Neowin interviews Ben Goodger, Justin Frankel

mr_tommy writes "Neowin has had the pleasure of talking to two prominent figures in the I.T. world. First, Ben Goodger, chief developer of the excellent browser Firefox, and secondly, Justin Frankel, creator of Winamp and many other products for Nullsoft. We've got Ben talking about Firefox, XUL, and the future at Mozilla; equally, Justin talks (humorously) about his past, Winamp, AOL, music, and what he's up to at the moment. Also, read on for some of his projects he thought about doing when he left Winamp, including setting up an interesting alternative to Windows 2000 based on Open Source software, similar to ReactOS."

Comments

Keeping A Close Eye on Justin

[lotsofno]

Justin actually updates his weblog regularly. It's well worth checking out just to see what he's been up to lately.

Winamp Unlimited also does a good job of tracking down any online activities with the Nullsoft staff, or any Winamp/NS-related projects that might be brewing.

Two people who have made an impact....

[Gopal.V]

As I listen to my CDs with Winamp and browse slashdot with FireFox 0.8 ... I've almost forgotten the people who made it possible... it's become second nature ... Thanks for reminding me :) Especially about the part about Justin Frankel using Vim... And maybe this was a first post ?... (but I did read the articles)

Re:Two people who have made an impact....

[MikeCapone]

Good point. Gratitude is the *least* we can do, that and constructive criticism to make good/great projects even better.

And a few donations here and there are cool too, of course.

iPod Plugin

[Will Fisher]

"I have an iPod, and I must say I do love the iPod (btw, the iPod Winamp plugin rules, too -- I can't stand iTunes, either)."

To find out more about this, go to mlipod.sf.net

--will
mlipod developer

Re:iPod Plugin

[lotsofno]

Winamp featured this iPod plug-in not too long ago in this hilarious article: Have Winamp, Will Travel.

This seriously is an awesome plug-in. It does pretty much everything I want it do with my iPod (file/playlist transfers, syncing, media management, etc..), except integrated with the media library in Winamp, which I much prefer over iTunes' interface. It even has a few features that other apps like ephpod doesn't have. The ads are great, too.

Re:iPod Plugin

[Microlith]

Ogg uses unicode tags and those display fine (except in the media library.)

So what's the difference between the reader in the playlist and main player, and the media library?

Really it's quite sad, it'd be nice if winamp were... fixed.

NSIS is pretty sweet

[harikiri]

I haven't to-date investigated what other alternatives there are for windows-based installers, but these nullsoft guys have made one available free.

Definitely something useful for small developers who can't afford an installshield license.

Re:NSIS is pretty sweet

[Richard_L_James]

I did investigate purchasing alternative installers to NSIS for my own use, however I soon realised I couldn't find anything better in terms of cost and it's powerful functionality. If you download NSIS then I recommend downloading HM NIS Edit also as it's wizard is very useful for knocking up quick installs. Just in case any of these guys happen to see this post: "a very big thank you for these excellent tools".

Re:NSIS is pretty sweet

[txsable]

Don't forget InnoSetup (http://www.jrsoftware.org/). It's also free, and the source is available, and it's extrememly flexible and scriptable. Also, it doesn't advertise itself on the install window....

Some useful background information...

[Richard_L_James]

... about Justin and Ben.

waitaminute

[davejenkins]

...make a well funded ($400M or more) startup that would develop something like ReactOS-- specifically, a win2k compatible (driver, application, UI, filesystem, everything) OS. You could base it on a lot of open source code, but make a commercial product....And do it all in 2 or 3 years.

Riiiight. Commercial product off of OSS.
Well, Red Hat has been trying that for 8 years now, and, while succesful, the desktop still gives them the willies. At that, RH is the only realy company to make OSS fly, and even that required "subscription" licence voodoo dealing with the GPL.

Don't get me wrong-- I loved WinAmp back in the day. But making a W2K replacement just for the sake of it will never work financially-- what OEM would preload that? Which IHV would really REALLY risk pissing off MS just to save the few bucks they pay in royalties to MS?

Re:waitaminute

[harikiri]

Riiiight. Commercial product off of OSS.

May I direct you to a few companies/products that seem to be doing well in this regard:

• MySQL
• Trolltech (Qt)
• Apple's MacOS X
• Nokia's IPSO platform (based on FreeBSD)

I'm sure other slashdot readers can provide further examples. The trick with GPL-based OSS and generating revenue, is to provide value-add (which may be through commercial closed-source tools). Alternatively, the tried and true position is through services, which IBM and HP seem to have figured out.

Re:waitaminute

[CdBee]

If it was anyone else but Justin Frankel, I'd agree with you. What can I say - he makes things happen.

Re:waitaminute

[killjoe]

Mac OS X is based on open source. Open source saved them years of development time which is just what the parent poster was talking about.

MySQL is able to sell commercial licenses because their product was GPLed which lead to it's widespread adoption.

Red Hat makes most of their money off of support.

I would also add to the list of the parent poster Novell. They in the end might end up making the most money off of open source (second most if you include IBM).

mp3 players

[mgkimsal2]

It really does amaze me that nobody else has produced an mp3 player whose UI is even in the same league of decent as the iPod's -- don't get me wrong, the iPod's UI is nowhere near perfect and pisses me off now and then too --but everything else I've seen is just an order of magnitude worse. What gives?
It's NOT THAT HARD PEOPLE.

Two obvious points:

1. Anyone doing anything similar to Apple is charged with 'ripping them off'.
2. Anyone doing something *different* from Apple is making it 'too complex'.

IT IS HARD, PEOPLE, to replicate something which people love on an emotional level, differentiate yourself enough so as to not be seen as just a knock-off, and yet have it be close enough to the original to be seen as 'good'.

Frankly, most iPod people will *never* use anything else because, like pretty much all Apple-buying people, they've paid top dollar and will never think anything less expensive has any merit.

I do not think the ipod interface is all that hot. Let me take that back - the *wheel* thing isn't. The visual interface is OK (not much you can do there) but I don't like the wheel. Tried both a regular and a 'mini' - can't use either of them very well.

I'm speaking from the standpoint of a new neuros owner, so yes I'm biased, but so are pretty much all pro-iPod zealots (either reviewers who got theirs free or the early-adopter raving "Apple can do no wrong" crowd).

WOW - one more thing I just noticed - an iPod owner criticizing Apple! He even says the interface 'pisses him off' now and then! What's wrong in paradise? Why doesn't he design a 'better' one if is so damn easy? He says himself IT'S NOT THAT HARD.

Re:mp3 players

[Will Fisher]

so after justin frankel has already:
Made media playback rock with winamp
Made streaming media rock with shoutcast and NSV
Revolutionised peer2peer software (gnutella)
Made WASTE ('nuff said)
Made an installer system that doesn't suck (nsis)
and other smaller projects (jnetlib, safesex, mlipod, plush, etc etc)

You want him to make a portable player?

He's not superman, dude.

Re:mp3 players

[ajayvb]

I think Justin Frankel, more than anyone else has earned the right to say this.

I've been using WinAmp for what, almost 6 years now, and the UI rocks. It is simple, uncluttered, and instinctive. I don't think iTunes or any others out there are half as good when it comes to organizing and playing music (my opinion, of course). The thing that iTunes is really good at is, you guessed it, when you want to buy stuff from their music store.

Now, if I (who couldn't do a UI for nuts)were to say that...it'd be a different matter.

The argument you are putting forth reeks of the OSS advocates, who say "if you don't like it, write it yourself!". Well ,some people have different things to do. If everyone who used software were to write their own, the world would have a hard time. After all, you can't eat your own code.

Re:mp3 players

[jsebrech]

Frankly, most iPod people will *never* use anything else because, like pretty much all Apple-buying people, they've paid top dollar and will never think anything less expensive has any merit.

I do not think the ipod interface is all that hot. Let me take that back - the *wheel* thing isn't. The visual interface is OK (not much you can do there) but I don't like the wheel. Tried both a regular and a 'mini' - can't use either of them very well.

Just because the wheel doesn't work for you is no reason to assume it obviously must not work for anyone and that all the people buying ipod's are elitist fashion whores.

And, yes, I do own an ipod. I like the wheel. I personally think the ipod is a superior mp3 player to anything out there. But you won't see me going around saying all neuros owners are contrarian low-budget poor-taste schmucks, because I know that isn't true and there are good reasons why someone might prefer a neuros over an ipod.

WOW - one more thing I just noticed - an iPod owner criticizing Apple!

Apparently you've never read the apple ipod support boards.

MS already did unix...

[sp0rk173]

And they fudged it. Xenix, my (wo?)man. I honesty think microsoft has invested too much time and money into their own API's to ditch the core of it now. And if they do take FreeBSD's code, i'm not sure how that would be a bad thing. FreeBSD will live on. Microsoft will (for a change) have a solid code base. If MS feeds patches back in, great. The FreeBSD coders won't submit crap code (forgoing any kind of "fuck you, open source bitches!" code). If MS sends nothing back, meh - big deal.

One thing that people seem to never realize (or just plain ignore) about FreeBSD is that it's all about research and putting out a good, rock-solid OS. They don't want to take over the world and displace the big boys.

Look what you've did, you've gone and pulled me off topic.