News Winamp releases its source code on GitHub — but the legacy media player doesn't go full open-source

[Admin]

Winamp is released on GitHub, but restrictive licensing prevents other forks or distributions.

Winamp releases its source code on GitHub — but the legacy media player doesn't go full open-source : Read more

 

[Amdlova]

For nostalgic reasons need to download the winamp 2.92 version.

I just want a asus p2b board, awe32 sound card and a 3dfx voodoo 3.

 

[thestryker]

I've never stopped using Winamp for local media playback as there simply is no reason to. I just doubled checked and I'm still using the old 5.666 build from December 2013. Over the years I have been a bit disappointed that nobody has been able to take up the mantle, but perhaps this will eventually get there.

 

[tamalero]

Why release it on Github if they dont allow any improvements or collaborations?

 

[bit_user]

Why release it on Github if they dont allow any improvements or collaborations?

Well, it lets people do security audits, submit bug fixes, and submit feature enhancements ...unless it's no longer being maintained (is it?). Even if it's not maintained, you can still mod it for personal use, which is kinda cool.

I don't know if this is what they were worried about, but maybe they didn't want builds of something claiming to be WinAMP that was either malware-infected or had bugs, etc. that the original authors would get swamped with complaints about. That's been a problem other media developers have faced (I'm thinking specifically of mplayer, where certain Linux distros stripped out the patent/license-infringing bits and distributed their own custom builds, which their users would then complain about to the original developers).

A simple solution for the WinAMP folks would be to exclude the logos, icons, and other branding from the github repo and simply state in the license that you must acknowledge it's derived from WinAMP (similar to the classic BSD license), but you can't actually call yours any variation on the name WinAMP.

 

[thesyndrome]

For nostalgic reasons need to download the winamp 2.92 version.

I just want a asus p2b board, awe32 sound card and a 3dfx voodoo 3.

I'd check out 86Box, it's a PC emulator that goes down to the level of having fully emulated hardware that you can configure.
I made a Win98 machine with a Pentium MMX 200, a Voodoo 3, and a Sound Blaster 16 sound card out of curiosity and have had a lot of fun going through my old discs to install classic games on there that have no modern support (also Abandonware sites and the Internet Archive are a godsend for this).
But be aware, because it's emulating the entire system, it's subject to a lot of the old errors and glitches, as well as exceptionally long load times, due to emulating the HDD too, luckily it's got a great community behind it who help out with configurations and common problems.

Still an interesting project for fun though!

 

[ianhu]

Their license goes againts github's TOS.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Winamp-source-code-released-online-controversy-ensues.893779.0.html