Winamp removed "No forking" restriction from license | Hacker News Reader

Winamp removed "No forking" restriction from license

github.com

44 pointsajdude12 comments

Justin Frankel (Winamp author) response here: https://www.askjf.com/index.php?q=7357s

So basically this change allows contributors to fork the repo in order to offer pull requests, and nothing else changes.

The dotting and crossing of Is a Ts, sort of like how users of social media platforms grant those platforms certain rights to their posts and comments in order to allow the platforms to copy/distribute/publish that content.

Notably this was already part of GitHub's terms of service.

Someone should make a ML model called Winamp to compete with Meta's Llama.

It still has this:

> This custom License aims to maintain the collaborative nature of the project while restricting the distribution of modified versions.

They were never going to remove that as this is all about only them benefiting from free dev resources.

I feel like programmers didn't care as much back in the days of Winamp. Doing plugins, skins and stuff. But the sentiment have changed. The age of freeware, nagware (Winrar) and shareware is gone.

It is all spyware or FOSS nowadays ...

I would have liked a Winamp port to Linux for nostalgias sake. But, dunno why anyone would bother with it now when you'd need to be sneaky about it or don't share it openly.

XMMS2!

I wonder, would publishing a diff be against the license?

I don't believe so, they can't control what you create or what others may do with it for personal use. They may only control winamp/their interests

The assumptions being, users of the patch get their own source and this isn't for commercial purposes. This is The Old Way

I think this is how we got MP3 support at large before the patents expired or something. Memory is failing me.

Audacious supports classic Winamp skins so if you're only after the aesthetics just use that. Alternatively you may be able to run the original Winamp through Wine.

I used to do plug-ins because it scratched an itch to code & provide things that'd be of use to others which when you've got a job to pay for that free time then it's less of an issue. Also the time of winamp & the plug-in / skin community of the time were somewhat reflective of how interested people were in tech vs how commoditised it's now become & generically boring imho. And I'm probably guilty of the change in behaviours with how I'm trying to fund wacup but 2 decades on is a long time & most of those early creatives have bills to pay.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com