Winamp released its source code with a license that drew a lot of attention. That’s when other apps’ code was found inside.
    • skaffi@infosec.pubEnglish
      181·
      2 months ago

      What a shame that it isn’t open source.

      I’ll happily continue to use Audacious with a Winamp skin.

      • ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41·
        2 months ago

        Well, given the very unorthodox nature of it as it is today, I don’t know that Dr0 can legally open source it until he’s finished replacing literally all legacy functions with new code, even if they wanted to. But I can understand your position.

        • skaffi@infosec.pubEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          Whether that’s the case or not, I think it is secondary to the fact that he clearly says on the website that he definitely doesn’t want it to go open source, for as long as he is working on it.

          • ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            He defines that as wanting to be in control of the project so long as he has the passion to work on it solo. But it’s somewhat implied that if he had to let it go, he may open source his work. I can understand that. DrO was one of the primary and most prolific Winamp plugin devs back in it’s heyday as well. So if you ever used Winamp itself (closed source) you have already trusted his code on much more vulnerable OSes, imo.

            I feel like he’s earned the limited trust this requires.

    • mannycalavera@feddit.ukEnglish
      322·
      2 months ago

      Lovely that it is open source, but dear lord that UI is a blast from the past 😂😂 👴👵🏚️

    • Shihali@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      Strawberry doesn’t support about a dozen audio formats I use, so until it’s got wider support I have to pass.

      • tekato@lemmy.worldEnglish
        191·
        2 months ago

        You have support for .wav .flac .mp3 .opus, why would you use anything else?

        • Shihali@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          6·
          2 months ago

          Because hard drives aren’t getting any bigger lately and I don’t want to multiply the size of my videogame music collection by ten?

          • tekato@lemmy.worldEnglish
            101·
            2 months ago

            You are saving your music in a format more efficient than opus or aac? What format is that?

            • Shihali@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              17·
              2 months ago

              Chiptune formats for retro videogame music can be very efficient. Just picking two with particularly good music, I have a 21 KB (0.02 MB) file storing 28:30 of music and 4.72 MB of files storing 1:54:48 of music, both at source quality.

              The catch is that they are designed exclusively to rip chiptunes from retro videogames as close as the format designers and player coders could manage to the original. So even the oversized ones like the 4.72 MB of files extracted from a 3 MB game are going to be far smaller than a general use format like opus. But you can’t encode your own music in the format without going to massive effort to code it like you would an authentic chiptune, and you’re unlikely to like the results.

              • moriquende@lemmy.worldEnglish
                4·
                2 months ago

                Damn, may I ask how big your entire library is? At those sizes, you can store more music than I’ll ever need in a couple of gbs.

                • Shihali@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  13·
                  2 months ago

                  Everything filed under “Chiptune”, excluding the AT3 and MAB files which are effectively general purpose music formats, comes to 1.14 GB for 4211 items totaling 158:50:29. There are a lot of duplicates in there, because for a lot of these items it’s more trouble to hunt down a replacement copy than it is to store a backup.

                  The catch, of course, is that it’s all retro videogame music from bleep to bloop.

                • Shihali@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  11·
                  2 months ago

                  Those are SPC files, and that particular example was one rip of Final Fantasy VI (III)'s soundtrack.

                  Unfortunately, it only handles music embedded in Super Famicom/Super Nintendo games. To convert your own music to SPC, you’d have to rewrite it for the SNES sound chip.

        • dezmd@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          If it doesn’t play Amiga era .mod files, is it really even a music player?

          • tekato@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            2 months ago

            Funny enough, it does. Here’s the full list of supported formats. Line 54:

            const char FileView::kFileFilter = ".wav *.flac *.wv *.ogg *.oga *.opus *.spx *.ape .mpc " ".mp2 *.mp3 *.m4a *.mp4 *.aac *.asf *.asx .wma " ".aif *.aiff *.mka *.tta *.dsf .dsd " ".cue *.m3u *.m3u8 *.pls *.xspf .asxini " ".ac3 .dts " ".mod *.s3m *.xm .it" ".spc *.vgm";

            Although like .spc, it doesn’t support seeking, you have to listen to the whole file in order or restart for the beginning.

    • Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      Will strawberry let me play a folder as a playlist from the DE’s context menus? Like right click > play in strawberry.

    • ѕєχυαℓ ρσℓутσρє@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      I mostly use mpv to play local music nowadays. (Most of the music I play is streamed using a Navidrome server with Feishin as the frontend.) Back when I did use a proper audio player on Linux, Harmonoid was my go-to.

  • MeaanBeaan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    69·
    2 months ago

    I’m surprised they kept it up for so long honestly. It was very clear they had no fucking clue what they were doing. What with the nonsensical license that violated Github’s tos, the Dolby Code they leaked, and the fact they kept every commit public for everyone to see.

    • jonne@infosec.pubEnglish
      111·
      2 months ago

      And it’s not like deleting will fix it now, it’s been copied millions of times now.

  • Wispy2891@lemmy.worldEnglish
    63·
    2 months ago

    Can someone explain me what’s the business model of an app that’s free for three decades? They claim to have 100 devs, how can they pay them?

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      The current revived version appears to be tied to a content streaming platform for “creators,” and also sells NFT’s. The mothership certainly gets a cut of all of those sales. Just like seemingly every other techbro venture nowadays, their business model entirely revolves around being a “service,” and the media player itself is apparently just a side hobby. (Note that this is basically exactly the same mutation that happened to Napster. That worked well.)

      Otherwise, the answer is sponsorship by a corporate sugar daddy. Even the OG Winamp was sponsored by and then ultimately bought outright by AOL.

  • edric@lemm.eeEnglish
    311·
    2 months ago

    I just use Audacious with a winamp skin. Looks identical but actually FOSS.

  • tabular@lemmy.worldEnglish
    312·
    2 months ago

    I think I tried Winamp back in the day but never really understood it.

    One has to admit it’s good that they released the source code (while it was available) so users can learn what their software is actually doing on their computer. Better for yourself as a dev too: you will probably avoid including other people’s work in yours. However, wanting contributions while retaining the exclusive right to distribute the software is anti-collaborative. I’m reluctant to say it might as well be proprietary again but since it doesn’t meet the standard of software freedom then it’s equally not worth trying on my computer.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      2 months ago

      In its day Winamp was the most comprehensive media player and users were super into its skinability which was a big deal at the time. Nowadays the “plays everything” throne is very firmly occupied by VLC, with a little cushioned stool next to it for Media Player Classic to sit on. However, neither of them offer the user interface experience that Winamp does/did.

      Winamp was iTunes before iTunes. It was Spotify before Spotify. It did an excellent job of managing the hordes of totally legitimate MP3’s we all had back in the day, and did so with an aplomb that nothing else seemed to manage. Really, its playlist and library management was top notch. Newer apps still piss me off because none of them do it the way Winamp did.

      Side note, if you have an old iPod kicking around and don’t feel like dealing with Apple’s ecosystem, Winamp can still, to this very day, stick music on your device natively without having to install or use iTunes. Just saying.

      But this source code release thing really baffles me. I have no idea what the point of that was supposed to be.

      • btaf45@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        2 months ago

        Really, its playlist and library management was top notch. Newer apps still piss me off because none of them do it the way Winamp did.

        It’s why I still use winamp.

        • eronth@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          It’s been a while since I’ve used Winamp, so I might just not remember, but what makes the library management so special?

      • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        2 months ago

        It did an excellent job of managing the hordes of totally legitimate MP3’s we all had back in the day, and did so with an aplomb that nothing else seemed to manage. Really, its playlist and library management was top notch.

        This is why I’m still on the eternal search for a replacement. Library management was really, really good in Winamp. I use Strawberry these days and it’s absolutely great at playing stuff but the playlist management is just ‘good enough’.

          • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.worldEnglish
            41·
            2 months ago

            Yep, I still use 5.666 on Windows, but I use Windows very infrequently anymore. I switched to Linux as my primary OS earlier this year and only use Windows for games that don’t work right in Linux. And thanks to Valve that’s becoming pretty rare these days.

            I haven’t tried getting Winamp to work in Wine but there’s probably a guide out there somewhere! Good suggestion, thanks.

            • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
              4·
              2 months ago

              WineDB has it marked as silver.

              Honestly, for a modern PC I can’t imagine Winamp is all that taxing of a program to run. I think the biggest bugbear will be its fairly tight integration with the Windows shell for file management and enqueuing things from an Explorer window, and maybe the external device integrations which would rely heavily on the Windows API and possibly WDM.

              • toddestan@lemm.eeEnglish
                2·
                2 months ago

                The video player in Winamp is also completely non-functional in Wine the last time I tried it, as it relies on DirectShow in Windows which has very iffy Wine support. That may also be why it’s marked as silver.

                It’s too bad as I really liked using Winamp as a video player in Windows, despite it’s quirks.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
      231·
      2 months ago

      I think I tried Winamp back in the day but never really understood it.

      What was there not to understand? It was a basic music player with playlist functionality, a plugin infrastructure to support playback of pirated music in underground formats like MP3, at the price of completely free and no ads (the website had banners but not the player).

      • tabular@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        Not sure what I could have expected from it back then. I just recall it being recommended online and ended up just using Win Media player (with the cool graphical effects).

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      However, wanting contributions while retaining the exclusive right to distribute the software is anti-collaborative. I’m reluctant to say it might as well be proprietary again

      As you describe it, that is proprietary – no “might as well be” qualification necessary. Just because you can read the source code doesn’t make it Open Source; you’ve got to have all Four Freedoms for it to count.

      • Kbobabob@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 months ago

        the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

        Is it not actually four or are they counting some of these as the same thing?

        • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          Change and improve sounds pretty much the same to me, as in the process is modifying it, only the intent changes.

    • spyd3r@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      16·
      2 months ago

      Foobar is still the best there is, although the classic style interface might not appeal to younger people.

    • wingsfortheirsmiles@feddit.ukEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      Still miss foobar which isn’t on Linux, though deadbeef is fairly similar at least. Never got the hang of all the beautiful themes/skins users put together for foobar but it was still my go to music player. Excellent layout customisation, tagging and conversion UI, as well as as nice range of plugins

      • dubyakay@lemmy.caEnglish
        6·
        2 months ago

        I really like deadbeef, coming from fb2k as well. Someone recommended it to me two weeks ago, and I’ve immediately recognized the similarities.

        Foobar’s Dev should have just taken their project open source imo. Although I suspect winamp’s lawyers would have jumped on that.

      • emil_98@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        What sucks about it? I just use it because it seems to play literally any video format

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          The UX.

          The functionality is great, and like you said, it can play pretty much anything. But the UX feels like it’s stuck in the late 90s, and the following are more ugly and painful than they need to be:

          • playlists
          • streaming
          • converting file types

          It can do a ton of stuff, but none of it is particularly intuitive, because the UX sucks. But it works great at the basic functionality I need, which is playing pretty much any video format.

    • Sam_Bass@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 months ago

      i use musicbee for audio. vlc for video. musicbee is the most like mediamonkey used to be and free. got into vlc because of its better support of the unusual video formats

    • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      Same even my school used vlc wayy before I knew floss software

  • Luna@lemdro.idEnglish
    17·
    2 months ago

    I am proud to be one of the 2.6k people who illegally forked winamp

    • frezikEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      It’s more likely to survive the company if it’s FOSS. The app was dormant for a long time.