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.
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.
Is there any way to verify that the product in deployment is built from the same source? I’m guessing hash values but I still think it can be faked.
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.
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.
Oooooh they were just looking for free labor! Pass
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
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/
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
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.
But do any of them Whip the Llama’s Ass?
I wonder how well XMMS would work on mordern Linux
It works quite fine, use it daily. Well, XMMS2 to be pedantic.
Just some shellscripts bound to windows-keys to pause/play and load new files.
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/
Oh, now that is interesting. Thank you for that piece of information!
It’s at best abandonware, but the source will never be released officially as it now belongs to a random megacorp.
Alright, Winamp. You can go be forgotten forever now.
Fondly remembered forever. As it was around 2000…
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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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?
- 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
I can use it to update my ipod.
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.
This does not whip the llama’s ass.
No, it teased that llama’s ass.
It might wipe it though.
talk about burying the lede. the title should’ve been: WINAMP STILL EXISTS (also not going open source)
Why would they call the open version ‘openllama’? Isn’t llama that ai model?
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes people, I’m sorry for not knowing a meme in a language that’s not my native from before I was born
“why would they call the AI llama? Isn’t that an animal?”
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
they always had a llama as a mascot and as part of their slogan
Time to make Linamp
It really lips the whamma’s ass
…gross.
There was x11amp at one point. I forget what it’s named now.
How is foobar2000 not on Linux?
There are other WinAmp-like apps - including ones that can use old WinAmp skins in classic now etc - such as QMMP or Audacious
Well, it is on Android…
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.
Does xmms fit the bill?
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.
