Winamp source code released online; controversy ensues

Back in May, the CEO of Winamp announced that its code will be opened up on September 24th. Without much fanfare, the source code of this iconic media player became public yesterday. While the licensing model is completely opposite to the open-source philosophy, the first forks (which are not allowed by the licensing agreement of the code) are already online.

Back in May, Alexandre Saboundjian, Winamp's CEO, said that "Winamp will remain the owner of the software and will decide on the innovations made in the official version." Leaving everything else aside, a major issue is that the Winamp Collaborative License (WCL) Version 1.0 and GitHub's Terms of Serviceare facing a partial contradiction. The targeted section involves Winamp's approach to the distribution of modified versions and forking. As per GitHub's ToS,

"By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and "fork" your repositories (this means that others may make their own copies of Content from your repositories in repositories they control)."

In addition to the above, all pages and repositories that are publicly available on GitHub allow each user of the platform

"a nonexclusive, worldwide license to use, display, and perform Your Content through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking)."

Some comments on GitHub labeled Winamp's current source code licensing model as "a dogwater license" and "unpaid labor." There is also a discussion on Reddit, in the r/linux sub about this. Its title says it all: The source code to winamp was released. No Forking allowed, but people forked anyway (see the Source(s) section for the link).

The sad conclusion is that, while claiming to "open the source code," Winamp simply allows very limited access to it and claims the copyright on the community work that would go into this code. Obviously, a few unofficial forks will become popular in the coming weeks and Winamp will have to adjust its licensing model to comply with GitHub's ToS or remove the code from the popular developer platform entirely.

Maybe the people at Winamp should have read GitHub For Dummiesbefore coming up with the final version of the WCL 1.0, but it's never too late. This book can be acquired from Amazon in Kindle format for $18, but the paperback version is also available. In this case, it can be acquired for $25 (new) or used, starting at $19.39.

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