Petition to ask for Winamp to go open source

[djpete]

Winamp is no more as of 20th December 2013.

Voice your request that Winamp the greatest media player ever built be allowed to go open source.

Winamp must not be left to die.
Give it to the people who love it and use it every day.

Please sign below with a comment!
AND SIGN THE ONLINE FORM HERE
https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitio...n-source#share

"There can be power in numbers..."

[kzuse]

--~~~~signed!!!

[specy]

Signed!

[Bojcha]

~ Signed!

[pball_inuyasha]

I'm in

[jesseg]

Why don't you use a petition website that can properly manage and handle delivery of the signatures... not to mention this website is closing in 1 month.

[Victhor]

Originally Posted by jesseg

Why don't you use a petition website that can properly manage and handle delivery of the signatures... not to mention this website is closing in 1 month.

Exactly

[djpete]

great idea and done. Will amend the orig post
https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitio...n-source#share

[Victhor]

Will give it a spin on Skin Consortium´s Twitter in a couple of days

[djpete]

on ya Victhor. The more talk out there the better

[Xaser]

Signed.

If Winamp will not be open source, I will personally start an open source winamp clone project.. after checking legal issues of course..

[SugarD-x]

Signed it as well.

[djpete]

Can anyone suggest the best email and or name contact for AOL as the petition updates can also be sent to them. Thanks

[circcc]

Signed!!!

[DrO]

all i'll say is open sourcing would not be the magical bullet that you're all thinking it would be and if people like Xaser for example are already going to contemplate yet another Winamp clone (haven't we been there before) it's just going to cause more fractioning of things then i personally think is good.

5.66 is a solid basis to work from for if needed making new plug-ins for features and with a fixed Winamp base, things aren't going to change which is more likely to happen if it were to be open sourced and then you have a mass of different 'bases' to work with.

[djpete]

can you elaborate why Dr? Do you have thoughts as to best way or what may happen. Is there a chance Winamp may be bought out for example?

[Jay]

Open source Winamp would be a novelty at best. Don't get me wrong, Winamp is pretty awesome but Winamp interest has been on the decline for several years. Not sure how open source improves that situation.

[MikeChops]

Originally Posted by DrO

all i'll say is open sourcing would not be the magical bullet that you're all thinking it would be.

"Magic Bullet" isn't the correct term to use when discussing what people want from this. All people want is their Winamp. In this case there would be a community to build upon and keep the project alive, and maybe even remove bloat, which is the reason I stopped using it to begin with.

[djpete]

To me with no coding experience whatsoever, the main benefit of going open source is that the software is updateable.

Yes it could open a pandoras box with many variations but as long as they are all avail to the public then we have a choice. No?

On the plus side it could also open Winamp to new developers who have wanted things done for many years but possibly given up in frustration of not being heard.

[DrO]

am basing my view on what's happened with previous things being open sourced where the bits needed got ripped out and used in other projects and the original just died.

so if Winamp were to be open sourced (as there's clearly parts that could not be or would be so crippled you'd have to make a new plug-in anyway), it wouldn't really be Winamp as you know it.

hence why i think using what there is now (irrespective of it being closed source) is the best thing to do to work from so it's more transnational than a rash re-code and all of the fun that comes from doing that.

a lot of things could be done back when the 5.04 shut-down happened and that was with a lot less APIs available so i'm being practical that using 5.66 as a basis (without code access) can do what's needed i believe with update packs, etc.

Originally Posted by MikeChops

"Magic Bullet" isn't the correct term to use when discussing what people want from this. All people want is their Winamp. In this case there would be a community to build upon and keep the project alive, and maybe even remove bloat, which is the reason I stopped using it to begin with.

and that is still there. and with your 'bloat' comment, just don't install the things you don't want as i did work to split things out more in the last 3 main releases (5.64-5.66). and one man's bloat is another man's essential feature as i've said many times before. plus you're forgetting, i'm a Winamp user as well, so i'm one of the few having to see if from both sides of the fence.

[djpete]

so...you're thoughts Dr on what may happen now...
Is this it?
Is it possible that an offer could be made?

[Victhor]

Originally Posted by DrO

am basing my view on what's happened with previous things being open sourced where the bits needed got ripped out and used in other projects and the original just died.

so if Winamp were to be open sourced (as there's clearly parts that could not be or would be so crippled you'd have to make a new plug-in anyway), it wouldn't really be Winamp as you know it.

hence why i think using what there is now (irrespective of it being closed source) is the best thing to do to work from so it's more transnational than a rash re-code and all of the fun that comes from doing that.

a lot of things could be done back when the 5.04 shut-down happened and that was with a lot less APIs available so i'm being practical that using 5.66 as a basis (without code access) can do what's needed i believe with update packs, etc.

In fact, looks like Winamp´s near future is all about plugins.. hopefully this will get some more devs to make things for winamp (in a plugin shape of course).

2 things can be done about it:

01- I can help you make your site "nicer" trough some design (individual icons, color categorization, etc). NOT NOW, I´m finishing some client´s delayed request (today more delayed than ever), but Argentinian summer is near and then I´ll have plenty of time (1 month from now). So, I´m available if you like to.

02 - I´ll save all official documentation about plugin / skins making (if needed, what do you think?), soon it will be very useful to have a proper Tutorial PDF / page stating the main steps and tricks to develop (plugins mostly).

[djpete]

yes soon all this valuable info will be gone forever!

[DrO]

surprisingly a lot is on archive.org already...

Originally Posted by Victhor

02 - I´ll save all official documentation about plugin / skins making (if needed, what do you think?), soon it will be very useful to have a proper Tutorial PDF / page stating the main steps and tricks to develop (plugins mostly).

so like what's on the wiki already...

[Victhor]

Originally Posted by DrO

surprisingly a lot is on archive.org already...

so like what's on the wiki already...

I thought AOL / Nullsoft managed that (and so it was destinated to vanish too).

Is there anything you think should be worth saving (besides the installer)?


(PS: archive.org! I totally forgot that for this.. -use it just to dl concerts hehe-)

[DrO]

am just pointing out places to look at for information, etc though i've already got a list of things that i've been compiling (and still am) that could / should be archived in some form. so for a number of things, immediate backup isn't going to be needed because of things like archive.org.

[RIP in Piece]

Originally Posted by DrO

am basing my view on what's happened with previous things being open sourced where the bits needed got ripped out and used in other projects and the original just died.

Well Winamp is a dead project anyway so at worst it will remain dead and at best a group will maintain it.

Even if open-source Winamp fails to take off 5.66 will still be here. However If a new Windows version breaks it and the source is not released then Game over, Winamp is gone forever.

[DrO]

is good to see the novelty forum names coming out

that's a very fair point and OS changes breaking things are no more different than what's been seen before but a lot of the time (though not easily) issues can be fixed externally or even shims introduced by the OS to help.

hence why anything beyond a few years is tricky to say how it'd work, but in a few years time (and i suspect now from the announcement) there's a lot less Winamp users than there were at the start of the day.


i understand why people think open sourcing is the way to go and i'm not trying to knock it, it's just that there's a need to be realistic about things and especially when it comes to licensing for certain formats / features.

[geniusbabak]

Signed

[Koopa]

I guess you guys miss some facts. Even if the source would be available, the new player probably couldn't be labeled as 'Winamp' and would then end in yet another clone.

Also who pays the license fees for MP3/AAC decoding/encoding, the Gracenote CDDB/Auto Tagger?

Mainly Winamp clones would make profit, the companies who are trying to make their player more popular, like they already did with supporting the large range of Winamp plugins.

making MilkDrop open source had no effect in the past either, there wasn't any single custom build, even after people asked for the source code again and again for many years.

Do what the player made so popular for so many years, create 3rd party plugins, skins etc. That's the reason why Winamp was so popular during all these years and that's the main difference between Winamp and other players.

Winamp was dead after 5.04 for a long time too, but 3rd parties were keeping it alive.

[gpagliaroli]

Signed!

[djpete]

Originally Posted by Koopa

I guess you guys miss some facts. Even if the source would be available, the new player probably couldn't be labeled as 'Winamp' and would then end in yet another clone.

Also who pays the license fees for MP3/AAC decoding/encoding, the Gracenote CDDB/Auto Tagger?

Mainly Winamp clones would make profit, the companies who are trying to make their player more popular if it supports the large range of Winamp plugins already.

making MilkDrop open source had no effect in the past either, there wasn't any single custom build, even after people asked for the source code again and again for many years.

Do what the player made so popular for so many years, create 3rd party plugins, skins etc. That's the reason why Winamp was so popular during all these years and that's the main difference between Winamp and other players.

At least if the code is available isn't that a start?
Otherwise the player is really stuck in concrete forever.
You still have the choice to use the final build also if that's what you want and are happy with. But to me 5 yrs down the track or maybe even less, mods are going to need to be carried out on the player.

[DrO]

but there's nothing to say modifications cannot be made down the road without code access - not ideal but binary patching can be done from decompiling and other fun things... yes it's a lot more involved, or even a wrapper program to handle / fix things (just like i've done with plug-ins). so it's not as limited as is being said and in a sick way, i quite like the idea of binary patching things again...

[djpete]

well thats a little promising then.

[DrO]

source code would be simpler but it's been shown it's possible to do such things with existing closed source plug-ins, so it can be scaled up (just involves more effort).

[djpete]

and maybe one day we will find out why Winamp did not continue to grow as it should have. I know there is a bucketful of politics involved but to us outsiders it just doesn't make sense that the best player out there (even today) has had to be shelved like this. So much potential just thrown away.

[Koopa]

Originally Posted by djpete1959

that the best player out there (even today) has had to be shelved like this. So much potential just thrown away.

I just have to agree with you.

[Plague]

I know alot of stuff cannot be open sourced, mainly plugins, but the player itself should be possible to open source.
I've always wanted the full Wasabi and Maki codebases opensourced, after Winamp3 got buried prematurely. The attempt at getting an open source Wasabi.player going was nice but one big reason it failed was that too many important parts (core and Maki for example) were simply not available as open source and rewriting them was too massive to happen.

If that can be avoided now by having access to the relevant codebase, then a healthy player can be maintained or be rebuilt and the closed source plugins can still function or be replaced with 3rd party ones (that are already available in the wild for that matter).

Personally, I _still_ want a wasabi.player after all these years, built entirely on the Wasabi and Maki codebase. But that's a pipedream by now. :P

Oh, and signed.

[Vie]

I realised today I've been using Winamp since I was 14, and I still use it daily now.

Though I hold out little hope, I've signed.

[Jay]

Originally Posted by djpete1959

and maybe one day we will find out why Winamp did not continue to grow as it should have. I know there is a bucketful of politics involved but to us outsiders it just doesn't make sense that the best player out there (even today) has had to be shelved like this. So much potential just thrown away.

I think there are a handful of OS tied music players and online jukebox systems that can answer that question.