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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

#91

Post by seattle_spring »

candiddevmike wrote: post #69
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.

GitHub doesn't provide nearly enough tools for moderation though. Like restricting issue creation, comments, and discussions to only certain folks (beyond the per-issue controls).

> GitHub doesn't provide nearly enough tools for moderation though

Which in itself would summon the vitriol of the super-trolls. "Moderation is censorship" is the most absolutely ridiculous mantra to gain traction in the last decade.

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

#93

Post by fsflover »

AlienRobot wrote: post #85
arp242 wrote: post #51

The trolling was ridiculous. I don't blame them. It was pretty clear that with "fork" they meant "don't create a WinAmp-ng fork" and not a "fork" in the "send a patch" GitHub sense. It's fine to point out "hey, I think your custom written license may need a bit of work!", but the amount of vitriol and hate over it (including on HN) was just ridiculous. It was one of those moments I was embarrassed to be posting here.…

I saw a guy on youtube complaining about it. He seemed to talk about FLOSS a lot and focus on the strict definition of "open source." I checked his github profile and he barely published anything. So here we have a company that made all of the code of a complete application source available being dunked by a guy who barely published any source code at all. Really put things in perspective for me.

The company broke a copyleft license though.

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

#94

Post by VonGuard »

toast0 wrote: post #79
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…

Just because the whole is more or less abandoned (although I still use winamp, currently running a build from Dec 21, 2022), doesn't mean the licensed parts are. If the rights holders of the licensed bits haven't abandoned them, then it's not really fair to distribute them without their consent.

This. I cannot believe people are telling me to just open everything. It's nuts. Imagine if someone found your personal code and just decided to open it without your permission or knowledge!

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

#95

Post by johnnyanmac »

pelorat wrote: post #62

Plenty of people have copies of the source and the release was just a novelty really. There's no point in anyone actually forking, building and releasing new versions of Winamp as it has been surpassed by other "real" OSS players eons ago. Let's face it, the release was mostly for Internet historians.

Given the license, I suppose so. It'd only be for a tinkerer who loved WinAnp but wanted to fix some nitpick in the player. Can't do much more than that.

The bad faith interpretation is that this was an attempt to make use of previous goodwill to get some free labor to at the very least fix some bugs for them, or at most add in requested features to try to get it back on the map.

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

#96

Post by kevindamm »

freedomben wrote: post #67
arp242 wrote: post #51

The trolling was ridiculous. I don't blame them. It was pretty clear that with "fork" they meant "don't create a WinAmp-ng fork" and not a "fork" in the "send a patch" GitHub sense. It's fine to point out "hey, I think your custom written license may need a bit of work!", but the amount of vitriol and hate over it (including on HN) was just ridiculous. It was one of those moments I was embarrassed to be posting here.…

My thoughts exactly. It was shocking and appalling to me how people reacted to this effort. Instead of praising them for taking such a big step, the airwaves were saturated with people magnifying every little imperfection and shitting all over them for it. If anyone is thinking about open sourcing (and/or making source available) their previously closed app, they had better be paying attention to this. The clear mess…

There's this emerging notion of "Fair Source" that attempts to meet halfway between open participation and business interests. I think as far as defending against copycat risk, that's somewhat reasonable.

Many in the OSS community have made it clear that there's a distinction between "yes do whatever you want with it, including running a local instance and/or charging people for it while using the original name" and "we're transparent but want to reserve some intellectual property rights."

We'll see if most consumers of said software agree with the vocal proponents of OSS purity. I think the story of BUSL and similar licenses has yet to fully play out.

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

#97

Post by hoten »

Jenk wrote: post #81
bscphil wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see the original issue, but it's interesting that the title chooses to highlight the fact that the GPL code was modified . Actually, under the GPL, this fact is immaterial. If the Winamp player contained any GPL code at all, modified or not, then it is a derivative work of that GPL code and anyone receiving a copy of Winamp is entitled to demand the full corresponding source be provided under a GPL license.

> Actually, under the GPL, this fact is immaterial. If the Winamp player contained any GPL code at all, modified or not, then it is a derivative work of that GPL code and anyone receiving a copy of Winamp is entitled to demand the full corresponding source be provided under a GPL license. That's just not true, surely? Lest everyone using any flavour of Linux is liable to the same problem? How many apps out there are…

Yes, it's true. There's a reason GPL is called copyleft.

> Lest everyone using any flavour of Linux is liable to the same problem?

The kernel is GPL. applications running on it in usermode are not constrained by the license.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#PortProgramToGP...

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

#98

Post by n_plus_1_acc »

Jenk wrote: post #81
bscphil wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see the original issue, but it's interesting that the title chooses to highlight the fact that the GPL code was modified . Actually, under the GPL, this fact is immaterial. If the Winamp player contained any GPL code at all, modified or not, then it is a derivative work of that GPL code and anyone receiving a copy of Winamp is entitled to demand the full corresponding source be provided under a GPL license.

> Actually, under the GPL, this fact is immaterial. If the Winamp player contained any GPL code at all, modified or not, then it is a derivative work of that GPL code and anyone receiving a copy of Winamp is entitled to demand the full corresponding source be provided under a GPL license. That's just not true, surely? Lest everyone using any flavour of Linux is liable to the same problem? How many apps out there are…

The devil is in the Details. Usually a licence is applied to a single library or compilation unit.

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

#99

Post by Rendello »

arp242 wrote: post #51

The trolling was ridiculous. I don't blame them. It was pretty clear that with "fork" they meant "don't create a WinAmp-ng fork" and not a "fork" in the "send a patch" GitHub sense. It's fine to point out "hey, I think your custom written license may need a bit of work!", but the amount of vitriol and hate over it (including on HN) was just ridiculous. It was one of those moments I was embarrassed to be posting here.…

There's a lot of emotional weight behind every PR I do on Github. They're generally the result of dozens of hours of work, discussion with project developers, etc. After all that, it could still be rejected, or need to be reworked, and discussion tone might not carry well over text, etc.

When I see Twitter-style drama on Github, it makes me sick to my stomach thinking that one day I could be the target of an impromptu dogpile.

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

#100

Post by VonGuard »

holycrapwhodat wrote: post #75
fwip wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Nearly all the combined work of humanity has been "lost to time," and society seems pretty okay with that. Pre-digital age, preserving the combined work of humanity was actually quite difficult. The cost to preserve everything outside of "obviously important" artifacts would've been preventative (or even impossible) for society as a whole. I believe many (if not most) folks native to the digital age believe that di…

Hey I agree 100%. We live in a time and place where we could put about 10-Refridgerators-worth of computer and storage into the basement of every library in the world, and fill those drives with every book, painting, movie, song, etc... EVRYTHING all in one place, replicated around the world a million times over..

We could do this. The technology exists. But we, as humans, as a society and as a race of beings, have collectively decided that we will not do this: It doesn't make anyone any money.

For the first time in history, we could store all of human knowledge in a safe replicable way, world wide, for everyone. But we specifically choose not to do this.

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