Earlier this year, when we reported that Winamp was opening their source, many of you were suspicious of the move, with the wording used in their announcement blog raising many concerns, and rightly so.
Months later, in September, when the Llama Group, the company that owns the Winamp IP, provided the source code, many were left utterly disappointed and surprised with the number of blunders that they had made throughout the process.
However, it now appears that their missteps have finally caught up with them, as they have done something quite radical.
Winamp, Can You Make Up Your Mind?
In an abrupt and unannounced manner, the source code for Winamp has been taken offline, with no trace of any related data from the GitHub repo being accessible. This comes as no surprise, as there have been signs.
You see, when the source code first appeared on GitHub, there were numerous issues with it. Take, for instance, the fact that forking was not allowed, distribution of modified versions was not allowed, and only official maintainers were allowed to distribute the source code for Winamp.
There were even many bits of proprietary code from the likes of Intel and Microsoft in the source code release, and many believed that this violated the TOS of GitHub. If I had to make an educated guess, these last two points might've been the key reasons behind the removal.
A person reported to be a former employee of the Llama Group stated that they wanted to fully open source all the code that belonged to Winamp, removing any intellectual property work from the likes of Dolby, Intel, etc.
They wanted it to be something similar to the GPL release of DOOM, but management failed to see it like that and were busy guarding their IP because they paid for that. They also mention that the 100 employees claim by the Llama Group was a sham and that many of the staff were fired following an asset sale.
Closing Thoughts
In the end, I think Winamp and the company behind it have done something of a PR move here, taking the original repository away from the public eye. In doing so, they have also managed to discard the many issues that people had complained about on the repo.
Luckily, the source code and the WCL have been preserved thanks to the many forks made by the open source community. One such fork can be found on GitHub for those interested in digging deeper.
💬 What are your thoughts on the blunders by Winamp? Do you think they will re-release the source code for Winamp?
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