Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Winamp Legacy player source code

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 345 posts

Re: Winamp Legacy player source code

#31

Post by bityard »

eminence32 wrote: post #12

Open sourcing is always good, because maybe you can learn some things by reading it. Also, Winamp Legacy is a fairly important piece of software, so having an archive of its source is a great thing. But the restrictions on the source are interesting. To quote the license file: * No Distribution of Modified Versions: You may not distribute modified versions of the software, whether in source or binary form. * No Forki…

> No Forking

Amusing; there are already 6 forks on GitHub as of this writing.

Re: Winamp Legacy player source code

#32

Post by npteljes »

dncornholio wrote: post #23
scblock wrote: post #22

Source-available but certainly not open source. "You are granted the right to view, access, and study the source code of the software. You are granted the right to Modify the software for private use only." "No Distribution of Modified Versions: You may not distribute modified versions of the software, whether in source or binary form." "No Forking: You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the…

Nobody said anything about open source

Title is "Winamp Legacy player source code is now open". The usage of the word "open" in conjunction "source code" alludes to the long established "open source code" phrase, which implies a set of licenses, and the associated open source culture.

A better choice for the title would have been "Winamp Legacy player source code is now available".

Re: Winamp Legacy player source code

#33

Post by bityard »

dncornholio wrote: post #23
scblock wrote: post #22

Source-available but certainly not open source. "You are granted the right to view, access, and study the source code of the software. You are granted the right to Modify the software for private use only." "No Distribution of Modified Versions: You may not distribute modified versions of the software, whether in source or binary form." "No Forking: You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the…

Nobody said anything about open source

The HN headline did

Re: Winamp Legacy player source code

#34

Post by thomastjeffery »

chrisfinazzo wrote: post #14
ndiddy wrote: post #7

I'm curious how they expect people to contribute to the project. Section 4 of the license says "Contribution to Project: You are encouraged to contribute improvements, enhancements, and bug fixes back to the project. Contributions must be submitted to the official repository and will be reviewed and incorporated at the discretion of the maintainers." However, the restrictions in Section 5 ban forking the code or dist…

As @rollcat said, I suspect this means that people can contribute modifications, but that they cannot be distributed outside of the official sources. So, while you can send a patch to add a feature, you couldn't release that modified version on its own.

That still contradicts the license as written.

> No Forking: You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the software.

There is no meaningful difference between the words "patch" and "fork"; and the act of creating an edited codebase is explicitly disallowed.

If that isn't what they want, then they had better write more clearly.

Re: Winamp Legacy player source code

#35

Post by eminence32 »

proto-n wrote: post #17
eminence32 wrote: post #12

Open sourcing is always good, because maybe you can learn some things by reading it. Also, Winamp Legacy is a fairly important piece of software, so having an archive of its source is a great thing. But the restrictions on the source are interesting. To quote the license file: * No Distribution of Modified Versions: You may not distribute modified versions of the software, whether in source or binary form. * No Forki…

I'm not sure forking the repo would create a forked version of the 'software' if the fork's sole purpose is to develop a pull request. But I guess it's somewhat ambiguous langauge, and better safe then sorry when it comes to lawyers (which I'm not).

I agree; your interpretation is reasonable and plausible. But it's disappointing to have this ambiguously, since the license file has a whole section for "Definitions" and yet it fails to define what "forking" means in this context.

Re: Winamp Legacy player source code

#36

Post by abtinf »

They are either going to have to submit a ton of DMCA requests to GitHub and get their own repo taken down by GitHub, or they will be at risk of losing their copyright and will take it off GitHub themselves.

Forking is a fundamental feature of GitHub. Forking policy may only be set on private repos, but this is a public repo. The license doesn’t permit forking. There are already 6 forks.

Typically, copyright is not lost through selective enforcement (unlike trademark), but in this case the rights holder is making license violations both trivial and has full access to the list of violators. I suspect the courts will laugh them out of the room unless they vigorously defend their rights.

In that case, I certainly wouldn’t want to deal with it if I was GitHub. It is a terrible user experience, where a user clicking one of the most popular buttons on the platform suddenly becomes a legal problem.

Re: Winamp Legacy player source code

#37

Post by mikepurvis »

proto-n wrote: post #17
eminence32 wrote: post #12

Open sourcing is always good, because maybe you can learn some things by reading it. Also, Winamp Legacy is a fairly important piece of software, so having an archive of its source is a great thing. But the restrictions on the source are interesting. To quote the license file: * No Distribution of Modified Versions: You may not distribute modified versions of the software, whether in source or binary form. * No Forki…

I'm not sure forking the repo would create a forked version of the 'software' if the fork's sole purpose is to develop a pull request. But I guess it's somewhat ambiguous langauge, and better safe then sorry when it comes to lawyers (which I'm not).

Presumably the prohibition is around creating a forked release, with the language being intentionally a bit vague to cover their bases. Unfortunate that that's how these things are, though.

Re: Winamp Legacy player source code

#39

Post by npteljes »

klaussilveira wrote: post #28

I can't comprehend such a restrictive license on abandonware. And from the the looks of it, not very well written abandonware.

I was a huge fan of Winamp back in the day, but the way they handled the software completely soured me towards it. Winamp 3 was a clusterfuck, Winamp 5 was fine but felt like bloat, and then it was passed around like a hot potato, then abandoned on and off, and then the open sourcing feels like it was also around for quite some time. And now it's not even that, just a meager source-available. I know they don't owe me anything, but I feel disappointed.

Re: Winamp Legacy player source code

#40

Post by blue_cadet_3 »

ryandrake wrote: post #30
dncornholio wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody said anything about open source

Yea this is just a case of a bad HN title. The source is clearly not open, even if though it is released. EDIT: looks like the title’s been corrected!

They say the same thing in their blog post announcing it.

https://winamp.com/press/winamp-open-source-code

Post reply on HN