The Zinf Project (ex Freeamp) Needs Help

Jayesh Sheth writes: "The Zinf Project (formerly known as Freeamp) needs your help! The Freeamp ( http://www.freeamp.org ) project, which produced the cross-platform mp3 and ogg vorbis player, is now known as the Zinf project. Freeamp distinguished itself early on as an easy-to-use music player for both Linux and Windows, with integrated support not only for the mp3 format, but also for the open source ogg vorbis format." Read on for the help this project is looking for -- in short, they're looking for some new blood.

"The project is unable to continue using the name 'Freeamp' due to legal action from PlayMedia Systems, Inc over the use of 'amp' in its name. Additionally, Emusic.com (currently owned by Vivendi Universal Net USA ) - which had previously sponsored the Freeamp project - has dropped its support for the project.

Fortunately, since Freeamp was run as an open source project, its source continues to live on - under the current stewardship of Robert Kaye (at the helm of Zinf.org), one of the original programmers for the project. The Zinf project,however, is looking for new project leaders, programmers, documenters, and user - support people.

If you have some free time, and would like to keep Freeamp alive as Zinf, please visit the Zinf website or its Sourceforge website, where you can add yourself to a user or programmer mailing list, download the source code or compiled files, check out the list of open bugs, and get in contact with the project .

Thanks for reading this. Lets keep Zinf - and diversity in the music player landscape - alive."

Comments

Re:OK

[reaper20]

Open source wont succeed until it makes better software than what exists or until it makes software that doesn't exist yet.

I've been trying zinf all morning ... and I must say, I'm glad I ran into this story, because so far it has been the best player I have used so far. We CAN do better than Winamp. XMMS IMO performs alot better than Winamp does under windows (try loading 5k+ mp3's and see which one is faster, by a long shot). With Open Source software we won't see stupid marketing gimmicks like a mini-browser.

Whether Winamp3 has a linux port is irrelevant. First of all, the port is already way behind the windows version, and it's not Free (speech).

Unfortunately for Zinf, it is cursed with "media player" syndrome, which means it must not conform to any known UI methodology and look like absolute crap by default.

The playlist is by far the best I've seen, I began organizing my mess of an mp3/ogg collection. I can edit ID3's right from the list, and drag them right onto my playlist. Everything good about this playlist overrides any qualms I have about how the normal player interface is. It is very intuitive.

Freea*p has a new fan today, I've already removed Winamp!