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

(arstechnica.com)
431 points dangle1 | 1 comments | 16 Oct 24 16:34 UTC | HN request time: 0.199s | source
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arp242 ◴[16 Oct 24 18:09 UTC] No.41861943[source]▶
The trolling was ridiculous. I don't blame them.

It was pretty clear that with "fork" they meant "don't create a WinAmp-ng fork" and not a "fork" in the "send a patch" GitHub sense. It's fine to point out "hey, I think your custom written license may need a bit of work!", but the amount of vitriol and hate over it (including on HN) was just ridiculous.

It was one of those moments I was embarrassed to be posting here.

And yes, they could have done better, sure. But instead of bringing in someone in the community you just chased them away. Well done everyone. Good job. Excellent result. A story to tell the grandchildren.

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freedomben ◴[16 Oct 24 18:30 UTC] No.41862181[source]▶
My thoughts exactly. It was shocking and appalling to me how people reacted to this effort. Instead of praising them for taking such a big step, the airwaves were saturated with people magnifying every little imperfection and shitting all over them for it.

If anyone is thinking about open sourcing (and/or making source available) their previously closed app, they had better be paying attention to this. The clear message I saw is that open sourcing is not worth it.

And that sucks and is the exact opposite of how it should be. Open sourcing is an amazing gift you can give to humanity, and instead of looking the gift horse in the mouth and bitching about some imperfections, we should have been praising them and thanking them for their generosity, and sending PRs to help fix issues.

The mess resulting from the Winamp open sourcing/source availabling is more on us (the community) than them, IMHO. If we had acted like rational adults instead of emotionally charged children dehumanizing strangers on the internet and shitting all over them, they would have fixed the issues and we'd be in a better place. Instead now, we have nothing. This is why we can't have nice things.

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1. ndiddy ◴[16 Oct 24 19:43 UTC] No.41863057[source]▶
Here's some backstory to what happened from a former Llama Group (Winamp owners) employee who suggested the open source release. He was envisioning something similar to Doom's GPL release, but management couldn't be convinced that the code had nothing more than historical value (likely explaining the dumb license) and everyone who had worked on the legacy Winamp codebase got laid off before the release was announced (likely explaining why there was so much proprietary code in the repo, anyone who knew it was there no longer worked for the company). Honestly the whole thing seems like a desperate PR move by a dying company, it's a shame that the license prevents the community from taking over the project after Llama Group goes under. https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/winamp-really-whips-op...