In the age of Spotify and Apple Music, fewer people use Winamp, the popular media player of the nineties, but the fanbase has not completely disappeared, and many people still use the software out of habit to play music. Back in May, the Llama Group announced that the source code of the original desktop Winamp player would become available from September, which it is fulfilling its promise, although not quite in the form that could have been expected. Winamp’s code is now available on GitHub and can be used with a specific version of Visual Studio 2019.
Earlier, in connection with the announcement, it was suggested that by releasing the source code, the classic Winamp could get forks, but it is questionable how the alternatives will fare against the Wacup (WinAmp Community Update Project) project. As it turned out: the “open” source code is not completely open either, so you won’t have to expect such big conflicts.
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The fifth paragraph of the Winamp Collaborative License (WCL) prohibits the distribution of modified forks and versions, either in source or binary form, and stipulates that only official maintainers have the right to distribute. By publishing the code, the company essentially engages enthusiastic external developers for quasi-free work, or, if we were looking for a nicer term, it encourages community maintenance. Unfortunately, this means we won’t be seeing enhanced or “classic” versions of Winamp anytime soon, at least not from this release.
Many members of the FOSS, i.e. Free and Open Source Software community, criticized the Llama Group for the restrictive license, as it prevents many things that developers would normally expect from such releases. So while Winamp’s source code is available on GitHub, the app isn’t fully open source, it just allows anyone to make bug fixes and new features for the iconic media player.
Source: www.hwsw.hu
