Here's the story:
Company buys the rights to Winamp, tries to get the community to do their dev work for free, fails. That's it.The 'Winamp source license' was absurdly restrictive. There was nothing open about it. You were not allowed to fork the repo, or distribute the source code or any binaries generated from it. Any patches you wrote became the property of Llama Group without attribution, and you were prohibited from distributing them in either source or binary form.
There were also a couple of surprises in the source code, like improperly included GPL code and some proprietary Dolby source code that never should have been released. The source code to Shoutcast server was also in there, which Llama group doesn't actually own the rights to.
This was a lame attempt to get the community to modernize Winamp for free, and it failed.
Of course many copies of the source code have been made, they just can't be legally used or distributed.
The former developers really want to publish it as OSS. This was ignored and the developers gradually dropped out. Then the management decided "anyway, a former developer had a good PR idea, let's do it" and there was no one left to check etc. They just released it and started the shit show.
improperly included GPL code
Shouldn't that force a GPL release of the rest of the code, at least the bits they had the rights to?
Not necessarily. It means that Llama group, and perhaps the original Nullsoft, have violated the license of whatever open source developer wrote that code originally. So the only ones who could actually go after them to force anything are the ones who originally wrote that GPL code. They would basically have to sue Llama group, and they might also have a case against Nullsoft / AOL (who bought Nullsoft) for unjust enrichment over the years Winamp was popular.
Chances are it would get settled out of court, they would basically get paid a couple thousand bucks to go away. Even if they did have a legal resources to take it all the way to a trial, it is unlikely the end result would be compelling a GPL release of all of the Winamp source. Would be entertaining to see them try though.
Complicating that however, is the fact that if it's a common open source library that was included, there may be dozens of 'authors' and it would take many or all of them to agree to any sort of settlement.
So the only ones who could actually go after them to force anything are the ones who originally wrote that GPL code
Not necessarily, the SFC is involved in a big case regarding Vizio about this right now. The FSF was brought in to explain the intended interpretation and spirit of the GPL.
Yep, but I think it's good for the former dev's to see what crap the management is making and instead of taking credit, they're more likely to get a shitstorm.
Just sad for the work of the dev's.
I understand the nostalgia surrounding Winamp—I loved it too. But with old versions still available, maybe it’s time to let it rest and look forward. Rather than holding onto the past, we have an opportunity to create new, modern tools that fit our needs today—and we can make sure they’re free and remain open-source from the start. This whole situation offers a valuable lesson: instead of relying on companies or commercial interests, we can build software as a community, ensuring it stays accessible for everyone. With over 8 billion people on the planet and so many resources available, including AI advancements, we’re more capable than ever of creating tools like Winamp—and beyond. I guess I am not understanding what the problem is here, also, someone in this thread has already pointed out that we still have VLC, which IMO works exceptionally well!
That's the sad part. If there's one thing that the open-source community produces an abundance of, it's definitely text editors, but music players are a close second.
Previously, we've had XMMS as an open-source project that supported WinAmp skins.
And right now, perfectly actively maintained, there is QMMP.I'd bet money that the code quality of QMMP is a lot higher than that of WinAmp. So, if anyone wanted an open-source WinAmp, it was there all along.
What did they realize that they open sourced their product a decade too late for anyone to actually revive it?
People are saying that the repo contained third-party code, some of which was proprietary, some was GPL. That's two angles from which they could be sued very easily...
