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

This is a cautionary tale for preservationists. My current preservation project is still not open because we are very slowly reviewing the code to make sure we don't accidentally include any IP when we open the source code. The real things that get you are similar to what happened here: codecs, graphics libraries, and a really big one to look out for is fonts. It'd be great if there was a scanner that could detect this stuff, but unfortunately, the scanning tools out there tend to go the other way like Black Duck: they detect open source code, not closed source.

Unpopular opinion: preservationism shouldn't care about licensing and legal nonsense.

Because what is the point if something is distributed in a restrictive license, can't be preserved and then gets lost to time? Also, licensing is to avoid distribution, modification or outright copying by competitors; preservation is completely orthogonal to those concerns. It is to avoid losing a piece of craft to the sands of time. There is no reason laws should have power over anything in perpetuity.

As seen in other spaces, pirates ignoring the "law" will provide the greatest service to humanity.

Just because the whole is more or less abandoned (although I still use winamp, currently running a build from Dec 21, 2022), doesn't mean the licensed parts are.

If the rights holders of the licensed bits haven't abandoned them, then it's not really fair to distribute them without their consent.

This. I cannot believe people are telling me to just open everything. It's nuts. Imagine if someone found your personal code and just decided to open it without your permission or knowledge!

My personal code isn't licensed, so there is nothing that stops you from doing that if you get your hands on my hard drive. What has licensing got to do with it?

Also, we're not talking about personal code either, but something that is arguably a product humanity, or a part thereof, would want to preserve for posterity.

Lastly, no one is telling you to open anything. I am saying that if someone decides something you have created need to be preserved, they should go ahead. You can protest, you can sue, the point is it shouldn't stop anyone from trying. Which doesn't apply to this case, as the owner of Winamp actually wanted to make it open source.

> My personal code isn't licensed, so there is nothing that stops you from doing that if you get your hands on my hard drive

This is not true. You can't redistribute someone else's IP without a license from the owner.

In which country? What if the owner has passed?