Open-sourcing of WinAmp goes badly – for its owners, anyway
www.theregister.com
As badly as the later development of WinAmp itself, really
  • fl42v@lemmy.ml
    1043·
    2 months ago

    I know, right… Damn foss enthusiasts, you show 'em sources in order to get some cheap publicity, and those bastards immediately start raising a stink over you slightly attempting to fuck them over with licensing

    • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
      11·
      2 months ago

      For starters, it was never “open source”…

      From your link:

      Instead, as Winamp CEO Alexandre Saboundjian said, “Winamp will remain the owner of the software and will decide on the innovations made in the official version.” The sort-of open-source version is going by the name FreeLLama.

      While Winamp hasn’t said yet what license it will use for this forthcoming version, it cannot be open source with that level of corporate control.

      If I upload the source code for my project on Github/Forgejo/Gitlab/Gitea and license it under and open source license, allowing you to fork it and do whatever you want (so long as you follow the terms of my copyleft license), and I diligently ensure that code is uploaded to my repository before being deployed, but I ignore all issues, feature requests, PRs, etc., is my project open source?

      Yes.

      Likewise, if Winamp had been licensed under an open source license, it would have been open source, regardless of how much control they kept over the official distribution.

      Winamp wasn’t open source because its license, the WCL, wasn’t open source.

  • Peffse@lemmy.world
    54·
    2 months ago

    Did they comment on why it was deleted? I didn’t see anything in the article. I recall the consensus was that they made so many mistakes the only way to fix it was deletion of the repo.

    I also saw in one of the comments of the Arstechnica article that the one who pushed for open-source wanted to clean up the code before publishing. Management said no, the entire team got fired/left, and suddenly the code got published with all that commercial stuff left in. Sounds about right.

    • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip
      30·
      2 months ago

      Based on the article, this is a train wreck of cosmic proportions. My guess is, the CEO panicked and went into damage mitigation mode.

      Sounds like they’re trying to put out a titanium fire using only a bucket of water. What could go wrong.

      • sawdustprophet@midwest.socialEnglish
        13·
        2 months ago

        Sounds like they’re trying to put out a titanium fire using only a bucket of water.

        I have a new phrase to use in the future.

  • gomp@lemmy.ml
    37·
    2 months ago

    I must say, this whole shitshow has been pretty funny to watch :)

    • taanegl@beehaw.org
      25·
      2 months ago

      This, and the WordPress mess, are two contenders for this years “wtf are u even doing” award.

    • a1studmuffin@aussie.zoneEnglish
      14·
      2 months ago

      Sometimes the real value of a project isn’t its proposed worth, but the schadenfreude it offers instead. I’ve backed a few failed Kickstarters that I absolutely got my money’s worth on.

      • Supermariofan67@programming.dev
        52·
        2 months ago

        Winamp published their code as “open source”. Problem is…

        1. It wasn’t open source, it was proprietary but you can see the source code.
        2. Their custom license didn’t even allow forks, which is against GitHub TOS
        3. The codebase apparently contains proprietary code from third parties that they don’t have the right to relicense.
        4. The codebase apparently contains GPL code from third parties that they probably didn’t have the right to make proprietary in the first place
        • theshatterstone54@feddit.uk
          3·
          2 months ago

          Wait, there’s GPL code there as well???

          I’d heard of all the others but this ome kinda snuck under the radar with all the larger issues at play here

          • Supermariofan67@programming.dev
            3·
            2 months ago

            The article on theregister stated

            Also inside the uploaded source code was some GPL 2 source code, which renders the not-very-open WCL moot.

        • superglue@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          On top of that, when told about the proprietary code, they deleted it from the repository thinking that was just the end if it. So they didn’t have any idea how git works either.

      • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip
        12·
        2 months ago

        Winamp source code was published on github, but the license said you can’t fork or share the code. Such a license isn’t compatible with github, which is all about forking and sharing.

  • AVincentInSpace@pawb.socialEnglish
    221·
    2 months ago

    ohhh nooooo, who could possibly have seen this coming

    not like that repo was getting constantly vandalized as people realized it contained copyrighted code that the winamp owners didn’t have the rights to which the project managers were halfheartedly playing whack-a-mole with