Gregory's ServerRemember how Winamp recently said they’re opening the source code “enabling the entire community to participate in its development”.
Well…
Why would people bother to contribute then? Open source licenses exist for a reason.
 23 comments
@gamingonlinux wait so... they said theyre open sourcing... and then said theyre not planning on going open source? What? I feel like I'm missing something lol. @kali @gamingonlinux because public source code doesn't mean the same as open source, they can just release the source code but not allow you to do anything you want with it (but the terminology can easily be used to confuse people) @vurpo @gamingonlinux oh i see now, thats so annoying "you can see our source code.... but only if it benefits us" @kali @gamingonlinux And then there's also the separate issue of how they're going to run the project, as "open source" itself doesn't dictate whether you need to accept contributions, how you take them, whether you listen to your community at all, etc. For example SQLite, one of the most widely used open source projects overall, does not take any code contributions from anyone (in their case it's for an OK reason), but the code is available and licensed for any use, so it's open source. @vurpo @kali @gamingonlinux OpenOffice was also like that, they almost never accepted any contributions outside Sun/Oracle employees. Because of that most linux distros actually used a fork that was more advanced (better support for MS Office formats etc). And that fork more or less became LibreOffice in the end. @kali @vurpo @gamingonlinux I think it goes a little further than that - “you can see our source, extend it, improve it, and add value to it, but it’ll still belong to us and you’ll have no rights”  @choobs @kali @vurpo @gamingonlinux That’s how I read it too. They’re after free development resources hoping to get a meal ticket from Winamp nostalgia. I think they perhaps underestimate the nouse of technically minded people.  @rejzor @vurpo @gamingonlinux i guess either as marketing strategy for people who dont look into it that much and just go "ooh open source means its better" or so people can audit the source code before installing it? also for free code contributions like someone else said.  @gamingonlinux I had a feeling this was the case. Though why they are so protective of a 25 year old media player hardly anyone uses anymore is beyond me.  @gamingonlinux Well, considering that the era of the native, fat and feature rich music player is gone anyways, this is a bit of a nothing burger tbh. 20 years ago, when this sort of application was still relevant, it would have been worth agonising over. But back then we also had Amrok, Rhythm Box, and all sorts of others. These are all dead now. Btw. I'm not saying an application like this is useless, just that there is little interest in them.  Clementine/Strawberry have existed for years. Heck VLC too. Winamp isn't relevant anymore and this is all a little sad. It reminds me of when Slashdot grandiosely offered up their (mass of perl and mess) forum software and everyone said, yeah, no.  @gamingonlinux I saw that announcement and gave it all the consideration due to an announcement that the Apple ][ version of Wolfenstein now has a plugin architecture. Honestly I'm not gonna get wound up about the TOS. @gamingonlinux Winamp has always avoided using "open source" in its initial statements. Well... It hurts. @gamingonlinux Nice so if I fix a bug from them or implement a feature I do lose the rights of my written code? That's really something I was looking for, investing free time and then gifting it to a company ...   |
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Tweet from
@winamp:"Open source is not currently planned."
23/05/24