Openwashing: Winamp Collaborative License (WCL) and Open-Source Journalism

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 25, 2024,
updated Sep 29, 2024

• Hackaday ☛ Winamp Releases Source Code, But Is It Really Open?

  The 1990s seem to have reached that point at which they are once more considered cool, and ephemera of the decade has become sought-after. One of the unlikely software hits from the period was Winamp, the MP3 player of choice in an era when time spent on dodgy file sharing sites or peer to peer sharing would snag you almost any music you wanted. Decades later its interface is still widely copied, but now you can try the original again as its source code has been made available. It’s not what we’d call open source though, even though they seem to be making an effort to imply as much with phrases such as “opening up its source code“.

• Linuxiac ☛ Winamp Releases Source Code, but Don’t Rush to Rejoice

  So far, so good. But the bad stuff starts from here. The license under which the source code is published is Winamp Collaborative License (WCL) Version 1.0, where point 5 Restrictions, clearly and explicitly states: [...]

• Doc Searls ☛ Open-Source Journalism

  Craig Burton used to say that he discounted first-hand reports by 50% and withheld trust in second- and third-hand reports completely. In some cases, he didn’t even trust his memory, because he knew (and loved) everyone’s fallibility, including his own.

  But still, we need facts, in whatever form. And those come from what we call sources. Those can be anybody or anything.

  Let’s look at anything, and into the subset in archives that are not going away.

Update

Already forked:

• Openwashing

  • Newly Open Sourced Winamp Forbids Forking, Already Forked Hundreds of Times

    Against Microsoft's proprietary prison GitHub Terms of Service which states all public repositories must be "forkable".

More here:

• Winamp publishes its source code, with a twist

  The kicker is that, while the source is viewable and can be built for personal use, executables and changes to the code cannot be published. So the promise of “open source” has vanished. They have created their own license, the “Winamp Collaborative License (WCL) Version 1.0” with a restrictive paragraph:

Tom's Hardware:

• Winamp releases its source code on Microsoft's proprietary prison GitHub — but the legacy media player doesn't go full open-source

  Winamp is released on Microsoft's proprietary prison GitHub , but restrictive licensing prevents other forks or distributions.

SJVN:

• Winamp opens its code, but it doesn't open source its code

  Llama knows exactly what it's doing. They're open-washing the program to get attention. It worked. As I write this, the GitHub site for this "open" project is the top YComb story. But, the released WinAmp source code is in no way, shape, or form open source.

  Indeed Winamp CEO Alexandre Saboundjian said, "Winamp will remain the owner of the software and will decide on the innovations made in the official version."

  Open washing, by the way, is when a company pretends its product is open source, but it's not. Companies do this because "open source" sounds good to developers and buyers alike these days. In addition, in the European Union, programs that can pass for open source can take advantage of the recently passed Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), which protects open-source development from onerous regulations.

From Hackaday:

• Hackaday ☛ Winamp A Few Days Later: You Can Fork, And Watch For GPL Violations

  A few days ago the source code for the popular Winamp music player was released into the world, with as we reported at the time, a licence that left a lot to be desired. Since then it seems some of the criticism has caught up with the company, for not only have they modified their terms to allow forking, they’ve reacted to a bunch of claimed GPL violations by removing offending files. Perhaps How-To-Geek are right in describing it all as an absolute mess.