Winamp....To common of a story.

[berny2602]

Its sad to see winamp take the path everything seems to take these days. I still love winamp. I’ll still use winamp, but I buy it?? Nope. Winamp started as a free music player that did just that. Played music. And it played it damn well. With this simplicity came popularity and a huge user base. Winamp did the right thing, made it almost a open source program. Anyone and everyone could make skins, and Plug-ins for it. And you didn’t have to search far for them. They were all on winamp.com. With the second release came more advanced features and a bigger winamp. It also became more buggy and unreliable. But over time improved and regained a massive add-on library. But the old “Do a few things and do them the best” Mentality of winamp was gone. It was still free, plug-in’s were as well. Now winamp 5.0 and pro are out. And winamp has takin the wrong path. There is a free version, and it plays music just fine. But there is the 15 dollar version. No longer is winamp totally free. If you wanted to rip with the old winamp, you could download a plug-in. Now you have to pay. By adding this price it will limit the plug-in library. Add-ons that improve the free version to the point where it can do everything the pro version can wont be accepted. The quality of add-ins will decrease. Its sad to see winamp turning into another “Realplayer” where the free version is alright, but to get what you might want, you have to pay. And the plug-ins are all eye candy, because usefull ones would improve the free version to much. When you used to download winamp, it was just the foundation of a media player. It was up to the millions of programmers to make other features to improve the player. You could have a very simple player, or very advanced player. I still love winamp, I don’t want it to because what most other popular programs have. Winamp as a shareware does not work. It is a giant mistake for Nullsoft to do this, someone else will come along and do what winamp used to do. A free player with the greatest user base ever. So nullsoft, if your reading this. Don’t knock down what made winamp so great. Don’t fall into the big corporate AOL money making ploy. The path you are taking will only lead to the falling apart of a once great product. Make it all free. Make donations available so we can still support you financially. Make it simple with the ability to grow through open source programming. Don’t ditch what made it the best media player on the planet. I want the old winamp. The winamp that used to “whip the llamas @$$” For now, I'll listen with QCD Player....a player with winamps old qualitys.

You do realize Winamp is still Free? When you purchase Pro you are paying for the licensing of the CD Ripping and Burning stuff.

Everything that was available in Winamp 2.91 is still available in Winamp 5.0 fro FREE. And if you don't want to advanced features that Winamp 5.0 offers, just uncheck them in the installer, it's not hard.

I am confused when it became a sin for a company to try to make money? Nullsoft cannot keep absorbing the licensing costs for advanced features forever.

And as much as everyone just loves to bash AOL, chances are there would be no Winamp today if it wasn't for them. Developers have bills to pay too.

But, hey, do what you want. If you want to use an inferior player because you see it as some crime for a company to pass the cost of a per-download license for extra features they decided to use down, that's up to you. If you feel it is a crime for a company to want to make money, that is up to you. If you blind yourself to the fact that Nullsoft is not charging for anything that you couldn't do before, fine.

Just don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. trust me, we have enough pricks here with on their high horse bitching about the "good old days" or the evils of a company want to cover costs.

Go use QCD or whatever you want. Nobody here gives a flying fuck.

*whacked*