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

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

#201
post #164

Good job, team. Companies are sure to open source their legacy proprietary applications now after that warm reception.

They didn't open source anything though. They shared some code under some restrictive license.

In addition, they leaked proprietary code they didn't have rights to publish in the first place.

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

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

# Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism > Good online communities die primarily by refusing to defend themselves. > Somewhere in the vastness of the Internet, it is happening even now. It was once a well-kept garden of intelligent discussion, where knowledgeable and interested folk came, attracted by the high quality of speech they saw ongoing. But into this garden comes a fool, and the level of discussion drops a little…

That’s rose coloured. Maybe people were more intelligent, but even 10 years ago people would absolutely flame each other in GitHub issues on public projects.

I suspect the author is thinking back to more than ten years ago.

But yes; even newsgroups, BBSes, etc. were subject to this kind of stuff. People have always been people, even smart people with money to purchase computers.

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

#203
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this happened because the company didn't want to open source the code, they wanted to openwash it and get free labor from the open source community. If another company wants to do the same and they decide not to because of this, nothing of value is lost.

> they wanted to openwash it and get free labor from the open source community. This is such a ridiculous accusation. Why do discussions about source-available models often turn into accusations of soliciting free labor? Why can't authors just provide access to source code, but reserve some or all of the distribution rights? It's their code, after all. Nobody is forcing 'the open source community' to contribute under…

What is the point of 'open source' where you're not even allowed to fork the damn repo?

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

#204
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this happened because the company didn't want to open source the code, they wanted to openwash it and get free labor from the open source community. If another company wants to do the same and they decide not to because of this, nothing of value is lost.

> they wanted to openwash it and get free labor from the open source community. This is such a ridiculous accusation. Why do discussions about source-available models often turn into accusations of soliciting free labor? Why can't authors just provide access to source code, but reserve some or all of the distribution rights? It's their code, after all. Nobody is forcing 'the open source community' to contribute under…

You can make a source available license and no one will criticize you for it. You put in the license "you can look, but you can't touch". When it becomes openwashing is when you instead write "you can look but you can't compete with us, also feel free to give us a hand". Let me cite:

> * 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.

> * Assignment of Rights: By submitting contributions, you agree that all intellectual property rights, including copyright, in your contributions are assigned to Winamp. You hereby grant Winamp a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, copy, modify, and distribute your contributions as part of the software, without any compensation to you.

> * Waiver of Rights: You waive any rights to claim authorship of the contributions or to object to any distortion, mutilation, or other modifications of the contributions.

>Nobody is forcing 'the open source community' to contribute under the terms set forth; anybody who does contribute does so under their own free will, under the terms set forth by the license.

And? Yes, we're all acting out of our own free will. The owners of Winamp decided out of their own free will to release their code under those terms, and I'm criticizing them for trying to take advantage of people also out of my own free will. What's the issue?

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

#205
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this happened because the company didn't want to open source the code, they wanted to openwash it and get free labor from the open source community. If another company wants to do the same and they decide not to because of this, nothing of value is lost.

> they wanted to openwash it and get free labor from the open source community. This is such a ridiculous accusation. Why do discussions about source-available models often turn into accusations of soliciting free labor? Why can't authors just provide access to source code, but reserve some or all of the distribution rights? It's their code, after all. Nobody is forcing 'the open source community' to contribute under…

Didn't the original version of their license state that you weren't allowed to do anything with the code, including forking it? It was "source available" but you're not even allowed to make a local copy of the code to look at it. People as a whole don't mind source available, Louis Rossman's FUTO's software is all source available and while they got a small minority of FOSS diehards complaining about it, they're doing great. Immich, FUTO Keyboard, FUTO Voice input, and Grayjay, are all source available, but the company was honest and didn't try to pull stupid shit like "you're not allowed to fork the code" in their license.

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

#206
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest I didn't see the license issues until this thread, because I had already checked out of the discussion by the time that was brought up. And it would have been fine to say "hey, I think there may be a problem here, let's work together to see if we can solve it" wrt. to either their custom license or the GPL. That is not what happened. The sad thing is there would be many knowledgable patient people who wo…

You think they should've just left the license-violating repo up for others to possibly also unknowingly violate?

That is clearly not what I said.

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

#207
post #161
post #7

We've lost a lot with the deletion of this repo. Not the code - that's already out in the ether - but the absurdist comedy of the issues, pull requests, and commit history of trying to piecemeal delete third party non-FOSS software.

The other thing we lost is that future companies will think again before making their code public. It's already such an incredibly rare thing in the wild, but now companies and their lawyers will see that Winamp was exposed to potentially lawsuitable behavior that wouldn't have come to light had they never opened the code.

Maybe they _should_ think before making code public - it is generally a good idea ;)

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

#208
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they wanted to openwash it and get free labor from the open source community. This is such a ridiculous accusation. Why do discussions about source-available models often turn into accusations of soliciting free labor? Why can't authors just provide access to source code, but reserve some or all of the distribution rights? It's their code, after all. Nobody is forcing 'the open source community' to contribute under…

Didn't the original version of their license state that you weren't allowed to do anything with the code, including forking it? It was "source available" but you're not even allowed to make a local copy of the code to look at it. People as a whole don't mind source available, Louis Rossman's FUTO's software is all source available and while they got a small minority of FOSS diehards complaining about it, they're doin…

To me, this seems to be a misunderstanding of the license text and the author's intent. The original license simply reserved all distribution rights. People assumed you couldn't even fork into a public GitHub repo in order to make pull requests, but afaict, the author clarified that the intent was not to prevent forking on GitHub, but to prevent redistribution of the forked software instead of contributing the changes back upstream. The right to make changes to the software for internal use was always there, afaict.

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

#209
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this happened because the company didn't want to open source the code, they wanted to openwash it and get free labor from the open source community. If another company wants to do the same and they decide not to because of this, nothing of value is lost.

> they wanted to openwash it and get free labor from the open source community. This is such a ridiculous accusation. Why do discussions about source-available models often turn into accusations of soliciting free labor? Why can't authors just provide access to source code, but reserve some or all of the distribution rights? It's their code, after all. Nobody is forcing 'the open source community' to contribute under…

Openwashing: https://web.archive.org/web/20241008220257/https://github.co...

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

#210
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they wanted to openwash it and get free labor from the open source community. This is such a ridiculous accusation. Why do discussions about source-available models often turn into accusations of soliciting free labor? Why can't authors just provide access to source code, but reserve some or all of the distribution rights? It's their code, after all. Nobody is forcing 'the open source community' to contribute under…

Openwashing: https://web.archive.org/web/20241008220257/https://github.co...

Did the authors claim to be open source somewhere I must have missed?

Without that, I don't see how this is open-washing...

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