Winamp is one of my all time favorite music players but unfortunately it is only available on windows. But in an announcement from winamp team made recently, they state that they are planning to make the full source code for Winamp available to everyone on 24 September 2024. This will open up the possibility of the code being ported over to Linux and other operating systems, which would be awesome.
Winamp has announced that on 24 September 2024, the application’s source code will be open to developers worldwide.
Winamp will open up its code for the player used on Windows, enabling the entire community to participate in its development. This is an invitation to global collaboration, where developers worldwide can contribute their expertise, ideas, and passion to help this iconic software evolve.
Winamp has become much more than just a music player. It embodies a unique digital culture, aesthetic, and user experience. With this initiative to open the source code, Winamp is taking the next step in its history, allowing its users to contribute directly to improving the product.
“This is a decision that will delight millions of users around the world. Our focus will be on new mobile players and other platforms. We will be releasing a new mobile player at the beginning of July. Still, we don’t want to forget the tens of millions of users who use the software on Windows and will benefit from thousands of developers’ experience and creativity. Winamp will remain the owner of the software and will decide on the innovations made in the official version,” explains Alexandre Saboundjian, CEO of Winamp.
At this time we don’t know what license the source code is going to be released under so we will have to wait and see on that front. Depending on the license used there might be restrictions on the code use so… The announcement asks users to register their interest by entering their details at their Free-Llama site. I have done so and will share any details I receive from them as we get nearer to the release date.
Unfortunately, there is a good possibility that the code will not be released under a public open source licence like GPL/MIT etc as in that case they would have just dumped the code on Github and made the announcement. Unless… this is a way to drum up interest for the release.
In either case, we will have to wait and see. But I am very excited by this 🙂
– Suramya