This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
WinAmp making their source code 'source available' instead of open source, and then dropping this phrase:
The release of the Winamp player's source code will enable developers from all over the world to actively participate in its evolution and improvement.
Yeah I don't think so
Yup, as much as I like Grayjay, I'm not going to help development much because it's "source available" instead of open source. There was an annoying bug I wanted fixed, and I was willing to go set up my dev environment and track it down, but they don't seem interested in contributions, so I won't make the effort.
Likewise for WinAmp. The main benefit to it being "source available" is that I can recompile it and researchers can look for bugs. That's it. They're not going to get developers interested.
Even if they accept patches, contributing still sounds like a bad deal. It's free labor for some company. FOSS at minimum means the right to fork, precisely what "source available" seeks to deny.
Leaving aside the question of winamp vs comparable programs, does anyone even care about desktop music players any more? I'm a throwback and use command line players, but I thought the cool kids these days use phones for stuff like that.
I understand there is some technical obstacle to porting Rockbox to Android, but idk what it is and haven't tried to look into it.
I look at 'source available' software as the right to review the code yourself to ensure there's no malicious behavior, not for community development.
It's simple. They want the free labor provided by the community with the ability to keep all of the profits they can potentially reap from said labor.
Oooooh they were just looking for free labor! Pass
And it’s available on Linux!
I had no idea that xmms died and got forked. Thanks for the tip
Is it important? It was a cool program 30 years ago but it's just a playback UI right?
It’s not the old program anymore, and it already leaked a long time ago. It was obvious that the new one wouldn’t be open.
The new one is just a web UI with options for streaming music. There were talks of the old original Winamp going open source though, which bought nostalgic memories to many. Eithercase, with so many music players on both Windows and Linux, I doubt Winamp would a niche case to fill.
But do any of them Whip the Llama’s Ass?
It looks like their May 16th tweet stated source code would be made available to developers, and they are clearing up some ambiguity in this new one.
Alright, Winamp. You can go be forgotten forever now.
Fondly remembered forever. As it was around 2000..
And now I'm curious how Winamp actually makes money.
**Edit
Just went to the website, it's a subscription Spotify knock off now. Still doesn't explain who are the people that actually pay for this.
The same ones who still pay for AOL
It's a little bit sad to me that Winamp collapsed just a year or two before smart phones really took off because it's interface and customizability were pretty well suited to the app format of smart phones. And now that the code and design are owned by a company that's being run by greedy morons there is likely never going to be anything resembling the original available for the phone app market.
I just use VLC on my phone these days. It works, no bullshit ads, and no glitches.
VLC is always respectable. I've been using AIMP. It lets you import folders as playlists and there's not an ad in sight, so it won me over.
That does not whip the llamas ass.
I mean... What contribution would this code actually be to the audio player world at this point?
Does anything else in the audio player world really whip llama asses?
I don't think that you could reproduce the llama ass whipping feature even with all the code available.
Even outside of this obviously either clueless or AI-fabricated post, I'm still not convinced that it'll be OSS, in the way that we expect it to be. The phrasing used in announcement leads me to believing that they'll use some license, that allows them draconian control over the source. It'll be "open" as in being able to see it, but not really fork, or meaningfully contribute.
Maybe someone can explain to me why Winamp is still so popular?
I have used Winamp 2, 3 and 5 around 2000ish, and it was a fine player, but nothing really special. After Winamp I think I switched to MediaMonkey, which IMO was easier to manage my music collection. Then I used VirtualDJ, which supported cross fading between music with synchronized beats. I think I also used foobar2000 a bit.
Winamp was an okayish player, but there was much more powerful software around at that time. It this just nostalgics or is there really something that people miss today that Winamp provided or still provides?
And most importantly, it really whips the Llama's ass. TBH, there aren't a lot of serious reasons. It was just slightly better than the default music player. I personally feel the skins played a significant part.
I wasn't that much a fan of the skins and found the interface of winamp very small and fiddly.
The milkdrop plugin however was rather nice though.
I don't think it's actually still popular, but I'm just talking out of my ass here. I remember it made some waves a few months ago about finally having a new release after so long, and my feeling was a shitload of nostalgia brought it back into the internet spotlight, regardless of how many people are actually using it.
I gave it a spin again, purely for nostalgia. I could find no compelling reason to use it over my actual preferred player, foobar
Why would they call the open version 'openllama'? Isn't llama that ai model?
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes people, I'm sorry for not knowing a meme in a language that's not my native from before I was born
"Winamp, it really whips the llama's ass"
The OG llama. Before The Emperor's New Groove, before Tina in Napoleon Dynamite and before llm's.
talk about burying the lede. the title should've been: WINAMP STILL EXISTS (also not going open source)
probably because it's a piece of shit and so they would have to rewrite it
For those that don't know, they are going to release something called FreeLlama which might be FOSS (no public info as to what the license actually will be).
Winamp says that they still want to control 'what features' go into winamp and it'll remain proprietary. I assume they really just want people to contribute interesting things to FreeLlama and then put the contribution into Winamp.
The license probably won't be FOSS because they probably aren't going to want anyone contributing to own copyright to the code that they are committing.
It is odd because FOSS contributors aren't really known for being OK with this sort of thing in the past, so I doubt they're going to get much out of it. Maybe it's a Hail Mary and they'll end up blaming people for not freely giving up their devtime and creativity to a company that wants to make money on it.
