Llama Group Releases the Winamp Source Code — But Beware Its Restrictive License

UPDATE (10/17/2024): With considerably less fanfare than it was launched, the Winamp source code has been sunk — with current owner Llama Group removing the repository from GitHub.

Llama Group's reversal comes after the company came under fire for a restrictive one-sided "Winamp Collaborative License," which bore the hallmarks of generative AI and little sign of having been approved by anyone with legal qualifications, which prevented anyone from doing almost anything with the source code to the Winamp desktop media player other than making improvements to be privately communicated back to Llama Group for commercial exploitation without recompense.

More worryingly for the company, it comes after the source code repository was found to have proprietary code owned by third parties including Dolby, Fraunhofer, and Microsoft, among others, to which Llama Group had no rights of redistribution much less relicensing — along with code originally published under the reciprocal GNU General Public License.

Llama Group has not responded to requests for comment on the removal, but may be asked to do so as part of legal proceedings in the future: while the official repository is no more, thousands of forks remain accessible.

UPDATE (09/30/2024): Llama Group has reversed some of the more onerous restrictions in its custom "Winamp Collaborative License," granting interested parties the right to fork the repository — while also removing a grab-bag of code the company itself lacked the rights to distribute, including a proprietary library belonging to Dolby.

In the most recent version of the license applied to the release of the source code for the Microsoft Windows version of the Winamp media player, a restriction on forking the project — a necessary first step to making any modifications — has been removed. Other restrictions, however, remain, including a ban on distributing modified software "whether in source or binary form," which taken literally means publicly-accessible forks are still forbidden.

Other recent commits to the repository have deleted a variety of files to which Llama Group itself lacks the right of redistribution, ranging from song samples to the source code for a proprietary Dolby library.

All changes are visible in the repository's public commit history.

Original article continues below.

True to its word, Llama Group has released the source code for the Microsoft Windows desktop build of Nullsoft's iconic Winamp media player — but its license terms should give you pause before grabbing a copy and playing yourself.

Llama Group promised it would release the source code for the classic Windows desktop build of the media player launched by Nullsoft in 1997 back in May, claiming it to be "a decision that will delight millions of users around the world" in the words of Winamp chief executive officer Alexandre Saboundjian. However, it did not respond to requests to clarify the license under which the software would be published — stating only that "Winamp will remain the owner of the software and will decide on the innovations made in the official version."

Now, the source code is available — but it's not just the "official version" that's under the Llama Group's control. The software has been made available under a custom license dubbed the Winamp Collaborative License Version 1.0.1, which the company describes as "a free, copyleft license," but which comes with serious restrictions on how the source code can be used.

While the license's preamble purports to deliver "freedom to use, Modify [sic], and study the software," modification is allowed only for unspecified "private use." Modified versions of the software cannot be distributed "whether in source or binary form," except back to Llama Group and WinAmp — and in doing so you provide the company "a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, copy, modify, and distribute your contributions as part of the software, without any compensation to you."

Taken at face value, even those eager to contribute to the official version of Winamp will find it a challenge: the restriction on distribution of modified source means you can't even fork the project from its official GitHub repository to make changes and submit a pull request, as doing so would constitute distribution. This hasn't however, stopped those interested in playing with the source code: at the time of writing, there were already 763 forks and rising on GitHub alone.

For those not put off by the one-sided license terms, the source code is available on GitHub.