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.

preservationism allows you to bypass "legal nonsense"? That's some entitlement you have. So basically, laws don't matter to you. People's life work don't matter? It's ok for you to take what somebody created in the name of preservation. I bet you wouldn't be saying this if you created and released something that you rely on as your income.