Licence violates github TOS

[m4rkh4wk]

• No Distribution of Modified Versions: You may not distribute modified versions of the software, whether in source or binary form.
  * No Forking: You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the software.
  * Official Distribution: Only the maintainers of the official repository are allowed to distribute the software and its modifications.

https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#5-license-grant-to-other-users

By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and "fork" your repositories (this means that others may make their own copies of Content from your repositories in repositories they control).

[sudwind]

If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to use, display, and perform Your Content through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking).

Another very important paragraph just down below that one.

[nitrix]

The usual approach is to allow for people to fork your software as long as it's under a different name so that they don't misrepresent you. Then you rely on the goodwill of the OSS community to not actually fork the project but rather contribute upstream unless they're absolutely forced to because you're not competent enough to run the show.

[Screampuff]

[donuts-are-good]

The usual approach is to do as the internet does and exercise your free will. Who will stop you? The intern manning the email account or the VC's who can't wait to lose more money on this?

[makemake-kbo]

what a dogwater license. very embarrassing to piss on the legacy of winamp like this

[xeons]

This license reads like you just want the community to do free maintenance while not being able to do anything else with the code.

[toby3d]

— Are you distributing the sauce?
— No, we just show it.
— Beautiful...

[thrashwerk]

Hey guys is this where I sign up for unpaid labor?

[KatieBun]

The company behind this is a scammy marketing company that want music to be NFTs ... I expect nothing better from them.

[0x5066]

this is beautiful

btw, heyyy!

[toby3d]

It's a joke. I'm joking.

[be195]

This issue does touch on Restrictions, however I would like to put in my two cents' worth and also mention a paragraph before that, Contributions.

Here is one of the mentioned key points in Contributions:

Contribution to Project: You are encouraged to contribute improvements, enhancements, and bug fixes back to the project. Contributions must be submitted to the official repository and will be reviewed and incorporated at the discretion of the maintainers.

Given the Restrictions, this does not make any sense. To make a pull request, or, in other words, to contribute to the project, you need to have a fork or at the very least a branch. What?

[grishka]

I'll duplicate my HN comment here:

It feels like they wanted to make sure that no one distributes a modified "Winamp" that isn't built from the official sources, which makes sense, but they went too restrictive on it. The usual way to go about it is to say "if you want to maintain and distribute your own fork of this product, you must change the name and the logo to make sure it doesn't infringe on our branding". Telegram does this for its client apps, for example.

[0x5066]

But this also means that any Winamp clone that uses the publicly available SDK you can find on the internet if you look hard enough, is hit by this and thus "illegal" (if I understand this right). :-)

[KingDuckZ]

Jailbait!

[PEPSIMANTR]

EULA on "final version" gives the right to create skins as long as it does not use Winamp name in it. And if you count skins as modifications, license on this repo forbids that as well so it also conflicts with the previous EULA and I haven't seen anything like "a newer license invalidates this EULA".
(even if you don't count skins as modifications, why not just make license of this repo similar to that one?)

[Architector4]

Also worth noting that, at least for now, this repository is also illegally distributing proprietary paid source code. This issue is erroneously closed, but does link to it: #11

[JohnEdwa]

Also worth noting that, at least for now, this repository is also illegally distributing proprietary paid source code. This issue is erroneously closed, but does link to it: #11

Good thing nobody is allowed to fork the repo or that source code would end up getting irreversibly distributed with them.
Oh.

[woefulwabbit]

This is a non-issue. You can upload non-free, even all rights reserved, source code and make it available on Github. By doing so you grant all Github users a separate license to fork your work on Github. We can download the code, modify and build it privately. We cannot upload the code or binaries to Gitlab or any other public repositories.

[Architector4]

You can upload non-free, even all rights reserved, source code and make it available on Github. By doing so you grant all Github users a separate license to fork your work on Github.

Yes, that's what the issue above says. I argue this is at the very least a "typo" kind of an issue, because that clause in the license is null and void, and so effectively a typo. Still more than a non-issue at least by that virtue lol

[rockisch]

@woefulwabbit I think the biggest issue is that the project clearly is welcoming contributions, but the only way you can do that on GitHub is by creating PRs based on forks

Probably just a wording issue ('you can create forks, but not distribute them' or smt), but would be nice to get fixed for clarification.

[Rua]

@woefulwabbit I think the biggest issue is that the project clearly is welcoming contributions, but the only way you can do that on GitHub is by creating PRs based on forks

Probably just a wording issue ('you can create forks, but not distribute them' or smt), but would be nice to get fixed for clarification.

Is creating a PR not also "distributing a fork"? Since it's a modified version of the source code, that is now available on the internet?

[CardealRusso]

let the man make money form commits.
go somewhere else

[Yotsubal]

Pirate at its peak, its not "Open Source", but they want us to become unpaid employee to contribute but cant edit things without their knowledge,

What a joke

[llunacb]

I have fixed this problem: #18

[tonytins]

If you want Winamp to change their license why don't you pay them?

Glances at the number of forks I think that ship has already sailed. xD

[Trolldemorted]

If Github is fine with such repos, then it's a "take it or leave it" situation.

There are literally repos which only commit binaries without any source code, so I doubt this one is problematic.

[morsik]

@Trolldemorted but there the licensing is at least clear.

[johnLegasse]

An insult to the OSS community, straight asking dev to work for them for free

[grepwood]

@Trolldemorted but there the licensing is at least clear.

No. There are repos that contain proprietary binaries, no source, no license. And GitHub is fine with it. Not only that, but if you complain, the devout users of this repo will attack you. Happened to me a couple times.

[nukeop]

@Trolldemorted but there the licensing is at least clear.

No. There are repos that contain proprietary binaries, no source, no license. And GitHub is fine with it. Not only that, but if you complain, the devout users of this repo will attack you. Happened to me a couple times.

You don't have to use a particular license to host your code or binaries on GitHub.

[dxgldotorg]

@toby3d's screenshot was altered.
This is the real version:

[dxgldotorg]

@toby3d's screenshot was altered. This is the real version:

This is fake

You can see it at https://twitter.com/CJMAXiK/status/1791349512125943900 straight from the source.

[runaway97]

I feel like this whole thing was intentional to seek some attention. You can't just say

The release of the Winamp player's source code will enable developers from all over the world to actively participate in its evolution and improvement. (https://about.winamp.com/free-llama)

then come with an explicit "no forking" in the license.

Expect some sort of ChatGPT-generated apology soon.

[FluffyKat43]

@toby3d's screenshot was altered. This is the real version:

This is fake

You can see it at https://twitter.com/CJMAXiK/status/1791349512125943900 straight from the source.

This is fake

Back it up. WHY is this fake?
You can't just say it's fake, you MUST prove it's fake.
Do your research.

[bLanark]

@toby3d's screenshot was altered. This is the real version:

This is fake

You can see it at https://twitter.com/CJMAXiK/status/1791349512125943900 straight from the source.

This is fake

Back it up. WHY is this fake? You can't just say it's fake, you MUST prove it's fake. Do your research.

They are trolling, just ignore them.

[dxgldotorg]

@toby3d's screenshot was altered. This is the real version:

This is fake

You can see it at https://twitter.com/CJMAXiK/status/1791349512125943900 straight from the source.

This is fake

Back it up. WHY is this fake? You can't just say it's fake, you MUST prove it's fake. Do your research.

And I gave proof that my screenshot is real (and not mutilated by Inspect) by giving a URL to where it can be seen.

[be195]

They should just give me the source code

[lunakittyyy]

The obvious solution here is to add every GitHub user as a collaborator. That way, nobody has to fork the repository and everyone can push directly onto it without any activity required by John Windows Amp.

[tonytins]

Huh, I just realized, the license never prohibited relicensing, only sublicensing.

[drewstephensdesigns]

If Github is fine with such repos, then it's a "take it or leave it" situation.

There are literally repos which only commit binaries without any source code, so I doubt this one is problematic.

There are also repos with Chinese propaganda, that I've reported several times over, yet Github is ok with it

[grepwood]

You don't have to use a particular license to host your code or binaries on GitHub.

@nukeop at which point GitHub is just RapidShare with less ebegging?

[huckleberrypie]

What the Winamp team is like letting people cook from a recipe but the one who wrote the recipe forbids those who cooked the meal to share the resulting dish to everyone. SMH

[dromer]

What Justin Frankel has to say about it: https://askjf.com/index.php?q=7357s

Question: Now that WinAMP's source has been officially released, do you have any desire to hack new badass features in? github.com/WinampDesktop/winamp
Asked by Will (23.125.224.x) on September 24 2024, 2:39pm
Reply on September 24 2024, 5:53pm (edited at September 24 2024, 5:55pm):

If I did have any desire, it would be extinguished by the license terms, lol. The terms are completely absurd in the way they are written, e.g. "You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the software." So arguably making any changes would be considered "creating a forked version." But even taking these terms as they are likely intended (which is slightly more permissive than how they are written), they are terrible. No thank you.

[YarosMallorca]

• No Forking: You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the software.

They removed this it seems.

[NoPlagiarism]

Half fixed with 64a5175

No Distribution of Modified Versions: You may not distribute modified versions of the software, whether in source or binary form.

Forking is still forbidden btw

[YarosMallorca]

Alr, forking this shit before it gets removed 😆

[xanhast]

Huh, I just realized, the license never prohibited relicensing, only sublicensing.

so funny. so this licence not only puts its own community in legal jeopardy, but also allows anyone to do the one thing it was supposed to stop.

do those fsf relicensing clauses have legal precedent or just precursory?

im not a laywer but i don't see why one can't just private fork this project, remove the licence, add mit0 or w/e and they made zero modifications to The Program while the old license was in effect. then remove any trademarks and bam, community edition.

[nukeop]

Huh, I just realized, the license never prohibited relicensing, only sublicensing.

so funny. so this licence not only puts its own community in legal jeopardy, but also allows anyone to do the one thing it was supposed to stop.

do those fsf relicensing clauses have legal precedent or just precursory?

im not a laywer but i don't see why one can't just private fork this project, remove the licence, add mit0 or w/e and they made zero modifications to The Program while the old license was in effect. then remove any trademarks and bam, community edition.

This is crazy. I just checked and there's no relicensing clause in the Windows EULA either. You should definitely release it with a changed name to see what happens.

[cjmaxik]

Nice meme you got there @toby3d 😆

[nq4t]

The company behind this is a scammy marketing company that want music to be NFTs ... I expect nothing better from them.

Yes.

They also bought Nullsoft over 10 years ago...okay? A decade. The first thing they did? They hired programmers to modify the shoutcast server binaries to require authorization. They came right out of the gate and said if you want to run a previously free server on your hardware that you're paying for; then you need to pay us every month for the daemon.

We all ran to icecast.

They tried to update Winamp for the NFT stuff...but that was a total flop.

They want a ROI but they feel they don't need to do any more investment. They feel the FOSS community is stupid and nostalgic enough we'll gladly do work for free. They fail to realize when they take away the incentives of FOSS; they're just left looking like a bunch of greedy idiots.

[nq4t]

No. There are repos that contain proprietary binaries, no source, no license. And GitHub is fine with it. Not only that, but if you complain, the devout users of this repo will attack you. Happened to me a couple times.

Usually, when there is no license; it's assumed public domain. This doesn't work for every country; but if I put something in a repository and I do not place a license or copyright notice; then it's considered public domain. Even if I go back and fix my mistake; those to grabbed it prior are technically exempt.

However this is clearly a restrictive license that should not be anywhere near FOSS. I think the devout users of this are either paid shills or traitors to the FOSS community. They're the reason the new world of open-source will be companies expecting free labor. It's never worked that way...and no body should be remotely sticking up for it or supporting it.

[nukeop]

Usually, when there is no license; it's assumed public domain.

You are completely wrong on this, if there is no license, then it's all rights reserved. Public domain release has to be very explicit. A license gives you rights that you would otherwise not have.

[francoism90]

It's a shame, if you don't want to opensource it/make it readable, don't publish your project on GitHub. Just publish it on your own CVS or release it as archive.

@nq4t You should thank AOL for this.