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Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

arstechnica.com

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Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#41

Post by Arelius »

VonGuard wrote: post #11

This is a cautionary tale for preservationists. My current preservation project is still not open because we are very slowly reviewing the code to make sure we don't accidentally include any IP when we open the source code. The real things that get you are similar to what happened here: codecs, graphics libraries, and a really big one to look out for is fonts. It'd be great if there was a scanner that could detect th…

I have the same problem..

I have been trying to preserve a game engine which has had an important following. But there has just been so many hands in the code, there is a lot of trepidation of the risk it could open the companies up too. Not sure how to progress from here.

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#42

Post by markstos »

delfinom wrote: post #31
Calavar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The meme/troll issues were edgy teen style humor and not that funny, but the legitimate ones that tried to gently explain what rebase does and went completely ignored were funny because they felt surreal and hyperreal at the same time. Office-Space-esque comedy.

The troll issues are exactly why my OSS group does not use GitHub at all. It's become a toxic platform for quite awhile.

What does your OSS group do instead?

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#43

Post by jart »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #36
armada651 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just the reality of any platform that doesn't gatekeep who gets to participate. Eventually assholes are going to join, that's simply unavoidable.

Sure, but then there's also the reality that people who don't want to deal with assholes and trolls will pack up and leave. So IMO it's best to combat it and not normalize it, so that we can have more nice things.

Use the report feature. I've gotten so many accounts removed from the platform for abuse.

Sometimes I wonder though why GitHub allows like an anonymous account with no projects and no followers to do things like upload executables to my issue tracker, or file a dozen new issues on a project with 160+ watchers. Then there's the people who use AI to fill their profiles with fake content to look less sus. It's particularly spicy when you work for a non-profit that puts a lot of oversight into decisions like banning people. I think Microsoft could be doing more to make sure the people who participate in the GitHub community are openly original and have good intentions.

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#44

Post by Dylan16807 »

fwip wrote: post #38
sph wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion: preservationism shouldn't care about licensing and legal nonsense. Because what is the point if something is distributed in a restrictive license, can't be preserved and then gets lost to time? Also, licensing is to avoid distribution, modification or outright copying by competitors; preservation is completely orthogonal to those concerns. It is to avoid losing a piece of craft to the sands of time…

> There is no reason laws should have power over anything in perpetuity. Laws are simply rules chosen and enforced by a given society. Having power over things is what they do. (Also, "in perpetuity" seems untrue, as all copyright expires eventually.) You clearly disagree with the laws (and I'm inclined to support you there), but what is special about preservation that it should automatically override the will of soc…

You're focusing on the wrong part.

That argument is almost entirely about the length of copyright, and you're dismissing that with a quick "eventually". It's not about trying to "override" the intent of copyright.

Also copyright has a clear purpose, and the purpose is to promote culture and science, not to help things get lost. When works that people care about get lost, that's a flaw not a feature.

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#45

Post by hedgehog »

liquidpele wrote: post #5

I’ll just leave this here. https://webamp.org/

If someone extracted that so it could run on desktop, especially with support for SoundCloud and other services, I would enjoy using that. Running inside Tauri the resource footprint wouldn't even be that bad.

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#46

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

belthesar wrote: post #14
sureIy wrote: post #10

I don't really understand why people complained. The source is open, if don't want to contribute, don't. Just because something doesn't fit a specific definition it doesn't mean it's not worth of existence.

The source wasn't open though, it was available, and it was provided in a sense that fully showcased that they did not understand what they were doing. Everything from licenses that were fully unenforceable and non-compliant with Github's license agreement to illegally distributing proprietary code to fundamentally misunderstanding how to use git. It's one thing to provide a source available codebase. That's a choice…

It doesn't meet your definition of the word open.

Of course they didn't know what they were doing. It was written by a 19-year-old in the mid 90s. The code is messy with poor licensing and some build tools were included in the repository and they wrote a dumb license for it? Who cares, they shipped a product that 10s of millions of people used and loved and wanted to share that code up to the world and instead of embracing the best of what they were trying to do while helping them to make things better, the community piled on them until they said it was so not worth it that just pulled the whole thing.

Bravo and job well done.

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#47

Post by VonGuard »

Arelius wrote: post #41
VonGuard wrote: post #11

This is a cautionary tale for preservationists. My current preservation project is still not open because we are very slowly reviewing the code to make sure we don't accidentally include any IP when we open the source code. The real things that get you are similar to what happened here: codecs, graphics libraries, and a really big one to look out for is fonts. It'd be great if there was a scanner that could detect th…

I have the same problem.. I have been trying to preserve a game engine which has had an important following. But there has just been so many hands in the code, there is a lot of trepidation of the risk it could open the companies up too. Not sure how to progress from here.

Email me at alex@themade.org and we can chat about options and methods. I've done this a bunch and we can usually figure out a way to meet the needs and keep risk at bay, but we will need to talk to the original rights holders, even if the thing was sold off 5 times to new companies. Usually, when I cold call the head of legal about this type of thing, they have absolutely no idea what IP I am talking about, even when their company owns it 100%, and this usually helps a lot to get them to open up. "We own what? Oh, and a museum wants to work with us? Cool!"

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#49

Post by datavirtue »

belthesar wrote: post #14
sureIy wrote: post #10

I don't really understand why people complained. The source is open, if don't want to contribute, don't. Just because something doesn't fit a specific definition it doesn't mean it's not worth of existence.

The source wasn't open though, it was available, and it was provided in a sense that fully showcased that they did not understand what they were doing. Everything from licenses that were fully unenforceable and non-compliant with Github's license agreement to illegally distributing proprietary code to fundamentally misunderstanding how to use git. It's one thing to provide a source available codebase. That's a choice…

[flagged]

Re: Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks

#50

Post by sangnoir »

armada651 wrote: post #33
delfinom wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The troll issues are exactly why my OSS group does not use GitHub at all. It's become a toxic platform for quite awhile.

That's just the reality of any platform that doesn't gatekeep who gets to participate. Eventually assholes are going to join, that's simply unavoidable.

> Eventually assholes are going to join, that's simply unavoidable.

To repurpose an old aphorism: Moderation is key to avoiding assholes running rampant on your platform.

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