Petteri Pyyny
25 Sep 2024 12:38
The legendary music player Winamp dominated our desktop computers for the first decade of the millennium, until Spotify and other streaming services pushed MP3 music aside.
For the last 20 years, the story of Winamp has been somewhat of a sad saga, despite having a dedicated fanbase throughout all these years. The ownership of the player has changed more often than one would expect, and little has happened to innovate or change its trajectory.
But this past spring, Winamp's current team announced that the classic would be released as open-source. The hope was that opening the source code would attract volunteers and bring completely new ideas to the program itself.
And now, that promise has finally been fulfilled - partially.
Winamp's source code is now available on Github. However, the software hasn't transformed into an open-source program in the truest sense of the term.
The license that Winamp uses actually prohibits the distribution of various custom experimental versions created from the software. In true open-source fashion, any program can be forked and developed into a completely different version that is separate from the main project. This is not the case with Winamp, as all development must occur for the purpose of enhancing the original Winamp. Of course, one can create their own forks or distinct versions from the main project, but these cannot be distributed at all, not even for free.
Understandably, open-source enthusiasts are not exactly thrilled with the licensing terms under which Winamp finally released its source code.