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.
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.
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?
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
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
The new one is just a web UI with options for streaming music. There were talks of the old original Winamp going open source though, which bought nostalgic memories to many. Eithercase, with so many music players on both Windows and Linux, I doubt Winamp would a niche case to fill.
I have the old one (5.x) installed and use it regularly. Is it still available for download anywhere? Would love for that one to be officially open sourced.
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.
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.
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.
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 was much more powerful software around at that time. It this just nostalgics or is there really something that people miss today that Winamp provided or still provides?
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 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
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.
Because it has 'llm' in it? Makes way more sense than a music player formerly known as Winamp
Edit: it seems the company that owns it rebranded itself to llama last year. Still think it's a stupid choice since nobody knows their name and everybody knows Winamp. 'freeamp' would be the logical choice
But the main app is tightly integrated into the win32 api--moving it to linux would basically require a complete rewrite. DEADBEEF is an example of something like this. Parallel values and ideals, but open source.
There are wine-bottled versions out there. Of course, whether or not output is bit perfect would depend on the wine settings. Bottling it, of course, defeats the point of the program being highly modular/extensible.
Also, you have to remember that a lot of proprietary formats have proprietary encoders/decoders that are incompatible with the GPL.
Shipping Windows binaries are much less of a hassle for the dev than than trying to reverse-engineer everything they need or figuring out how to manage dependencies with different licenses across different package managers and distros with different goals.
tl;dl foobar2000 is an excellent sum of its parts; like Winamp was back-in-the-day. You start changing parts and you get a different sum.
Edit: oops. It had its final release in 2007. Shows how much I use Linux for multimedia lately! Around 2000 this was my go-to. I had it hooked up to an Inspiron laptop in my car with a usb game controller to switch tracks and stuff.
For those that don't know, they are going to release something called FreeLlama which might be FOSS (no public info as to what the license actually will be).
Winamp says that they still want to control 'what features' go into winamp and it'll remain proprietary. I assume they really just want people to contribute interesting things to FreeLlama and then put the contribution into Winamp.
The license probably won't be FOSS because they probably aren't going to want anyone contributing to own copyright to the code that they are committing.
It is odd because FOSS contributors aren't really known for being OK with this sort of thing in the past, so I doubt they're going to get much out of it. Maybe it's a Hail Mary and they'll end up blaming people for not freely giving up their devtime and creativity to a company that wants to make money on it.
Winamp oh winamp.......
You still trying to exist even after so much other music player out there like AIMP, QMMP, CLEMENTINE, ELISA, etc.....
Maybe back in my childhood days you're king.....but nowadays nah.....