised, or even bandwidth-feasible for many people. A lot of people will have used it to play rips they'd made of their own CDs.

Personally, I use Winamp to play FLAC files from CDs I own and to listen to streams from DI.fm

I guess you could format a diff patch file locally and paste it as a text comment in an issue in their repo...? :P

Anybody know whether this would preclude patches that contain none of the project's own source code?

You don't need to fork a repo to create a branch.

If the permissions on the repo (in GitHub, not git) are such that you lack permission to create branches, then you must first clone (local git terminology) / fork (hosted on GitHub terminology) the repo so that all the permissions are yours.

The best thing we can do for the future of the project is to NOT engage with the project at this time ... Even just cloning the project into your private workspace to review / compile is giving more engagement than their current licensing stance warrants.

I'll check again when an HN post comes out stating they've changed their licensing stance - Until then, closing this tab and forgetting about it ...

The author justin frankel (also wrote reaper the DAW absolute legend) had this to say about it

> Question: Now that WinAMP's source has been officially released, do you have any desire to hack new badass features in?

Answer: If I did have any desire, it would be extinguished by the license terms, lol. The terms are completely absurd in the way they are written, e.g. "You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the software." So arguably making any changes would be considered "creating a forked version." But even taking these terms as they are likely intended (which is slightly more permissive than how they are written), they are terrible. No thank you.

where is this quote from?

Looks like it's from his "Ask Justin Frankel" website: https://www.askjf.com/index.php?q=7357s

I remember hanging out in #mpeg3 on EFNet many many years ago and becoming an acquaintance of Justin Frankel while he was working on this. I had made a skin and even a few tray icons for him to use in the app, and some of them are in here. I can't remember 100% which ones were mine, but the punchlabel one definitely was. My name is in the credits too: https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/blob/0695744fd658c42...

I wonder if you would have linked this credits page had you been assigned the title "BREAST EXAMINER" OR "NUDE SCENES" like some others, haha

They are either going to have to submit a ton of DMCA requests to GitHub and get their own repo taken down by GitHub, or they will be at risk of losing their copyright and will take it off GitHub themselves.

Forking is a fundamental feature of GitHub. Forking policy may only be set on private repos, but this is a public repo. The license doesn’t permit forking. There are already 6 forks.

Typically, copyright is not lost through selective enforcement (unlike trademark), but in this case the rights holder is making license violations both trivial and has full access to the list of violators. I suspect the courts will laugh them out of the room unless they vigorously defend their rights.

In that case, I certainly wouldn’t want to deal with it if I was GitHub. It is a terrible user experience, where a user clicking one of the most popular buttons on the platform suddenly becomes a legal problem.

> In that case, I certainly wouldn’t want to deal with it if I was GitHub. It is a terrible user experience, where a user clicking one of the most popular buttons on the platform suddenly becomes a legal problem.

As others have mentioned, GitHub has already covered that with their ToS. All public repos may be forked.

410 forks currently.

I have a little history with Winamp. I wrote a popular plugin for it back in the day.

This is the source code for Winamp 3, which is a total rewrite of winamp 2 in C++. In my opinion, it was overcomplicated and over-architected. The original source code by Justin Frankel in C.

What has been "provided" is the stripped down 5.666 source bundle given to radionomy when sold on from AOL & the end result of their iterations up to the 5.9.2 release. So it's made up of the however many years of the 1.x -> 2.x -> 5.x development process & however many different people hacked upon it in that time (aka a mess).

Yes there's a large part of winamp3 in there which was already long since open sourced properly in the aol era (unlike this heavily restricted licensing terms) but from what I remember when making the code deliverable the dedicated winamp3 repository was never provided (assuming my memory from 11yrs ago is still good).

-dro

Is Frankel's original code anywhere? I do recall him saying once that he preferred C++ over C but used C++ as simply C with classes. Frankel is a hero of mine.

I think there was a copy of it buried somewhere in the comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29379346

Back in the summer of 1999 while I was in college, we were the first house to use MP3's at our parties. Most houses used a CD disc shuffler which usually consisted of a bunch of scratched and smudged discs, so their music skipped all the time.

We went all digital. We were ahead of our time.

The parties were in the basement. We'd lock the computer up in a spare bedroom - ran the wires and speakers out to the main basement area.

We used Winamp on shuffle.

Hours of music without a single skip, without us having to babysit the music.

Thank-you Winamp for the great memories.

> Back in the summer of 1999 [..] > We went all digital. We were ahead of our time.

Well I had a DAT recorder in 1993. Even a DAT walkman.

I guess I am not too far from the truth saying the CD (1982) is digital too. : )

I assume what they mean is no physical media (storage) before the DAC, or something like that.

A perversion of the term "open". The licensing terms do not allow redistribution or resale, which is a condition of "open source" (as it's commonly accepted).

Note how the title nor the repository says "open source". I would have called this source available, not that "the source is now open".

The license claims that it's a copyleft license... but it cannot be one with the distribution restrictions demanded by the license.

I hope that they either remove the claim that it is a copyleft license, or relax the distribution restrictions to something like "If you distribute modified versions of this Program, you may not call the modified versions Winamp.".

I completely missed that.

The license file also says that it's "free" and ensures that we have the "freedom to use it":

""" The Winamp Collaborative License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works. It is designed to ensure that you have the freedom to use, Modify, and study the software, but with certain restrictions on the distribution of modifications to maintain the integrity and collaboration of the project. """

Looks like there's already pushback in the issues section [1] [2].

[0] https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/blob/community/LICEN...

[1] https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/issues/16

[2] https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/issues/6

The only music player that wasn't annoying. Just did its job with a streamlined interface, without the clutter and clunky graphics that competitors thought was the way to go.

> without the clutter and clunky graphics

Wasnt one of the fun things with that player putting random skins on it? Or am I thinking of a different one?

Yes, but the skins didn't rearrange anything (as opposed to some other players). It was just a different "texture". See: https://skins.webamp.org/

There were winamp3 / modern 5.x skins which were freeform in nature so could be all sorts of shapes or not depending on what the skinner wanted it to be like. With 5.x still supporting the fixed form classic / 2.x skins as webamp & its skin museum support.

Yes.

And also fancy graphical visualizations of the music.

oh heck yeah, that was fun times!

My 'favourite' nowadays is Tidal. Those botchers cannot make a stable playback experience, also the UI is full of user hostile elements, approaches, and malfunctions. If I was in the position of hiring, those coming from Tidal had no chance.

Indeed, and I even found better now: cmus.

Since I met this beast, I never went back to anything else.

Checkout Tray Player if want a minimalist music player for Windows.

Funny, the latest commit is "Removing code which is not open"[0], which means they are infringing on someone else's licensing terms by keeping it in the git history.

[0] https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/commit/0a4b7d32d0906...

Based on https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/issues/11 it's their own code, just a different service they didn't decide to release the source for.

llama group / "winamp" don't own shoutcast anymore as that was all sold off a year or so ago to azerion as part of changing audiovalley into llama group.

-dro

looks like both are under the same parent company Src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radionomy#List_of_properties_f...

The history section just above the prior properties section is what's now the case with winamp & shoutcast under unrelated organisations nowadays. Though it's all a bit murky as radionomy & audiovalley were the same top people.

-dro

What does -dro mean?

Ha! They've been quickly pulling some other things in the last hour or two, like a bunch of files with this header...

  *           Copyright 2000-2002 Dolby Laboratories, Inc.  All Rights 
  *                Reserved.  Do not copy.  Do not distribute.  
  *                     Confidential information.
  *
  *           (C) copyright Fraunhofer - IIS (1998)
  *                All Rights Reserved

Is there a copy of the original repository available anywhere?

I wonder if it can even build.

They didn't remove anything it's still available in the history

If you want a free copy of the SHOUTcast server software, they illegally share that code in their repo ..

Here it is from a snapshot before removal: https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/tree/3ab19235a69d96b...

There is even a full (code, data) GeoIP copy in there.

https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/tree/3ab19235a69d96b...

looks like both are owned by a company called Radionomy src : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radionomy#List_of_properties_f...

Hit that download button while it hasn’t been force-push cleared.

Even if it's force pushed, it's too late as long as there are forks. See:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41060102

- https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/issues/19#issuecomme...

Open sourcing is always good, because maybe you can learn some things by reading it. Also, Winamp Legacy is a fairly important piece of software, so having an archive of its source is a great thing.

But the restrictions on the source are interesting. To quote the license file:

    * No Distribution of Modified Versions: You may not distribute modified versions of the software, whether in source or binary form.
    * No Forking: You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the software.
    * Official Distribution: Only the maintainers of the official repository are allowed to distribute the software and its modifications.

I'm guessing the "No Forking" clause means I can't release my own media player based on this source code, but the language is curious because they explicitly welcome contributions and for a project hosted on Github the standard way to do that is to "fork" the project into your own account.

This seems to go against GitHub's own ToS[1]:

> By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and "fork" your repositories (this means that others may make their own copies of Content from your repositories in repositories they control).

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...

There are two distinct meanings of fork and you are conflating them I think. I suspect winamp's license is using the sense of the (pre GitHub) idea of creating a distinct version of a project maintained by a different group, and the GitHub ToS specifically refers to forking within the GitHub platform.

Let's say you are hallucinating "two distinct meanings of fork". Unless you are referring to tableware, a fork is a fork, it's any distribution of a software, based on the software in question. The fact that most forks on GitHub serve only operational purpose, nobody actively maintains them and nobody normally uses them instead of the parent project, doesn't change what they are: a distributions for (potentially, and unless PR is accepted, actually) distinct software projects, based on a project they are forked from. You are just so used to the button and the process, you lost track of what the label on that button actually means, why it's called "a fork". And the answer is, well, because it's a fork. In no way it is different from starting a MariaDB project. As soon as you press that button, you are distributing your own software, based on that parent software. If the parent project disappears, or moves on, or never accepts your PR, which somebody really likes, other people can (and probably will) use your fork in a way that isn't any different than, well, any larger and "more obvious" fork.

So, essentially, winamp license means nothing. They already forfeited their right to deny you forking by posting it on GitHub.

Just an aside, but really hope "maybe you're hallucinating..." doesn't catch on in human to human speech.. Its great for the models, kinda too flattening for real discourse.

Any public GitHub fork is being distributed.

Anything the owners of the Winamp code can find in order to take legal action on will be distributed. Rule 2 (and 3) is always superfluous in practice.

Is forking a well defined term? Doubt it will hold up in court.

You can't have a private Github fork

A fork is a copy of a repo at a certain version. A copy of the files of the repo without the .git folder is effectively a fork. Either way, their terms contradict what GitHub allows.

What is the other meaning of fork?

When you click "fork this repo" in GitHub, that clones the repository, and re-publishes it under your username.

When you clone a repo to your system privately, that does not involve publishing. If this is their intended meaning of "fork", then this license must explicitly disallow cloning the repo!

> What is the other meaning of fork?

The older, still in use today meaning is what happened when Oracle bought MySQL and ruined it. People forked it and now we have MariaDB. Basically, it means a fork in the code base and now there are two separate projects.

In particular I think you may press the fork button on the github repo as per github rules. However, you are not allowed to make any commits to this new repo.

Interesting to see how would this play out in case of a lawsuit against an user who doesn't honor their license because it clashes with GH one. Anyway, that code has already been swallowed by some AI that will reorganize it, split in functional blocks and regurgitate it elsewhere someday, so too late for them to complain.

The GitHub ToS is not a software license. It is the terms for using the GitHub service. The penalty for breaking it is that your GitHub services might be terminated, not that they can somehow relicense your software.

This part of the ToS explicitly does grant such a license to other GitHub users.

As written, this says that you can fork a repo but can’t then clone it and work on it on your own machine. Isn’t software licensing fun?

It would seem that Github's TOS is superior to their license. They could have chosen other way to host their code

There is no conflict here. The quote from Github's ToS means you allow others to copy the source code you've made public, it cannot and does not give you any rights regarding what you do with the code beyond that. Points one and two of the Winamp license quote are essentially one and the same, just worded in a different way for clarity.

The GitHub ToS states:

> If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to use, display, and perform Your Content through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking). You may grant further rights if you adopt a license. If you are uploading Content you did not create or own, you are responsible for ensuring that the Content you upload is licensed under terms that grant these permissions to other GitHub Users.

It would be weird to have a license that lets me create a fork in my own repo, but doesn't permit me to distribute it. If I create a fork of a public repo on GH, I require a license to distribute it because a public repo can be forked or downloaded by anyone. I can't them doing doing it. Therefore permission to further distribute is required for participation on GH.

> If I create a fork of a public repo on GH, I require a license to distribute it because a public repo can be forked or downloaded by anyone

Why?

The users that clone or fork your fork of the original repository are covered by the original repository's "license" GitHub grants itself, not yours.

Different meaning of "forking".

"modified/derived version" vs "copy"

It is interesting that in a hypothetical scenario if someone did fork it and then thes goes to court. Which licence would take precedence here?

> Which licence would take precedence here?

There is only 1 license, and it is issued by the WinAmp copyright holders. No additional license is created by hosting a repository on GitHub. The only (extremely theoretical) issue would be between GitHub and the WinAmp folks, if GH believed that WinAmp is violating its TOS.

Seems to me that it's up to you which license you use, so if one grants the right to fork then there's nothing Winamp could do to prevent that.

At best they could invalidate the one license they control, but even that seems iffy

> Which licence would take precedence here?

Whichever one runs up the attorney's bill the highest.

I guess they mean with "fork" a rebranded or self-compiled version. So unmodified source code, but different logo or name. Or compiled with different settings or for an unsupported platform. Something along that line. But calling this fork, after they are already forbidding modifications in point 1 is really strange phrasing.

Time to report it to GH then.

IANAL...

By creating an account on GitHub, you agree to this license. That seems like a pretty strong precedent for precedence.

You can fork it but not commit to it? LOL

It feels like they wanted to make sure that no one distributes a modified "Winamp" that isn't built from the official sources, which makes sense, but they went too restrictive on it. The usual way to go about it is to say "if you want to maintain and distribute your own fork of this product, you must change the name and the logo to make sure it doesn't infringe on our branding". Telegram does this for its client apps, for example.

> ...but they went too restrictive on it.

I bet that they would disagree with you. This is an "all rights reserved" "source available" license. Given the redistribution restrictions, their assertion that it is a "copyleft" license is clearly false.

> No Forking

Amusing; there are already 6 forks on GitHub as of this writing.

Now 52 forks on GitHub. Thug life.

72 now

This is like a park having a sign on the corner telling you to not step on the grass because it is privately owned but people go and make picnic there anyway

The person who set the license is also accepting PR's from forks.

https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/pull/7

The confusion and disorganization is hilarious

IANAL but doesn't that basically show they are OK with forks?

There's already 229 of them, so we will see.

> but the language is curious because they explicitly welcome contributions and for a project hosted on Github the standard way to do that is to "fork" the project into your own account.

It's because techies instead of lawyers wrote it. The first and second restrictions overlap anyway, as it says you can't distribute a modified version in the first restriction, but then can't distribute a forked version in the second restriction. I'm not sure what the difference is, and courts don't like redundancy and will often invent reasons to interpret the phrases as meaning something different.

I got a $15 parking ticket recently and got it dismissed after I contested the ticket on the basis that the way the city regs were written, they used both "parking spot" and "parking area" and thus "parking area" cannot be synonymous with "parking spot," which altered the meaning of the reg they used to ticket me.

Curious if you'd share the language you used in this contention.

Looks like someone just removed 180K lines of plugin source code from the repo too. Checkout from here: 7ce05499ff0508f9eb06f7194407f676de7d72f4

Seems like 37 madlads have already pushed the fork button.

It's not open source. however I like it. I wish closed source licenses were more of a thing. as it is, our software tends to fall under two two extremes very liberal open source. closed build artifact only. with very little in the middle.

I think a "here is the copyrighted(with all that implies) source for you to compile on your machine" software distribution would be a great middle ground. but it is a thing you normally only see on large screwball enterprise contracts. because the normal practice of here is the compiled build artifact really sucks when trying to trouble shoot why it is not working on your machine.

I'm not sure forking the repo would create a forked version of the 'software' if the fork's sole purpose is to develop a pull request. But I guess it's somewhat ambiguous langauge, and better safe then sorry when it comes to lawyers (which I'm not).

You're not allowed to "distribute" a fork, even in source form. Posting something on Github certainly smells a lot like distributing it.

Presumably the prohibition is around creating a forked release, with the language being intentionally a bit vague to cover their bases. Unfortunate that that's how these things are, though.

Interestingly the first line says, even distributing a modified version in source form is not allowed... so a GitHub fork with a tiny modification already violates this line.

In a very specific technical sense, it could be argued that it doesn't — the data for GitHub forks (i.e. their branches and the commits of such) is actually stored within the base repo forked from.

In other words, by forking something on Github, you're not distributing anything; rather, the original org is now distributing an additional thing you made — your fork branch[es].

This is the source of many confusing things about the security of GH forks; and the source of some recent GH vulnerabilities.

Also, if you're curious, this isn't a meaningless "implementation-level distinction", as it has semantic implications for repo management: it means that the branch attached to a PR coming from a fork repo continues to exist in the base repo, even if the fork repo that that branch originated from gets deleted. Because that branch was always "in" the base repo to begin with; the PR just changed the branch's GH ACLs to make it accessible to the owners of the base repo.

(Really, the "fork repo" itself is an illusion — it's like a SQL view. There's only the base repo, which contains both regular branches, and user-fork-namespaced branches. This is in part why forks can't be private; they're just a view of resources in another repo, already security-controlled by that other repo; so they can't have their own additional security logic acting on those same resources!)

This implementation choice has always felt a bit odd to me, almost like premature optimization. Is there a reason to have done it this way other than storage deduplication? Since git is already a content-addressed store anyway, how hard would it have been to have some kind of abstraction below the repo layer that would provide the same deduplication?

At this point there's obviously huge inertia in Github's early architectural decisions, but if you were building Github today, would it still make sense to go this route?

I agree; your interpretation is reasonable and plausible. But it's disappointing to have this ambiguously, since the license file has a whole section for "Definitions" and yet it fails to define what "forking" means in this context.

Yeah the license self-refers as "copyleft" (an unregulated term afaik), and they have been very careful to avoid usage of the term "open source" rather preferring to say things like "the source is open".

Regulated or not the use of "copyleft" still seems deliberately misleading to me - I don't think the restrictions you've listed are in line with the intent of the copyleft movement.

While "copyleft" is just a word like any other word, and subject to the same descriptivist drift as any other, in this case it is a specific word coined by a specific org, with a pretty specific definition. One that this license does not meet.

Frankly, copyleft is MORE permissive than generic bullshit weasely term "open source" (thanks to corp-friendly ESR). The fact they try to avoid using "open source" but willingly use the more "free as in freedom" word "copyleft" is a bit distressing.

I'm tired of this whole "shared source" movement, it's disingenuous, and ruins the spirit of actual open source (let alone "copyleft").

Boo on Winamp. Shame. I'm still using 5.666 until I die. I won't use their newer stuff, because it's clear they're not doing it with love but just trying to find another captive market of nostalgia nerds.

Copyleft just means you lose license privileges and revert to unlicensed copyright rules when violating its terms. There's no reason you can't use that principle in a more restrictive way than GPL.

That's not at all what copyleft means.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html

That's the FSFs spin. Ultimately GPL is a promise not to pursue an entity for copyright violation without the need for a signed contract. That promise is revoked when you disobey the copyleft.

While I did make the point that "copyleft" is not a protected term & therefore can have many definitions, I've never heard your definition & it's certainly not the widely accepted one.

The language is pretty clear to me. I understand what you’re saying, and suspect that this is an honest oversight on their part, but as it currently reads forks are prohibited.

They may have meant something else, but what it says now is “no forking.”

They know exactly what they're doing. They're open-washing the program to get attention. It worked. As I write this, it's the number one YComb story. But, it's in no way, shape, or form open source.

I am all for reverse Hanlon[0]: don't assume incompetence when people profit from something. I think however that "source available" is a legit business model, and not just a HN hack. They made their source code available after all. Although it isn't compatible with github, as the others pointed it out.

[0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

I think this is a great license as it allows you to download the code, make modifications, create "pull requests", etc, but you are not allowed to compete, or distribute it with a virus baked in. That way the maintainers have full control and don't have to worry about hostile takeovers, or people making profits without contributing.

Well, it's at least slightly more open than e.g. Microsoft's source-available repositories, let alone leaked proprietary source; as you do have the freedom to e.g. read the Winamp source code and then ground-up reimplement a Winamp-alike program, without their lawyers coming after you. (Orgs like ReactOS don't let people contribute if they've ever read code from a Microsoft source-available repos, lest ideas inspired by that code end up in the ReactOS codebase, and Microsoft sue them for that.)

I'm not sure what to call a codebase that only grants you the (implicit) right to not be sued for reading the source and then getting inspired by it, though.

I thought reading closed-source code is a very bad idea, as if you wind up writing something similar, then you're possibly guilty of copyright infringement. If you have one team look at the design, catalog the features, and describe how it works in detail, then you can have another team implement it, and you're on legally much better ground (unless patents):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design

It's not "Open Source", to use the capitalized term the OSI attempts to gatekeep. It fits most non-zealots' definition, though.

How is it zealous to prevent people from co-opting and diluting the meaning, like you have done here? If anything, companies are trying to misuse "open source" for their source-available code.

Yeah, I wouldn't call that an open source license. It's something like Microsoft's "shared source", as I expected/feared.

This license prohibits maintenance. If the official copy had a single bit that prevents it from compiling on your local machine, you cannot make that change. Only the "maintainers of the official repository" are permitted to do that.

Ianal but the license also prohibits fair use cases, which probably might circumvent the granted license.

I can't comprehend such a restrictive license on abandonware. And from the the looks of it, not very well written abandonware.

I was a huge fan of Winamp back in the day, but the way they handled the software completely soured me towards it. Winamp 3 was a clusterfuck, Winamp 5 was fine but felt like bloat, and then it was passed around like a hot potato, then abandoned on and off, and then the open sourcing feels like it was also around for quite some time. And now it's not even that, just a meager source-available. I know they don't owe me anything, but I feel disappointed.

You have to place some of the blame for latter Winamp versions on AOL who purchased Winamp from Frankel's team and messed with it so much he eventually resigned.

I think selling it wasn't mandatory, and the consequences of selling are predictable, so some of the blame rest with the original decision-makers as well. But I find hard to care after so many years, if I have to be honest, they just messed with my darling too much, and I have long moved on.

It was either sell it & shoutcast or kill both off since aol in 2013 was changing & there's lots of other projects under them at that time which were killed off instead of what was thought to be a better option to keep it going elsewhere.

Alas going to radionony which has ended up becoming llama group after some funny business stuff going on was a mistake though some of the other options that I was aware of at the time weren't great either.

And I'm not defending aol either as there were things that I didn't like under their almost 15yr tenure of ownership but it was never condescending like this lot have been over the past 11yrs which their licensing terms have reinforced.

One of the earlier examples of enshittification, before the process had been smoothed out and best practices established.

This really whips the llama's ass

The source code itself appears to come from a cracked version [0]

   supplied by deadbeef\n\n\

   cracked by rOn\n\n\
 
   32kb cool intro by lone";

[0] https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/blob/community/Src/W...

Edit: Apparently it's an Easter Egg! Credit to bri3d for research

This is a weird Easter Egg that's been compiled into real, genuine, uncracked Winamp release builds for a very long time.

The actual compiled binary ends up with the same text you see linked there scrambled using XOR (you can see that on the other side of the #if 0) to avoid it appearing in the binary's strings verbatim.

It's unfortunately hard to find stuff from the Old Internet anymore (I recall this being discussed at length on the original Winamp forums), but there are some references to it here: https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/366648-winamp-51/page/2/#...

There's a screenshot of the exact text from the source here:

https://eeggs.com/items/45636.html

And someone getting really confused about it on Reddit here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/winamp/comments/caukeo/installed_wi...

Weird, how does that even work? Does cracked mean its' been decompiled? It's strange because it includes other stuff like build scripts, etc that wouldn't be in released binaries..

its probably an easter egg

Yes, by the cracker team not by the Winamp devs.

Those names were some of the original devs & they're the ones who put it in the easter egg on the about dialog that it relates to as a hacker-like joke. The source code is what aol sold on as a stripped down copy of 5.666 & then what radionomy/audiovalley/llama group iterated on afterwards. As much as I dislike what now calls itself "winamp", it's nothing nefarious & you can find old 2.x installs with that about easter egg text.

-dro

Further discussion about this "opening up" back in May:

Winamp has announced that it is "opening up" its source code

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40383029

Bizarre license reeks of a company that doesn't know what to do with their own highly regarded software but is desperate for the community to give them free improvements that they can later monetize.

my guess is that they don't even know how to build it

You know what source code I'd like to see? ICQ and MSN and/or Windows Messenger.

ICQ source code is here: https://github.com/mailru/icqdesktop.deprecated

Uh oh!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iCPIUGnHQ8

This is a Worms sound effect as well, right? Does it come from a sound library? (I feel like I have watched a video about this at some point, but if there isn't one, there should be.)

Edit: HN search gives me this short thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11289591

My local grocery store's registers made that noise when they had an error.

You can imagine how fast my head whipped around the first time I heard it.

I was expecting to see some comment about the quality of the code. How clean (or not) it is.

I was personaly hopping a much more ordered and clean codebase.

Everyone is commenting on the distribution terms. But the Contributions section is just as bizzare.

> Waiver of Rights: You waive any rights to claim authorship of the contributions or to object to any distortion, mutilation, or other modifications of the contributions.

I waive the right to claim that I authored my contributions? Wait, what?

Why would I ever contribute to this project under this license?

With European copyright law, these so called "moral" rights are not transferrable: you can always claim authorship and even revoke a license if it was used in a morally reprehensible way that harms your name as an author.

Not open source, not free software. Restrictions in license found here for those curious:

https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/blob/community/LICEN...

This by long distance the most chaotic open sourcing of a piece of software I have ever seen in my life...

It's 2024. Was Winamp2 + plugin system just peak audio playback software?

>Was Winamp2 + plugin system just peak audio playback software?

Yes. You can tell it was peak too because later versions got worse instead of better.

Simply reading the word "Winamp" brings back a nostalgia for me almost like smelling the perfume of an old girlfriend.

Spent so many hours looking at my custom Winamp skin and playing songs I'd downloaded from god-knows-where...

For anyone who wants to support a proper legacy I recommend backing the WACUP project.

It's based on the winamp3 code, that Winamp did open source, and then the closed source parts are being re implemented.

"We take DirectX 9 SDK (June 2010) from Microsoft, modify it and pack to archive. Run unpack_microsoft_directx_sdk_2010.cmd to unpack it."

Nice. Wonder how long will this version work?

Windows executables mostly work forever. Especially if they were widely distributed.

If Winamp is broken on Windows N+1, it's Windows that is broken. If Winamp is broken on Wine, it's Wine that is broken.

May have been true 20 years ago. But these days it is not hard to find a game which works in Wine but not Windows. And DirectX is often the reason.

Yup.

I have Master of Orion 2, which came out when DirectX was in version 1.0. It technically executes in Windows 10, but the graphics are glitchy.

When they re-released it on Steam along with the MoO remake, they actually packaged the DOS version with DOSBox rather than release the Windows version.

I think this is largely only true with Windows games from the '90s using still-nascent 3D apis. Many of these games were broken on modern versions of Windows by the time Vista came out.

Once you get to the early '00s, you can still find a lot of games that are broken, but the culprit is usually changes in hardware and driver behavior rather than Windows itself.

No, not really. Even if you ignore DRM which practically makes ALL games from the XP-Vista era unplayable (which I ignore since that is often not better in Wine), just search around for the amount of workarounds that are required even when you apply these patches.

I wasn't saying that fewer games from the '00s require fixes, I said that the things that are broken in them are more often caused by factors other than Windows itself. The most common compatibility issues I see with games from this era are caused by changes made to GPUs and/or their accompanying drivers.

Take for example the first two Splinter Cell games. Certain shadows on them do not render on modern GPUs. The root cause isn't any changes Microsoft made to DirectX or Windows, but Nvidia deprecating a feature they relied on in their GPUs and their drivers not providing any kind of fallback. If you play these games on Windows XP with hardware from 2003, they run fine. But if you play them on Windows XP with hardware from 2007, they do not.

Wine fixes a lot of these games because it is already providing its own translation layer for graphics calls, and any GPU vendor-specific DirectX stuff gets translated into hardware-agnostic Vulkan. These same games are often easy to fix on Windows using DXVK (Wine's DirectX translation layer), or wrappers designed for late '90s and '00s games like dgvoodoo2.

The big elephant in the room is DRM, with popular solutions like StarForce being deliberately broken by Microsoft.

I was surprised you're allowed to this. But I also haven't read the license.

There is an open source clone of Winamp called XMMS.

Sonique and Foobar2000 were also venerable players of that era.

Yep, I still use XMMS.

There is also qmmp[1] for a Qt based player. And I think Audacious[2] still has a classic winamp interface, although it's not the default anymore.

[1] https://qmmp.ylsoftware.com/

[2] https://audacious-media-player.org/

Just curious, but on which OS are you running XMMS on?

https://www.salixos.org/

It's not installed by default, but it's in the repos.

I still use Foobar. Ideal/timeless software.

Please also add the source for the Linux Alpha version that briefly showed face.

They're very unlikely to have that as I don't remember it falling under the remit of things to be collated when things were sold from aol to what now calls itself "winamp" - they primarily got a stripped down 5.666 & what's offered is their iterations though aspects of what was winamp3 would be within the gen_ff plug-in.

This is the license equivalent of a specific automotive spare part for an old car where the dealer asks $1300 for it just to say they don't want to stock and sell those. "Yeah, it's available, sure, but...you don't want it."

Why did people start talking about open source in this thread? This is almost the opposite of open source, and doesn't claim to be open source. It's restrictive to the point where you should just treat it as an official source leak. It's even called "collaborative" by which they clearly mean that if you want to work on the software, you're free to send them a pull request. You're also free to compile it yourself, as long as you don't distribute it (modified or not) in any way.

Nothing wrong with this, but I don't understand why people started arguing about open source. Because you get to look at the source?

Which winamp is it ? Version 2 ? Version 3 with the wasabi (?) engine ? Or version 5 ?

5.9.2

https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/blob/community/Src/W...

Finally I can play MP3s on my desktop computer

man, at first glance doesnt look like a lot of work to add support to linux.

Care to elaborate on how you can see that? Eager to learn

Does Linux really need another media player?

I recently wend through the process of selecting a MP3 player software for my Linux laptop and after testing many settled on the Strawberry player. It is actually very good: https://www.strawberrymusicplayer.org/

It certainly needs Winamp.

Are there any tools that can receive an entire code base like this, then analyze and answer questions about the code, structure, functionality?

Ya the one between your ears. Kidding! Maybe Sourcegraph Cody https://sourcegraph.com/cody, or possibly Github copilot. I think Cody might handle the multiple files better, and allows you to pick from multiple models.

apparently folks are making tools to do this: https://martinfowler.com/articles/legacy-modernization-gen-a...

Cursor can do it.

What happened here? Did someone buy the rights to the original Winamp? The linked site doesn't look very related to the original Winamp.

Here you go https://about.winamp.com/press/article/winamp-open-source-co...

Oh great. Yet another bunch of people trying to claim their not-at-all-Open-Source custom license is actually Open Source.

Hopefully one day they'll actually Open Source it. I mean, they're trying to pretend it is, so why not just do it properly?

Thanks for sharing. Wonder if they've ever heard of color contrast. Dark blue on dark blue is not very readable. Had to highlight the article to read it.

Looks like a bug in their light theme - it's using the dark theme's background. There's a theme toggle top-left to switch to the still-functioning dark theme.

Guessing they probably started with a light theme then retrofitted a dark theme & rolled it out without realising it would regress the existing light theme.

Coincidentally, I thought it was this bug that bit you; it was reported a couple of days ago https://github.com/mui/material-ui/issues/43823

I'm not seeing that colour combination -- are you sure you don't have Dark Reader or some such add-on enabled..?

Nah, I'm on my work computer. No browser add ons. Just standard chrome in dark mode. Clicking the light/dark toggle on the page (as some others suggested) does fix it.

Here is a screenshot of what I see if you're curious: https://imgur.com/a/eRchEn7

I also don't see the bugged light mode until I allow 3rd party scripts on the website in uBO

see https://winamp.com/player/legacy or https://about.winamp.com/press/article/winamp-open-source-co...

Wish they bothered to preserve the commit history... Can't imagine anything sensitive in there that they couldn't share.

That'd mean they'd have to do more work then necessary & there'd at most only ever be what went back to the stripped down 5.666 code deliverable they got after it was sold on from AOL at the start of 2014 (was looked into but determined not worth the hassle when that was being sorted out at the time).

-dro

I see... Fair enough. Thanks for the background!

One of the best pieces of software ever made. Will devour its code. Hopefully new startups like Slack can learn from it too.

According to the license, this repo is not that different than me just extracting the source code from the binaries. Pass.

"source code is open" implies "open source", and the License refers to itself as a "copyleft" license, but it's a newly minted license - IANAL does anyone know if this is open source or another Elastic type situation?

It's definitely not Open Source as it has pretty restrictive terms. :(

Cool, I guess. But WinAmp is in the category of software that is easy to write, but benefits hugely from the network effect. Nobody would care about WinAmp if it weren't for the huge number of skins the community created for it.

F yeahhhhh ... the player that never crashed, even if Windows OS crashed all around it

This is more significant (to me) than the iPhone 16 launch, I'll pay for people who can port this to Linux (Gnome) and Mac OS.

Barring the ton of licensing stupidity ongoing (maybe they'll fix it, who knows), as far as I know you could actually do that by forking the repo and then connecting your fork to bountysource. Open an issue for each target OS, set the amounts, and then publicize that fact on as many social media channels as you have access to

However, I wanted to draw your attention to "are you asking the right question" because there's a very real chance that the things you actually love about Winamp would not carry over to any such ports, since it's not "recompile and get the Winamp on Windows experience" - they would be Gnome and macOS apps, behaving similar to other such apps

Bountysource is long dead.

There is some pretty creative swearing throughout this codebase - very entertaining!

I thought so, but that's what I came to the comment section to know ;-)

Eh, here we go again, there's yet-another custom license, "Winamp Collaborative License (WCL) Version 1.0". Quick skim:

> No Distribution of Modified Versions: You may not distribute modified versions of the software, whether in source or binary form.

> No Forking: You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the software.

It's basically "look but do not touch". I don't see why this was necessary for something that's basically abandonware by now, and is mostly of historical interest.

Lawyers.

Is there any chance or an already existing fork to build for apple silicon mac!?

Is there an official announcement or something else that accompanied this? I don't know the current state of their organization and the chain of ownership for the code.

Awesome, that's far more interesting than the new implementation, which doesn't include the batch media transcoding for exports to mp3 players.

Oooh, a legacy version of winamp? Might as well clone the repo, that'll be a pretty small download, from before when software got all bloated

...

750Mb later: WTF?

[tippety tappety clickedy clackedy]

Oh.... they vendored everything, including a bunch of external x86 binaries. 32- and 64-bit. FFS.

But also - I sure hope they got the licensing correct for those parts...

I don't really care about the whole licensing thing, but some of the people in the issues section are being quite immature about it.

Maybe finally this can help clarify how their WASABI interface thing works for the visualization plugins

Lot of fun looking at an old battle worn codebase like this.

If you're just looking for a repository to steal, https://github.com/hatonthecat/CloneThisRepository

What a load of BS. This is just a poor attempt at open-source-washing.

They rolled their own license but couldn't be bothered to read GitHub's ToS.

"collaborative" license, "opened to the community", "enabling the entire community to participate in its development", "global collaboration" but you have to grant them perpetual rights and waive your own, you're not even allowed to fork lol.

Seems like they're only looking for unpaid workers.

Is there even any development happening on Winamp? What would these unpaid workers do? If they can't touch the code, not even test it, then the only thing this repo could serve is reporting bugs, but will anyone fix them?

I feel like this whole release is just a PR stunt to remind us that winamp still exists. They don't actually want any help, nor do they want to give anything to the community. They just want to get into gossip, so the spectacular chaos with releasing certificates and 3rd-party proprietary code actually helps for publicity.

They dumped the prior dev team over a year ago (the ones that added the nft plug-in & fanzone crap) & it is mostly a ploy to get a free dev team as was speculated when the whole "source available" thing got announced 4 months ago (but they seem to have left it to the night before to do anything hence the complete mess that's been going on).

The license was always going to be restrictive & focused on what only benefits them as they would never want any clones, etc to be able to make use of it. Also the terms when I look at it from an ex plug-in dev stance seem to prevent any new / updated plug-ins from being built with the plug-in api headers which afaict would fall under their license & surplanting the prior one (no idea if they've changed the in-file stuff or not as I cannot look at their code to avoid issues with work my own player).

it looks like they are using mpg123 for the actual mp3 decoding

Haven't thought about converting FLAC files to mp3 in a while. Hell yeah Winamp

Why convert? Winamp plays FLAC natively.

The license sucks

The second link is a 404

Probably this one:

https://winamp.com/press/winamp-open-source-code

fixed

Can't we just let it die?

Source-available but certainly not open source.

"You are granted the right to view, access, and study the source code of the software. You are granted the right to Modify the software for private use only."

"No Distribution of Modified Versions: You may not distribute modified versions of the software, whether in source or binary form."

"No Forking: You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the software."

Nobody said anything about open source

Title is "Winamp Legacy player source code is now open". The usage of the word "open" in conjunction "source code" alludes to the long established "open source code" phrase, which implies a set of licenses, and the associated open source culture.

A better choice for the title would have been "Winamp Legacy player source code is now available".

I agree but my statement still holds true. When something doesn't explicitly say "Open Source", it's not Open Source. This is a very old trick that i've learned decades ago..

Well, the description in the Repo says this:

>its source code was opened to the community

I find it hard to believe that any serious person would argue that "code that is open to the community" ≠ "open source code".

I think it's realistic to assume that the developers who wrote the README, and the lawyers who wrote the license didn't talk to each other much when making decisions about how much freedom users were going to have with the code.

Their official blog post does

https://winamp.com/press/winamp-open-source-code

It does not. It open-source only in it's URL which has no semantic value if you read the article.

And the license itself states,

> The [license] is a free, copyleft license

And then proceeds to not be a free, copyleft license.

This pretty clearly seems like they're trying to squat on the terms "copyleft" "free software" and "open source" while weasel-wording their way out of it — "open washing", as someone else in the comments called it, seems to fit. This smacks of someone who wants to use the words, and to have you feel like they've used the words, but without having to actually do the things the words would mean, spoken genuinely.

It's still misleading and they're obviously trying to imply marketing value that doesn't exist.

Yea this is just a case of a bad HN title. The source is clearly not open, even if though it is released.

EDIT: looks like the title’s been corrected!

They say the same thing in their blog post announcing it.

https://winamp.com/press/winamp-open-source-code

The HN headline did

If I can read the code, it's open source.

What you're complaining about is free source code, which this probably is not.

sorry but why does old winamp code still matter? there are plenty open source audio libraries these days along with different open source players.

It's still one of the best simple media players (sadly). If it had better HiDPI support, it'd still be my go to on Windows (if I still used Windows).

I wonder if anyone there still has the source to the failed Linux Alpha. It crashed all the time, but it did exist, for a very short while.

It's a fun diversion to browse around old codebases, especially those of software you once used extensively.

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