As reported here back on May 17th, the source files for the Windows music player Winamp were published on GitHub on September 24, 2024. From GitHub:
Winamp is a multimedia player launched in 1997, iconic for its flexibility and wide compatibility with audio formats. Originally developed by Nullsoft, it gained massive popularity with still millions of users.
Its development slowed down, but now, its source code was opened to the community, allowing developers to improve and modernize the player to meet current user needs.
The kicker is that, while the source is viewable and can be built for personal use, executables and changes to the code cannot be published. So the promise of “open source” has vanished. They have created their own license, the “Winamp Collaborative License (WCL) Version 1.0” with a restrictive paragraph:
5. Restrictions
No Distribution of Modified Versions: You may not distribute modified versions of the software, whether in source or binary form.
No Forking: You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the software.
Official Distribution: Only the maintainers of the official repository are allowed to distribute the software and its modifications.
The maker community will likely not wish to participate with such restrictions.
The good news is there are projects which either look like Winamp (but use zero code from them) or that are inspired by Winamp – check out this Adafruit guide for one such.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
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The maintainers of WinAmp have shot themselves in the foot.
Why would ANYONE want to spend the time and effort to improve on something that they can’t save as a new version?
It’s the equivalent of writing a large document in a word processor but never saving the document! All your effort was for nothing….
What a missed opportunity..
The maintainers of WinAmp have shot themselves in the foot.
Why would ANYONE want to spend the time and effort to improve on something that they can’t save as a new version?
It’s the equivalent of writing a large document in a word processor but never saving the document! All your effort was for nothing….
The “No forking” restriction is not even valid. The GitHub terms and conditions clearly state:
“By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and “fork” your repositories”