Here's the story:
Company buys the rights to Winamp, tries to get the community to do their dev work for free, fails. That's it.

The 'Winamp source license' was absurdly restrictive. There was nothing open about it. You were not allowed to fork the repo, or distribute the source code or any binaries generated from it. Any patches you wrote became the property of Llama Group without attribution, and you were prohibited from distributing them in either source or binary form.

There were also a couple of surprises in the source code, like improperly included GPL code and some proprietary Dolby source code that never should have been released. The source code to Shoutcast server was also in there, which Llama group doesn't actually own the rights to.

This was a lame attempt to get the community to modernize Winamp for free, and it failed.

Of course many copies of the source code have been made, they just can't be legally used or distributed.

What a shitty company

The FOSS story, yes. But the code is out there. Even the stuff they weren't supposed to share.

Can you name any userbase more ready to pirate the shit out of a third-party fork? Maybe the people still using Media Player Classic.

For one is was under a license what not only not Foss but completely violated Github TOS.

Also the repo had a bunch of code they didn't own the rights to like the Adobe stuff.

I understand the nostalgia surrounding Winamp—I loved it too. But with old versions still available, maybe it’s time to let it rest and look forward. Rather than holding onto the past, we have an opportunity to create new, modern tools that fit our needs today—and we can make sure they’re free and remain open-source from the start. This whole situation offers a valuable lesson: instead of relying on companies or commercial interests, we can build software as a community, ensuring it stays accessible for everyone. With over 8 billion people on the planet and so many resources available, including AI advancements, we’re more capable than ever of creating tools like Winamp—and beyond. I guess I am not understanding what the problem is here, also, someone in this thread has already pointed out that we still have VLC, which IMO works exceptionally well!

Yeah well, VLC has been open source for 23 years.

Statement from dev about the shit show

And it makes no mention that they were modifying and using GPL code prior to making their code "open source".

Id argue that this story is not over until the GPL code can be confirmed removed by a third party

If we can synthesize the idea of WinAmp owners, it would sound like, “Please contribute your free labor in an attempt to monetize the app in pursuit of our financial goals.”

I watched a video a little while ago , I think the only value winamp has is nostalgic and historical. If it was really open source maybe we could get a really good fork and that's about it, I think. Maybe I'm missing the point, let me know I'm not very smart at this stuff.

Maybe WinAmp was the llama all along.