They are nuts. Their license means that you give up all of your authorship rights to the code you contribute, and on top of that you’re not allowed to distribute modified source, nor can you fork the source for any purpose.
Edit: lol
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
187 points (100.0% liked)
Programming
19366 readers
227 users here now
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
- Follow the programming.dev instance rules
- Keep content related to programming in some way
- If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos
Wormhole
Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
So many forks, lol.
Winamp go fork yourself!
It really forks the llamas ass!
Does that actually matter?
I'm asking because license stuff is over my head, but I'd like to learn about it more.
They basically want free labor.
That's the oss model.
Not necessarily. While of course in many many cases, open source is a volunteer effort, there's usually some implicit transaction going on. Whether that's improving the software for yourself and passing that on to others, being a business and improving a library or something you use that helps your project generate revenue, or even a straight up commercial transaction.
But in all these cases, the open source project can be taken by you (or others) and you can do whatever you want with it. In the case of Winamp here, you cannot do any of that. It would be different if they were paying for contributions. But they're not, so.
Yeah. You're talking about 0.0001% of the users though. For everyone else it's "I don't want to pay for this".
If you only care about contributing improvements, no, it doesn't matter.
If you want to at least be recognized as an author, and be able to say "I made this", the license opposes that.
Waiver of Rights: You waive any rights to claim authorship of the contributions […]
I don't know how they intend to accept contributions though. I guess code blocks in tickets or patch files? Forking is not allowed, so the typical fork + branch + create a pull request does not work.
Also, this isn't even compatible with copyright law in some countries. I.e here you can't give up authorship at all; you can only grant an irrevocable, perpetual license (that might even prohibit you from distribution yourself and such) but you'll always be able to say "I made this" no matter what their license says.
The way I look at it is this: I want credit for the work I do, I should also be able to fork a repo that I work on, and I sure as hell don’t like giving up my rights if I can help it.
But others may feel different.
I guess, opening a PR without forking is possible, but hey that's sort of incredibly bullshit idea
It...seems like there may be some issues with the repo...
I lost it when coming across this commit: https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/commit/67c68e6dc24f36b266427034d016fb86ef4d486c
I love GitHub drama.
Anyone know if the Dolby code leak is going to lead to anything interesting, or had this code been leaked before? And how fucked are the Winamp folks?
Context:
https://github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp/issues/17
Confidential Dolby code was pushed, though just some headers files.
And then they just push a new commit without the files, completely unaware that git keeps all versions of the code? I feel like this repo is going to disappear.
Thats golden !
This really whips the llama's ass
The open source community is really showing itself from the best side by harassing the devs of that repo. I'm sure the devs don't regret publishing the code...
Sure, the license isn't the best, but that's no way to act. With such childish behaviour from contributors, I'd have just taken the code down again. Bunch of children.
The license isn't the best? That license sucks. Probably one of the worst on Github.
You’re acting like releasing the WinAmp source code is like some sort of great gift to open source devs, lol. It’s a community that works based on a set of rules and expectations, if the company doesn’t want to meet those expectations, then an appropriate response is to bully them out of the space (or to bully them into meeting those expectations)
Projects are not entitled to be received gratefully and respectfully if you treat open source devs like a disposable source of free labour.
And the concept of “civility” in the face of corporations telling us what we can and can’t do, can well and truly get fucked.
You're missing the point. I don't really care about Winamp. It's ancient and probably used by about 15 grandpas. The point is the behavior of the people in the issues and pull requests. It's possible to be polite, but firm and bring a point across. Right now it looks like a pack of dogs barking around thinking they're witty and clever for doing so.
Projects are not entitled to be received gratefully and respectfully if you treat open source devs like a disposable source of free labour.
Nobody's forcing anybody to do anything. You're not forced to contribute in any way shape or form. Winamp hasn't hired anybody there to write code under bad conditions. Justifying bad behavior "because the other side is doing it" (which isn't true btw) is just weak.
I don’t think you have a point. You’re shaming people in a community who don’t give a fuck about your concern trolling. Calling out shitty organizations for shitty behavior in the loudest way possible is often the only way to enact change. There’s a distinct power imbalance between companies that have money and resources versus individuals in the open source community. Polite and firm are useless unless you have additional leverage.
Enjoy being rude on github then 🤷 I'm sure your reasons for being mean are justified and help the image of the opensource community 👍
Clinging to absolute morality leads nowhere. You shouldn't punch down.
"Be nice"
No I want to be an asshole because I think they are assholes
"That's not very nice"
don't punch down
Wat?
Right now it looks like a pack of dogs barking around thinking they're witty and clever for doing so.
Sure, but that’s pretty much any online community. We’re doing it right now. You did the exact same shit in your original comment where you called the GitHub commenters a bunch of children. We are the dogs in the mirror, if you want to change that culture, be the change.
Personally, I don’t think that being a smarmy prick in the comments of some corporation GitHub repo is “bad behavior”. It’s definitely not as bad as profiting from the exploitation of unpaid or underpaid labor, anyways.
When corporations destroy lives, it’s “just business”. But when people refuse to act civilly towards or about corporations, it’s “childish” and “immature”. In that case, I am very proud to be an immature child telling the adults that they’re brainwashed obedient drones complying with the will of then ruling elite.
This whole thing sounds more like a way to get some pull requests to fix their product for free. That's not open source. The source code is simply available, that's all. In the first run they even prohibited to fork it (!!!) while it is necessary to work on this project. They may fixed it, but you are still not allowed to do anything with it, only provide free work. Of course people are not happy with it.
They should delete this repo and change their license if they want contributors for free. Or just hire programmers for money.
Of course people are not happy with it.
Of course. I'm not happy about many things, but that doesn't give me the right to harass somebody. Pointing out something politely is very different from jumping on a bandwagon and spamming an issue, or creating meme issues and meme pull requests. We should be better than that.
Is that really what we want? Anything slightly popular making a misstep to be hounded by an online mob?
Of course. I'm not happy about many things, but that doesn't give me the right to harass somebody.
They are not being harassed, but are being shown in this way that their intentions and behavior are more than just shit
Pointing out something politely is very different from jumping on a bandwagon and spamming an issue, or creating meme issues and meme pull requests. We should be better than that.
Is that really what we want? Anything slightly popular making a misstep to be hounded by an online mob?
This is not a misstep. They just don't want to hire developers for Winamp and rather try to outsource the work to others for no cost. And then they call it copyleft while forbidding anyone to do anything else with the source code except sending them pull requests. That's disrespectful, rude and simply shameless. This is fully calculated, not a misstep. If it was just a misstep, then I would agree with you about these meme pull requests and so on. Saying this, I absolutely understand why the receive such "feedback".