Well, given the very unorthodox nature of it as it is today, I don't know that Dr0 can legally open source it until he's finished replacing literally all legacy functions with new code, even if they wanted to. But I can understand your position.
I mostly use mpv to play local music nowadays. (Most of the music I play is streamed using a Navidrome server with Feishin as the frontend.) Back when I did use a proper audio player on Linux, Harmonoid was my go-to.
I'm surprised they kept it up for so long honestly. It was very clear they had no fucking clue what they were doing. What with the nonsensical license that violated Github's tos, the Dolby Code they leaked, and the fact they kept every commit public for everyone to see.
The current revived version appears to be tied to a content streaming platform for "creators," and also sells NFT's. The mothership certainly gets a cut of all of those sales. Just like seemingly every other techbro venture nowadays, their business model entirely revolves around being a "service," and the media player itself is apparently just a side hobby. (Note that this is basically exactly the same mutation that happened to Napster. That worked well.)
Otherwise, the answer is sponsorship by a corporate sugar daddy. Even the OG Winamp was sponsored by and then ultimately bought outright by AOL.
i use musicbee for audio. vlc for video. musicbee is the most like mediamonkey used to be and free. got into vlc because of its better support of the unusual video formats
I think I tried Winamp back in the day but never really understood it.
One has to admit it's good that they released the source code (while it was available) so users can learn what their software is actually doing on their computer. Better for yourself as a dev too: you will probably avoid including other people's work in yours. However, wanting contributions while retaining the exclusive right to distribute the software is anti-collaborative. I'm reluctant to say it might as well be proprietary again but since it doesn't meet the standard of software freedom then it's equally not worth trying on my computer.
In its day Winamp was the most comprehensive media player and users were super into its skinability which was a big deal at the time. Nowadays the "plays everything" throne is very firmly occupied by VLC, with a little cushioned stool next to it for Media Player Classic to sit on. However, neither of them offer the user interface experience that Winamp does/did.
Winamp was iTunes before iTunes. It was Spotify before Spotify. It did an excellent job of managing the hordes of totally legitimate MP3's we all had back in the day, and did so with an aplomb that nothing else seemed to manage. Really, its playlist and library management was top notch. Newer apps still piss me off because none of them do it the way Winamp did.
Side note, if you have an old iPod kicking around and don't feel like dealing with Apple's ecosystem, Winamp can still, to this very day, stick music on your device natively without having to install or use iTunes. Just saying.
But this source code release thing really baffles me. I have no idea what the point of that was supposed to be.
It did an excellent job of managing the hordes of totally legitimate MP3’s we all had back in the day, and did so with an aplomb that nothing else seemed to manage. Really, its playlist and library management was top notch.
This is why I'm still on the eternal search for a replacement. Library management was really, really good in Winamp. I use Strawberry these days and it's absolutely great at playing stuff but the playlist management is just 'good enough'.
I think I tried Winamp back in the day but never really understood it.
What was there not to understand? It was a basic music player with playlist functionality, a plugin infrastructure to support playback of pirated music in underground formats like MP3, at the price of completely free and no ads (the website had banners but not the player).
Not sure what I could have expected from it back then. I just recall it being recommended online and ended up just using Win Media player (with the cool graphical effects).
However, wanting contributions while retaining the exclusive right to distribute the software is anti-collaborative. I’m reluctant to say it might as well be proprietary again
As you describe it, that is proprietary -- no "might as well be" qualification necessary. Just because you can read the source code doesn't make it Open Source; you've got to have all Four Freedoms for it to count.
Still miss foobar which isn't on Linux, though deadbeef is fairly similar at least. Never got the hang of all the beautiful themes/skins users put together for foobar but it was still my go to music player. Excellent layout customisation, tagging and conversion UI, as well as as nice range of plugins