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by blue_cadet_3 630 days ago
Their official blog post does

https://winamp.com/press/winamp-open-source-code

1 comments

It does not. It open-source only in it's URL which has no semantic value if you read the article.
And the license itself states,

> The [license] is a free, copyleft license

And then proceeds to not be a free, copyleft license.

This pretty clearly seems like they're trying to squat on the terms "copyleft" "free software" and "open source" while weasel-wording their way out of it — "open washing", as someone else in the comments called it, seems to fit. This smacks of someone who wants to use the words, and to have you feel like they've used the words, but without having to actually do the things the words would mean, spoken genuinely.

Contract law doesn't really allow for this kind of behavior. If you say over and over again that your software is open source and the community is free to develop with it as they please, and then write your license to say the opposite, you're going to have a hard time enforcing the license given that you're actively telling people to violate the terms in your press release.
It's still misleading and they're obviously trying to imply marketing value that doesn't exist.