Winamp failed to confuse people about software freedom
Quoting: Winamp failed to confuse people about software freedom —
The free software movement has been around for several decades. During all this time, numerous contributors to the GNU Project and other free software projects have worked hard to develop thousands of programs that benefit everybody. Their hard work has made it possible that today the term "free software" stands for all the programs that users can rely on if they want to control their own computing. Users turn to free software because of that intrinsic value, and there is a great risk of harm if the name "free software" is used for software which does not grant the user the four freedoms.
Free software means users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve the software - for any purpose. The word "free" in "free software" means liberty, not price. To be able to exercise their freedom in practice, users have to be provided with the program's source code and it should either be in the public domain or licensed under a free software license.
Unfortunately, some authors, deliberately or not, engage in confusing practices by which they gain interest and create expectations associated with the renown and intent of "free software", but the result denies users their freedoms.
Such practices include drafting licenses using existing terms and conditions of one of the GNU licenses altered by adding restrictions, placed in the LICENSE file, contradicting the original text and leaving users uncertain on how they can use the program. We have commented on these in an earlier blog post of ours.
Confusing practices also include situations where the authors make claims about their software or license being free without actually granting all four freedoms to users.
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Winamp Open Source Story Is Over
In mid-May, Winamp surprised everyone by announcing plans to make the player open source. The goal was to give developers worldwide a chance to contribute to bringing back Winamp’s former glory from oblivion—the music player that dominated its niche in the late 90s and early 2000s.
The news sparked a lot of excitement and positive reactions. The main reason? Nostalgia. Many longtime computer users fondly remember Winamp from their early days of using computers. It seemed like a great idea, but unfortunately, things began to take a turn for the worse after that. Here’s why.