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
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.
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/
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).
Is it important? It was a cool program 30 years ago but it’s just a playback UI right?
It’s not the old program anymore, and it already leaked a long time ago. It was obvious that the new one wouldn’t be open.
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.
There’s WACUP: https://getwacup.com/
Alright, Winamp. You can go be forgotten forever now.
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.
