Back in May, Winamp's owner company, Llama Group, announced that it will soon make the source code of the iconic media player available to the public. The Windows media player was all the rage back in the early 2000s, so naturally, excitement was high among users of the classic software. This announcement followed another from 2021 where Llama Group had detailed a "re-imagining" of Winamp, which repurposed it as a music streaming platform for creators too, but it seems like that initiative didn't work out well, which isn't a surprise considering we have giant competitors like Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music in the same space. Regardless, the source code of classic Winamp has now been released to the public, as promised.

Classic Winamp is back again

The source code for classic Winamp has now been made available on GitHub, along with information about the library dependencies and build tools. This release has sparked a lot of interest from the community, with the project already boasting over 4,000 stars and almost 1,000 forks. The source code is primarily written in C++, with Llama Group providing compilation instructions too. All in all, it provides the tools necessary for nostalgic users to relive their early 2000s through the iconic multimedia player.

Winamp's source code isn't really open-source

Unfortunately, there is a twist in the tale. Although the source code for the media player is now public, it's not open-source in the truest sense. This is because the code is governed by a custom Winamp Collaborative License (WCL), which states that while users can modify and tweak the code to their heart's content for private use, they aren't allowed to distribute the modded versions of Winamp; only the maintainers of Winamp have this permission. Additionally, if you submit a modified contribution, you automatically grant Winamp the exclusive, global, perpetual, royalty-free rights to further modify and distribute your code, without paying you any compensation. Needless to say, this restrictive license will cause many eager software developers to pause and ponder, but if you're an enthusiast who just wants to have some fun in your private space, give Winamp a go here.