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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

#131

Post by sph »

VonGuard wrote: post #94
toast0 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

My personal code isn't licensed, so there is nothing that stops you from doing that if you get your hands on my hard drive. What has licensing got to do with it?

Also, we're not talking about personal code either, but something that is arguably a product humanity, or a part thereof, would want to preserve for posterity.

Lastly, no one is telling you to open anything. I am saying that if someone decides something you have created need to be preserved, they should go ahead. You can protest, you can sue, the point is it shouldn't stop anyone from trying. Which doesn't apply to this case, as the owner of Winamp actually wanted to make it open source.

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

#132

Post by beachy »

freedomben wrote: post #70
johnnyanmac wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The forking was bizarre and I agree with your take on it ("forking" with no other changes is not "distribution" except in the most obtuse way). But the licensing issues with what 3rd party software they threw in there was a pretty serious issue. It was probably inevitable they'd take it down and redo it even without the drama.

Agreed it probably was inevitable, but I would be surprised if the "redo" part even happens now. Why would it? They spent their time/money giving us a gift, and we mainly just mocked them because the gift had imperfections. I wouldn't blame them for adopting a "go f*k yourself" attitude.

If it was inevitable that it was going to get taken down then it was never a gift in the first place.

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

#133

Post by chasd00 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #87
Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> non-compliant with Github's license agreement Oh no! I did notice all the hallmonitors calling for teacher. I absolutely support dumping proprietary code on any platform and I'm glad I got a copy the day it was uploaded which lets me verify any fork claiming to be from it.

So basically you're glad someone broke their contract so you could hoard more code on your local end?

information wants to be free or so I'm told/was shouted at for a decade.

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

#134

Post by jrflowers »

francisofascii wrote: post #116

This story is analogous to a landowner and a group of neighborhood kids. The landowner allows the kids to play baseball in his field, but then the kids complain the grass is not cut, they are playing late into the evening, a few kids vandalize damage his flower bed, and his lawyers tell him he will be sued if he doesn't make all these safety changes, and so the landowner says screw it and puts up a fence.

Rather in this analogy the landowner didn’t own all of the field and somehow the kids get blamed for him failing to keep track of what he does and does not own.

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

#135

Post by VonGuard »

sph wrote: post #131
VonGuard wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

My personal code isn't licensed, so there is nothing that stops you from doing that if you get your hands on my hard drive. What has licensing got to do with it? Also, we're not talking about personal code either, but something that is arguably a product humanity, or a part thereof, would want to preserve for posterity. Lastly, no one is telling you to open anything. I am saying that if someone decides something you…

OK, but again, people are telling me to take code I do not own the rights to, and to release it under an open source license. That's 100% illegal. This is the equivalent of me taking a Stephen King novel and pasting it into a webpage and attaching a Creative Commons license. That does NOT make the Stephen King novel open source. It just gets me in trouble and sued.

And the license matters. We're talking about something owned by a company somewhere, legally. Humanity's concerns don't matter in business and legal affairs. As I stated above, I agree that we should be able to save everything. But this has nothing at all to do with what's good for humanity. This is about money and copyright law.

Also, OK, your personal code is not licensed. Great, now I can take it and license it myself, copyright it myself, and then sue you for hosting it in your github account. Hey, I'd be in the wrong, but if I lawyer up I can just win by spending money and waiting you out. This is the world we live in. It's not good, but it's reality.

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

#137

Post by sph »

VonGuard wrote: post #100
holycrapwhodat wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

Are you willingly ignoring the Internet Archive which is exactly doing that, and is not a for-profit operation?

We need more of those, agreed, but it makes no sense saying "no one is doing that."

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

#138

Post by EmilyHughes »

jfvinueza wrote: post #109

The article mentions how deeply compressed the files we played were back then, but I'm pretty sure nowadays it's even worse.

Not at all. Any song on youtube uploaded in the last 5-10 years is as good as a 320 kbit mp3. Why would it be with the bandwidth anyone has to today?

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

#139

Post by ndiddy »

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…

Here's some backstory to what happened from a former Llama Group (Winamp owners) employee who suggested the open source release. He was envisioning something similar to Doom's GPL release, but management couldn't be convinced that the code had nothing more than historical value (likely explaining the dumb license) and everyone who had worked on the legacy Winamp codebase got laid off before the release was announced (likely explaining why there was so much proprietary code in the repo, anyone who knew it was there no longer worked for the company). Honestly the whole thing seems like a desperate PR move by a dying company, it's a shame that the license prevents the community from taking over the project after Llama Group goes under. https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/winamp-really-whips-op...

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

#140

Post by chasd00 »

Rendello wrote: post #99
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 imprompt…

I occasionally submit PRs to open source projects on github. One time a reviewer asked me to completely rework the code for no functional difference but to just do it the way he would have done it. I just said "it fixes a bug, take it or leave it." and left it at that. It saw it was merged in eventually but couldn't really care less. I wouldn't generate too much emotional attachment to a code segment because heartbreak at some point is inevitable.
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