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

Winamp wanted to engage coders, but not like this.

Winamp, through its Belgian owner Llama Group, posted the source for its "Legacy Player Code" on September 24 so that developers could "contribute their expertise, ideas, and passion to help this iconic software evolve."

Less than a month later, that repository has been entirely deleted, after it either bumped up against or broke its strange hodgepodge of code licenses, seemingly revealed the source code for other non-open software packages, and made a pretty bad impression on the open-source community.

"Collaborative" licensing

Winamp's code was made available in late September, but not very open. Under the "Winamp Collaborative License (WCL) Version 1.0.1," you may not "distribute modified versions of the software" in source or binary, and "only the maintainers of the official repository are allowed to distribute the software and its modifications." Anyone may contribute, in other words, but only to Winamp's benefit.

Justin Frankel, a key developer of the original Winamp and founder of Nullsoft, which also made SHOUTcast streaming software, was asked on his Q&A site about contributing to the code. Frankel responded that, even if he had some desire, the license terms "are completely absurd in the way they are written." Even taking them "as they are likely intended," Frankel wrote, "they are terrible. No thank you."

Despite how this license would seem to bar forks, or perhaps because of that, the code has been forked at least 2,600 times as of this writing. In forking and examining the source when first released, coders have noticed some, shall we say, anomalies:

• Large portions of other projects' code, offered under other, more robust licenses, were seemingly included (if later deleted) from Winamp's repository
• The original Winamp code may have leaked the source code for SHOUTcast server software
• In seeking to remove offending files with a simple deletion instead of a rebase, Winamp kept it available to those who know Git mechanics
• Proprietary packages from Intel and Microsoft were also seemingly included in the release's build tools

A player unstuck in time

As people in the many, many busy GitHub issue threads are suggesting, coding has come a long way since the heyday of the Windows-98-era Winamp player, and Winamp seems to have rushed its code onto a platform it does not really understand.

Winamp flourished around the same time as illegal MP3 networks such as Napster, Limewire, and Kazaa, providing a more capable means of organizing and playing deeply compressed music with incorrect metadata. After a web shutdown in 2013 that seemed inevitable in hindsight, Winamp's assets were purchased by a company named Radionomy in 2014, and a new version was due out in 2019, one that aimed to combine local music libraries with web streaming of podcasts and radio.

Winamp did get that big update in 2022, though the app was "still in many ways an ancient app," Ars' Andrew Cunningham wrote then. There was support for music NFTs added at the end of 2022.

In its press release for the code availability, the Brussels-based Llama Group SA, with roughly 100 employees, says that "Tens of millions of users still use Winamp for Windows every month." It plans to release "two major official versions per year with new features," as well as offering Winamp for Creators, intended for artists or labels to manage their music, licensing, distribution, and monetization on various platforms.

Winamp has not responded to requests for comment, either at the time of source code posting or after its repository deletion.

This post was updated at 12:20 p.m. on Oct. 16 after Winamp's source repository was deleted.

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