Winamp, the iconic Windows media player, is about to get a second wind. The company has announced the opening of its source code from the next school year, thus inviting developers to participate in its evolution.
Born around thirty years ago under the aegis of Nullsoft, Winamp quickly won the hearts of users. Created by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev, the software had a stint at AOL in 1999 before being bought by Radionomy (now LLama Group) in 2014. At the time, rumors even mentioned a potential takeover of Winamp and Shoutcast by Microsoft.
Initially available on Windows and Macintosh (under the name MacAmp), Winamp was then available as a mobile application. In 2013, an attempt to return to macOS was initiated with a new application, before gradually sinking into oblivion.
Ten years later, Winapp now announces that the source code of the Windows version of the software will soon be available to developers around the world.
Winamp: the Windows version will become open source
The idea of an open source Winamp is not entirely new. In 2013, following AOL’s announcement of the end of development of Winamp (version 5.66), a “Save Winamp” campaign was launched by developers. Their petition had also collected more than 12,000 signatures at the time.
For Winamp, the opening of the source code aims above all to bring together developers around the world. According to the press release published on their website, it is “ allow this emblematic software to evolve ” thanks to ” the experience and creativity of thousands of developers “.
In this sense, Alexandre Saboundjian, CEO of Winamp, declared: “ It’s a decision that will delight millions of users. We will focus on new mobile players and other platforms. We will launch a new mobile player at the beginning of July “.
An opening planned for the next school year
As you will have understood, Winamp will not abandon its fans of the software on Windows, which will soon become open source. “ We don’t want to forget the tens of millions of users who use the software on Windows and will benefit from the experience and creativity of thousands of developers », Specifies Alexandre Saboundjian.
Despite this major change, the company specifies, however, that it will retain control over the direction of the project as well as the innovations integrated into the official version.
The source code of the Winamp application on Windows will be accessible to everyone from September 24. The new mobile player will be deployed in July.
Source : Neowin
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