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Winamp has announced that it is "opening up" its source code
- ssahoo 2y agoGood. Love the reimplementation in HTML https://webamp.org/ https://webamp.org/
- yazzku 2y agoIt's fantastic. I can easily spend hours on the skins website. https://skins.webamp.org/ https://skins.webamp.org/
- tech-no-logical 2y agowow, I even found the skin I used way back when... very cool https://skins.webamp.org/skin/d77a144cdb775a0937617389b6e0e4f0/Ultrafina.wsz/ https://skins.webamp.org/skin/d77a144cdb775a0937617389b6e0e4...
- phatfish 2y agoAnime girls and the Borg lady from Voyager, checks out.
- tshaddox 2y agoMajor Tom was the one with the most impressive artwork to me. https://skins.webamp.org/skin/dd9931b75c11c570ff8ceabee499e740/Major_Tom%20Remix.zip/ https://skins.webamp.org/skin/dd9931b75c11c570ff8ceabee499e7...
- semireg 2y agoThis satisfied whatever cravings I still had. Thank you!
- captbaritone 2y agoHey! That's my side project. So glad to hear people enjoy it.
- mybrid 2y agoI just checked it out. Good stuff! I may deploy it.
- einsteinx2 2y agoWhoa! How did you get what looks like the real Milkdrop visualizer working??
- LocutusOfBorges 2y agoTwenty years too late for it to possibly matter, but it's still nice to see. Interesting that there's no mention of what licence the source is being released under - and it's only available following email enquiries, of all things. I'm surprised they're even bothering, at this point - the software's so obsolete that it's not like it has much in the way of value anymore beyond nostalgia.
- bcraven 2y agoI use the community update of Winamp, WACUP, and it's excellent. I've tried other media players but always come back here. I'm not even one of those people who likes the shitty visualisations, I just think the interface works perfectly. https://getwacup.com/ https://getwacup.com/
- QuercusMax 2y agoIt's windows-only? Weird.
- Lammy 2y agoWeird? It's Winamp lol
- xnx 2y agoWith the source code someone can port it to make Linamp.
- callwhendone 2y agodon't forget Macamp.
- nathell 2y agoRemember that before Winamp, there was DOSamp! I used to use version 0.8. Playback was jerky on a 486DX2/66 but once I upgraded to a Pentium, it was smooth sailing.
- xxpor 2y agoI'm skeptical this will be a fully free license based on the cagey language in the announcement :/
- pquki4 2y agoVery weird. They provide a very specific future date for this, and avoided using the term "open source". I can't recall any other company doing this. Most of the time, companies provide a github repository at the same time they make such announcements. Even for twitter, Elon Musk promised the algorithm would be opened, and then some time later it was just there. While generally it is a positive thing to see code being available, I wouldn't think too much into it until I can see the license and the code.
- TillE 2y ago> I can't recall any other company doing this Years ago Microsoft used to do stuff like this, notably releasing .NET Framework under its Reference Source License (you're allowed to look at the code, but that's about it).
- nailer 2y agoIt’s still happening. Bad companies are swapping between using ‘open source’ inaccurately (to get grants and funding) and saying ‘source available’ (when people call them on their bullshit) now.
- ElijahLynn 2y agoTIL: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm https://blog.x.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-source/2023/twitter-recommendation-algorithm https://blog.x.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-source/2023...
- swatcoder 2y agoThey might not be in a position to relicense all of it, or might not be sure of exactly how to do so appropriately. Large, living companies like Microsoft can work with their lawyers to confidently understand what they're releasing when opening up old code and indemnify theythemselves appropriately, but a troubled company on its last legs can't nexessarily budget for all that. Commercial software of that vintage was not built from dependencies that were all open source themselves, nor were there necessarily contributor/contractor agreements that kept copyright in a suitable place for open source relicencing. They might have been prepared for explicit rights transfer to another party, and maybe disclosure as they're suggesting here, but relicensing is a different thing.
- 0x1ch 2y agoThe dozen people still using Winamp rejoice...
- dark-star 2y agoI'm one of those 12 people apparently. I don't know, I still listen to mp3 music on my PC almost every day... And I have yet to find another player that is as fast and lightweight as WinAMP
- zeroonetwothree 2y agofoobar is great
- M95D 2y agoIt's great until you move your music and the notice that the carefully sorted playlist you kept updating over 10 years doesn't use relative paths and you can't do search and replace because it's binary.
- devindotcom 2y agoi'm with you my brother
- jerhewet 2y agoNot lightweight, but I've fallen in love with MusicBee (https://getmusicbee.com/ https://getmusicbee.com/) and it's been my only music player for at least the last 10 years. Love everything about it.
- hodder 2y agoIt really whips the llama's ass.
- solardev 2y agoMaybe now we can finally add RealVideo support to it.
- buildsjets 2y agoLet's all take this moment to celebrate 22 years and 230 days of RealNetwork's strong commitment to fucking ugly clunky software. https://www.bonequest.com/1099 https://www.bonequest.com/1099
- xyst 2y agotil: Winamp is still alive and kicking
- tflol 2y ago[flagged]
- renegade-otter 2y agoI remember as a hobbyist Windows programmer (Borland C++ Builder) I was really envious of the skills required to build something like Winamp - especially the UI. Back then, advanced learning resources and examples were effectively non-existent or at least, hard to find and stitch together.
- yazzku 2y agoThe fact that you can re-skin it at runtime with such a wide variety of skins and load such a variety of plugins puts modern software to shame.
- renegade-otter 2y agoDockable UI, fast, stable, form and function. Really a masterclass in software design to this day.
- pjbk 2y agoI think those of us who use the REAPER DAW and its customizable themes are the main beneficiaries of that functionality.
- dale_glass 2y agoYou can reskin a lot of modern software, it just went out of fashion.
- yazzku 2y agoModern software won't run on a 30 year-old Win95 computer like Winamp did. CSS inside browser-based applications does not count as skinning; that's just an abomination.
- bredren 2y agoIt was really cool. Skinning was pretty easy to do. The packaging format was a zip archive with a renamed extension. You could do a lot with a little photoshop skills and trial and error. So many people used it that skins would get a lot of distribution, too.
- GGO 2y agowhy wait this long (until Sept 2024) to opensource the code?
- captbaritone 2y agoNote that they don't actually say "open source" anywhere.
- ndiddy 2y agoWinamp has a ton of proprietary licensed library code (codecs, Gracenote API, etc) that all has to be replaced with open source equivalents before the code can be released. I believe the skeleton crew that they had working on maintaining Winamp a few years ago started on some of this work, but I'm assuming that the whole codebase needs to be audited to make sure that they're legally in the clear.
- omoikane 2y agoIt's also weird that the timestamp on the press release is "Dec 16, 1". There are 5 press releases total on that site, 2 from 2023, 2 from 2024, and this one from year "1". It just seems very strange.
- pwillia7 2y agollama
- yumraj 2y agois there a good Mac port that supports newer, especially loss less, codecs?
- captbaritone 2y agoThe closest I've seen is https://re-amp.ru https://re-amp.ru. Not sure about codecs
- rocky1138 2y agoSomeone mentioned macamp. I have no idea though
- sn0n 2y agoCan we get a Godot port for winamp on all the systems? Kthnx. ^>^
- foxandmouse 2y agoI can't remember the last time I thought of winamp, I moved on to foobar2000 and then to streaming services. Even with this announcement, there's no mention of a licence... Too little too late, maybe if foobar2000 became open source but I'd doubt it.
- Lammy 2y agoThis leaked a couple years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29379346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29379346
- drc86 2y agoI knew those quotation marks were going to ruin my elation when I clicked the headline.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoKinda late. Maybe it would've been cool in 2006 when I still used Windows. But what I really want to know is: will it really kick the LLaMAs ass now with AI features?
- babypuncher 2y agoI'm surprised they haven't announced any AI features yet. It seems like every 5 years ago there's a big "Winamp is BACK" announcement paired with some new nonsense related to whatever the big tech buzzword of the day is. Last time it was blockchains.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoIt's what's left of AOL. Give them another 20 years.
- RobotToaster 2y agoThe weaselly wording doesn't make me optimistic, but I hope it's an open source license.
- devindotcom 2y agoCurrently dating myself by playing Portishead's Dummy in Winamp 5.66... Looking forward to this code being lightly maintained for minimal compatibility with future OSes. I dislike change!
- ndiddy 2y agoSome context: Winamp's owners have been going through financial difficulties since last year and as a result have laid off the skeleton crew they previously had maintaining Winamp (their main focus seems to be a streaming service also called Winamp for HTML5 and phones). This looks like they're willing to let the community take over maintenance for PC Winamp, which beats letting it die IMO. https://forums.winamp.com/forum/winamp/winamp-site-design/4620943-winamp-windows-desktop-version-download-directory-on-server#post4621013 https://forums.winamp.com/forum/winamp/winamp-site-design/46...
- peppertree 2y agoStill waiting on KaZaA open source. Kids these days don't know what it's like trying to download a music video and end up watching someone getting beheaded.
- esotericimpl 2y ago[dead]
- zztop44 2y agoI’m pretty sure kids these days do know exactly what that’s like (although they wouldn’t be downloading the music video and it wouldn’t have taken over an hour for a shitty 2.3mb file)
- wrigby 2y agoI realize this is a joke, but can’t resist mentioning that LimeWire was (is?) open source (or at least used an open network in GnuTella)
- mrmincent 2y agoAnd funnily enough, gnutella being a creation of Justin Frankel, the creator of Winamp as well.
- giancarlostoro 2y agoOr downloading Windows XP.ISO and booting up Ubuntu. 15 year old me was confused and enraged.
- thefourthchime 2y agoAbout 20 years ago, I almost got hired on the Winamp team. They were busy working on Winamp 3, which, from what I gathered, was a pretty much total rewrite using modern C++. The previous codebase had been more or less just C, written by Justin Frankel. I think everyone kind of hated Winamp 3. It was very buggy. The plugin framework was extremely complicated. I wonder which source code they'll open up. Maybe both.
- boomskats 2y agoI had to re-read your comment because first time round I thought you were suggesting it was JF's codebase they hated. Everything else he's ever worked on has been phenomenal (especially Reaper, from the very start). So was that at AOL?
- loceng 2y agoI just remembered I used to hangout in an IRC chat with the creator of Sonique as a pre-teen when I first started to teach myself to code - Sonique being the main competitor to Winamp way back when. Strange how memory works.
- serf 2y agosonique was interesting because most skins ditched 'square-rectangle' all together. Sometimes it was really wacky, like raindrops on your screen. The visulization engine was very milkdrop-y, too.
- willcipriano 2y agoI used to love Winamp for internet radio/tv. Maybe plug-in NewPipe or similar instead and fork it?
- babypuncher 2y agoFor anyone looking for a slightly more modern alternative, I recommend foobar2000[1]. It's not quite as pretty out of the box, but it makes up for it with some insane customizability. It also has a very robust ecosystem of components, and works very well in Wine. 1. https://www.foobar2000.org/ https://www.foobar2000.org/
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nipperkinfeet 2y agoI still use the old Winamp on all my devices. Winamp: old or new is being open sourced? If it's the old one, wonderful! WACUP team are now able to develop a ARM version.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y agoQuestions for the experts: should anyone use this, compared eg to something more modern like VLC?
- BoingBoomTschak 2y agohttps://qmmp.ylsoftware.com/ https://qmmp.ylsoftware.com/ already exists, though.
- nirav72 2y agoThe site is not reachable.
- chubot 2y agoWow, for me Winamp was one of the first "enshittified" pieces of software. I remember one version was fantastic, and then the next version sucked. I'm pretty sure this was due to a change in ownership or something I remember I used to use http://oldversion.com http://oldversion.com [1] to download the previous one Ever since then I have been wary of "improvements" that make software worse, which has been happening a lot recently. I'd be really interested in seeing the source code to the original. I didn't know much about programming then, and to me that would be similar to reading the original source code of Doom (which I've done a bit) [1] this site still seems alive? But doesn't even have https?
- lmm 2y ago> I remember one version was fantastic, and then the next version sucked. I'm pretty sure this was due to a change in ownership or something Winamp 3 was a major regression that sparked a backlash (in particular it had a new skin engine that probably was a priori better, but broke compatibility all existing skins, which wasn't popular; also performance, which had been a major selling point, was worse), but I don't remember there being any change of ownership or monetization effort. I think it was just a genuine well-intentioned rewrite that ended up worse than the original, like Netscape 4 or KDE4.
- willywanker 2y agoWA3 was an AOL production so of course it sucked. Buggy out of the box and introduced the media library feature. Version 5 fixed it. Also best part is the media library and extra features were themselves written as plugins so if you didn't want the feature you could disable it and use it just as a simple player.
- tiffanyh 2y agoHope it’s the source for Winamp 2.x (not 3 or 5)
- riffic 2y agodidn't it leak some time ago? did AOL ever spin nullsoft back out?
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoOh my God. My favorite piece of software of all time. Would love to read it's source.
- Andrew_nenakhov 2y agoThe most impressive feature of classic winamp were it's skins. You can effortlessly watch them in all their classic glory on WebAmp.org [0]. (There is also some nice music there) [0]: https://webamp.org/ https://webamp.org/
- dev1ycan 2y agodo people still use winamp over foobar?
- alok-g 2y agoI do.
- nirav72 2y agoI want to see a wasm version of winamp.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoIt's no skin off my nose either way, but I don't understand why you would want to take a nice slim desktop application and turn it into another web application that runs in a bloated browser. Seems to defeat the purpose of winamp at that point.
- willywanker 2y agoBlech.
- gman83 2y agoI've been using WACUP, it's really good: https://getwacup.com/ https://getwacup.com/
- throwme6969420 2y ago[flagged]
- Valerie_Wilson 2y ago[dead]
- notfed 2y agoNote their careful wording..."opened up source", not "open source".
- Razengan 2y agoIt's amazing… how WinAmp and the other softwares and websites that were so crucial in the rise of the internet AND computers in general, just..faded away like they did, and we got stuck with the Facebook and TikTok and Twitter and Netflix etc bs we have left today..
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y agoI hope for the code to read the library database. Perhaps I'll be able to debug what's broken in mine and fix it so I can use it again.
- anjel 2y agoAIMP3 is still in regular development for windows and Android and for me at least seems to nicely emulate winamp in UI, skins, plugins and extra features. I have fond memories of Winamp, but I don't miss it.
- cyco130 2y agoHeh, I wish Justin had some time to lay his hands on it again after so many years. (On a second thought, I’m happier with him being busy with Reaper).
- gerdesj 2y ago"Winamp will remain the owner of the software and will decide on the innovations made in the official version," explains Alexandre Saboundjian, CEO of Winamp." Which license will be used? "Opening up" is not exactly GPL.
- ssl-3 2y agoI also don't know what license will be used, but nothing in the GPL prevents [eg] the owners of Winamp continuing to own Winamp, or from deciding what innovations will (or will not) make it to their own official version. I'm not sure that "opening up" actually means what you may appear to think that it means. The entirety of present-day Winamp could be released, with code, under the GPL tomorrow and nothing says the org that owns Winamp will somehow cease to own Winamp, or that they must accept others' changes into their own source tree. (And that's perfectly OK, even under the restrictions of the GPL.)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- uptownhr 2y agowinamp should release an LLM and claim that it really beats the Llamas....
- desktopninja 2y agoTo me the gold version was winamp-v2.94 ... ~1.2MB of magic. I still use it today. Notable mention on BEOS ... CL-Amp
- oeieuwoiw7e 2y ago[flagged]
- oeieuwoiw7e 2y ago[flagged]
- oeieuwoiw7e 2y ago[flagged]
- ssahoo 2y agoAlso someone has rewritten Winamp in Swift as well. Few days ago it was on Product hunt and got 4 likes. Check it out https://re-amp.ru https://re-amp.ru
- trenchgun 2y agoLinux Winamp?
- itvision 2y agoNo one would ever believe me but last night I had a dream about exactly this. I was shocked to wake up and read about this in the news.