After much confusion, cross complaints, background edits, and an out-of-control comments section, those responsible for Winamp decided to activate the nuclear option and removed the code from GitHub. Obviously, the genie is out of the bottle and there are copies everywhere, but what should have been a moment to celebrate ended up becoming a warning…
The idea was very good in principle: Open the code of the classic Winamp player, with which millions of users grew up, had fun, and participated in a true musical revolution. But the problems began once its license was known: The initial version of the Winamp Collaborative License went to the extreme of prohibiting forks, opening a potential conflict front with GitHub's terms of use. The second version removed that point but confirmed the impossibility of distributing new editions. During the last three weeks, the Issues section became a battlefield… and in the end, those responsible for the code ended up pulling the lever.
Winamp on GitHub: What happened?
In general terms, today we can say that Winamp's code had portions of external projects, and proprietary packages from Intel and Microsoft (among other things). One of the most 'active' threads began with a mention of libdiscid (a module for generating MusicBrainz and freedb disc IDs from an audio CD), and the way it was included. The sources were modified, and from a technical point of view, it amounts to a GPL violation.
Beyond some corrosive discussions, everything seems to indicate that Llama Group (current owner of Winamp) never carried out the necessary cleanup before publishing the player's code. When we say 'cleanup', that process requires an overall audit, and of course, a legal evaluation. A former employee, Raphaël Leroux, said that the developers of the player legacy were fired before being able to clean the code, and that the original plan was a kind of opening like Doom had at the time (the DOS version used the proprietary DMX module and could not be released directly).
At the end of the previous article I expressed my wish to see Winamp as a free and open source project. After this, I think the bridge will remain in flames for a while. Pity.
Source: Ars Technica
