AOL Open Sourcing Audio & Video Technology

daria24 writes "BetaNews says that AOL is open sourcing Winamp AVS and Milkdrop, two popular Winamp plug-ins, and its Ultravox streaming media platform (the successor to Shoutcast). 'Despite helping to launch the Mozilla Foundation and releasing the code to its AOL Server software, America Online has never been synonymous with open source. But a number of new initiatives could change AOL's proprietary image, as the company strives to reach a broader audience on the open Web.' The next-generation AIM release will also be an open platform, which AOL says 'could rival even Mozilla due to its scale and the massive AIM user base.'"

Comments

You BASTARDS!

[nagora]

What have you done with the real AOL?

TWW

Re:You BASTARDS!

[RicktheBrick]

I think AOL is going through a slow death. I was a member for over 5 years until I moved to an area that had no local access. I have since moved on to broadband(verizon dsl) and would never even consider going back to AOL even if they did have a local number. I live in an area where 7 miles from where I live they have SBC and they offer broadband for $14.95 a month which AOL charges for access with another carrier. I see no use for AOL unless they get their own means of access(wi-max or stratolite) and offer more services(smart home, security, and medical alerts).

Re:You BASTARDS!

[Nefarious420]

It is about time AOL became just another portal pushing their name recognition to get advertising sales. Its fucking ridiculous to think they could maintain all these overpriced dial up users for any long stretch of time with Broadband becoming so cheap and mainstream. Then again it is probably too late, they should have done this 2 years ago or more. http://reiclubli.info/InvestorsJournal/

Re:You BASTARDS!

[darkain]

AOL layed off most of the Nullsoft team, and the ones that didnt, quit. Why is AOL opening all of their software now? So they can get development for free. A few of the developers actually asked to open-source various of the Nullsoft products under the condition that they would continue to work on the projects out-of-pocket. So, is this a good thing, or a bad thing? I really cant say, because it does pain me to live in IRC with these guys for the past several years and to hear all about the internal workings of the company. As for the AOL side of things tho? I dont really know anything about them. I just feel for the guys that used to work for Nullsoft that no longer have their jobs with them.

Re:You BASTARDS!

[ccn]

You really want to trust your medical alerts to AOL?

Pixie-dust projects

[Scorillo47]

Yet another example of pixie-dust projects...

Re:Pixie-dust projects

[Synbiosis]

I'm no open source fanatic (I actually think most of it is crap), but I think the fact that the blog is on MSDN is funny as hell. =P

Re:Pixie-dust projects

[hey!]

quote the linked blog

Pixie-dust projects. Here I put big, commercial projects that were morphed in an open source variation, as in an attempt to sprinkle the open source pixie dust to help them to remain competitive. Examples: Netscape....

Not like anything could come of that kind of airy fairy pixie dust project, eh?

Taking this guy seriously, it's not hard to see that all of the classes of projects he describes do indeed exist. However, if you go the other way, from the important projects to the classifications, you see that none of them really fit any of his classifications.

Where would you put Apache HTTP server? Tomcat? Perl? Wine?

Or for that matter Linux. Sure, you can probably find some organizations that are supporting Linux so they can poke a competitor in the eye, but characterizing corporate support for Linux that way is simplistic.

Some organizations are simply scratching their itches, like that Nasa guy who wrote all those ethernet drivers.

Others just need Linux to exist to make their business viable. I think Red Hat doesn't really set itself up to compete with Microsoft, which is the classic land-war-in-Asia mistake. They'd be foolish to aim to "spoil things" for Microsoft; that's just a possible side effect. It's more like they're trying to create a business model that allows them to make money around Microsoft.

Another reason I see for supporting Linux that doesn't fit into this scheme is strategy. Microsoft is not an important competitor to IBM in any sphere, now that OS/2 is a dead business. Big Blue needs Linux to make sure it stays that way. Without Linux, IBM would have to compete with Microsoft in its business areas but allow Microsoft control over the underlying technology. You could say that is "disruptive", except that is more aimed at maintaining the status quo from IBM's perspective.

Huh?

[TheSpoom]

Wait, does this mean that we're supposed to... like... AOL?

But... it just feels wrong somehow... :^(

Re:Huh?

[dknj]

I think we're just supposed to hate the ISP aspect of AOL, even though that is getting better too. Their software has never been half bad. I have been a big fan of AIM (up until 5.2 or so when they included the WildTangent crap), and even the original design of the AOL client was quite interesting. AOL Server proved itself, but it wasn't free. Now that AVS is open, we can see some more interesting projects spawned off of it (xmms/noatun plugins anyone?). I think they're trying to show the world that we shouldn't hate AOL, just the users.

-dk

Re:Huh?

[doombob]

Yeah, that's ok... it's just their customers we're not supposed to like.

Re:Huh?

[superpulpsicle]

I am convinced more people on slashdot know what to do with AOL than the AOL-management team. Therefore, no... you shouldn't like the company.

Re:Huh?

[Cruithne]

It makes sense when you think about it. Open source as a business model is basically about embracing service-based revenue streams rather than product-based ones. AOL has always been a service-based company - the two fit perfectly. This is why MS is so anti-OSS, all they do is sell you a product :)

Re:Huh?

[Tenebrious1]

Wait, does this mean that we're supposed to... like... AOL?

But we can still hate AOL users right?

Re:Huh?

[Queer Boy]

Just so you young whippersnappers remember, AOL was the reason there's a consumer internet AT ALL! The existence of AOL and its massive userbase was the impetus for improving the usability of things like WWW, Usenet and e-mail.

Did you think you could always point and click your way across the internet?

Re:Huh?

[stuuf]

The headline should have read "Nullsoft open sourcing audio & video technology" Of course we're supposed to like AOL, because they own things like Netscape and Nullsoft.

Re:Huh?

[nuggetman]

Their software has never been half bad.

It's never been half good either.

Re:Huh?

[dknj]

just out of curosity, what makes the software half bad for you. i don't use aol server regularly, but i didn't have any complaints when i did use it briefly. there still aren't any aim clients that 100% replicate the features in aim. winamp 5. netscape, okay so they may have butchered it here, but if it weren't for aol netscape wouldn't exist anymore.

-dk

Props to them

[m50d]

Anyone know how portable the code is? Any chance we could see milkdrop for xmms (yes I know there are clones around, none of them are as good as the original).

Re:Props to them

[Crimson Dragon]

It would truly depend what they used to write it. It seems difficult to say at this stage of the game.... I would guess some kind of C, but the question of what they use to render the visualization is suspect. Do they use Direct X? OpenGL?

Unless they truly use some concoted scheme for the other logic, only the way in which the vis is rendered is an issue.... I never used the winamp plugins, but writing software all day, if my boss plunked that on my desk that would be my first thought..

Re:Props to them

[ktulu1115]

projectM is a Milkdrop clone which has ports for WinAmp, iTunes, and XMMS. It does a pretty good job replicating Milkdrop's functionality, been using it for awhile now on X... although there are many features it is lacking. It's great to hear Milkdrop is finally being open-sourced, let's hope projectM can work better as a result.

Re:Props to them

[ktulu1115]

Milkdrop uses DirectX AFAIK, projectM uses OpenGL (written in C).

Re:Props to them

[m50d]

It's been around for a while, so it's probably not depending on new directx, so even if it is directx perhaps it could be compiled against winelib? I'm more concerned about the code assuming everything is windows (\ for directory separator, etc)

Re:Props to them

[The Bungi]

Interesting. This is the entire body of this post. All the other offtopic (Europe, library cards) posts here seem to be coming from +2 and up comments in articles posted today.

Looks like Splashdork is in for another bot attack.

Re:Props to them

[00lmz]

It seems that AVS uses DirectDraw for its drawing. It also has some mmx optimized inline-assembly routines for copying surfaces. The AVS plugins have a little windows dependency (to create the configuration dialog and process values from it), but the plugins render to a int* framebuffer so plugin render code should be fine (that is, if ported to a little-endian, 32bit architecture).

The EEL (expression evaluation library) for avs uses some sort of compiler that seems to generate x86 floating-point code, but since it's contained in a library, it should be easy to change the internal workings of the library to work on other platforms. Actually the source for the EEL library has been available for quite some time with the Winamp SDK. It was intended to be used by AVS plugin creators so their plugins would support the same code as the rest of AVS.

Re:Props to them

[Crimson Dragon]

Yes but that is typical conversion in code that is not multi-platform. I assume the question was directed at matters aside from syntactical adjustment.

Re:Props to them

[m50d]

Code can be written to be cross platform from the start, and not need such adjustments. That was a very trivial example, there can be deeper things. But anyway, what I'm asking is was the code written to be multi-platform.

Does it really matter?

[Elecore]

'The next-generation AIM release will also be an open platform, which AOL says 'could rival even Mozilla due to its scale and the massive AIM user base.' It could rival in pure numbers, but I'd bet that MOST AOL users don't really understand or care what open source is. Most people who do stay clear of AOL to begin with.

Re:Does it really matter?

[Synbiosis]

"It could rival in pure numbers, but I'd bet that MOST AOL users don't really understand or care what open source is. Most people who do stay clear of AOL to begin with."

AIM has an obscenely diverse user base. It's available on all platforms, and virtually everyone (except for Jabber guys who refuse to friend anyone not on Jabber) uses it.

Granted, there will be some people who don't care about open source, but there's definitely quite a few people who would be willing to switch to something less RAM hungry and ad-free for their IMing needs.

As for currently existing open source projects, there's Gaim & Miranda. Gaim is deent, but it's a ram hog and uses GTK, which is the bane of anyone running 1024x768 or less. Miranda IM is the exact opposite, but it's missing key features like *working file transfers*.

Re:Does it really matter?

[dcclark]

Not to mention that the "open platform" actually consists of letting some outside developers license certain aspects of AIM and its protocols. In particular, there will be some sort of plug-in architecture -- so no chance of getting better access to the protocols for 3rd party use. They aren't actually doing much "opening up," so much as making more business opportunities for themselves.

Re:Does it really matter?

[lav-chan]

I wonder if 'open platform' means AOL will let me use Miranda to connect to their service without suspending my account every week.

Re:Does it really matter?

[rizzo420]

they released a beta of this new aim product... it's got ads. do you really think the official client from aol won't have ads? come on now...

i use gaim. it's alright, although it does use a lot of ram (but so does the official aim client). i don't have a lot of hope for what they're going to release... the're really just opening the protocol, probably meaning they're not gonna harass 3rd party clients.

Re:Does it really matter?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

I'm not an AOL user. I hate AOL the service. I'm an AIM user, primarily because of network effects. All my friends use AIM, and because the purpose of instant messaging is to talk to your friends, not open-source evangelism, I use AIM too.

I'd love to use an open-source IM client, because there are some extra features I'd want to implement. I've tried to mod AIM, but at best it's not easy -- you have to use obscure hacks -- and at worst it violates the ToS. I would use Gaim, but a) my friends aren't, so patches to Gaim are worthless and b) I clicked through the ToS without realizing they prevent me from using Gaim.

Oh, and as for your assertion that there aren't a bunch of AIM people who are also OSS people: Instant Messaging Wikipedians lists a bunch of AIMmers and (gasp!) MSNIMers, far more than the number of Jabberers.

Re:Does it really matter?

[Synbiosis]

True, but if you read the article it suggests that AOL may open-source it in a similar fashion, and ads can be removed.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Good

[mindaktiviti]

More competition is a good thing (and by competition I mean releasing source, and striving to compete with the likes of mozilla, as opposed to being just a rotting corporation that no geek would bother with).

AOL does contribute to open source software

[fitsy]

AOL does contribute to useful open source software. AOL developers contribute to SQLite and have helped produce numerous useful additions to SQLite.

Quote: The primary purpose for version 3.2.0 is to add support for ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN. The new ADD COLUMN capability is made possible by AOL developers supporting and embracing great open-source software. Thanks, AOL!

Re:AOL does contribute to open source software

[Perl-Pusher]

That has to do with AOL & SQL Lite how?

Re:AOL does contribute to open source software

[DVega]

AOL also released AOLserver. A Free WebServer under MPL License.

From the project's page:

"AOLserver is America Online's Open-Source web server. AOLserver is the backbone of the largest and busiest production environments in the world. AOLserver is a multithreaded, Tcl-enabled web server used for large scale, dynamic web sites."

Re:AOL does contribute to open source software

[kriston]

I wrote that description when I created the AOLserver project on Source Forge. AOLserver really hasn't caught on and despite releasing 4.0 there isn't really much reason to use it. All of its cutting-edge benefits, like integrated database handling and in-process scripting, are now done better in Apache.

As for being the backbone of the "largest and busiest production environments" that is rapidly changing. They re-released the webmail system using some other software (definitely not AOLserver) and most of the outsourced projects aren't even done on Unix.

The fun is gone.

Reminds me of History

[Dink Paisy]

Does this mean that AOL is about to go the way of Netscape? I wonder if someone will pick up the software pieces and make something decent of them. Winamp is ok, but AIM is a much larger piece of the AOL hegemony. AIM has quality issues that make Microsoft look sweet and refreshing.

Personally, I'm very surprised that virus and worm makers haven't homed in on IM clients yet. I imagine AOL will be very hard hit when they do. Although, an open source AIM client that really was bigger than Mozilla might be able to turn that around.

Re:Reminds me of History

[halltk1983]

maybe it would look similar to GAIM...

Re:Reminds me of History

[DrXym]

The new AIM client is based on a framework called Boxley. Now that I would like to see open sourced. As it was described way back, it is somewhat like XUL + Javascript without some of the horrific bits like RDF.

Re:Reminds me of History

[javaxman]

Does this mean that AOL is about to go the way of Netscape?

What, you mean, be bought by AOL, found to be expensive to maintain and impossible to make money from, then released as open source to die a slow death or be resurrected through the hard work of people unrelated to the original product creating entirely new code?

It's possible, except with the bonus that they don't have to buy anything...

And no, unless by "AOL" you mean the AIM client and a Winamp plugin or two. That's all this is about. There's plenty to AOL that's going to forever remain proprietary and will have to live or die on it's own. One does have to wonder how much AOL is finally figuring this out, and how much new content is being lost in Rainman-only development v.s. newer HTML initiatives, though.

The sad, important thing to keep note of is that it's just the IM _client_ that's being opened. Big deal. We have better clients already.

Finally...

[PenguinBoyDave]

I can rush out now and subscribe to AOL. I was just waiting for them to support open source. I'll be the first guy in my lug to have an AOL address. I rock.

Ah AOL...

[DrXym]

AOL is run by a bunch of geniuses. I've never seen a company that can invest millions in technologies such as browsers, music & video players, only to shitcan their (superior) solutions in favour of (inferior) ones developed by their main competitors.

I just look at WinAmp and shake my head. There's a programme that could have been iTMS before such a thing even existed. It could still be iTMS rival now, two years too late. And the integrated NSV means it could deliver TV and VOD too with a little work. So why the hell isn't it?

Because AOL is run by a bunch of geniuses.

yay

[Apreche]

Maybe now AIM file transfers will work reliably in gaim.

Doing a little dance!!

[DigiShaman]

Oh HELL YA! Milkdrop has got to be THE best plug-in developed. Geiss is genius. How he is able to program the AI to do the things Milkdrop does just blows me away. And now, it's open source! Sweet mother of holy bliss!

http://www.geisswerks.com/

Re:Doing a little dance!!

[DigiShaman]

WTF are you talking about? Ryan Geiss no longer has total control of the program when he started working with AOL (Winamp devision). So now that it's AOLs property, they can do what the hell they want with it. Personally however, I will donate some money to Ryan to pay my respects.

Re:Doing a little dance!!

[Jonny_eh]

If it was only made opensource recently, how was it released for the Xbox Media Center a couple months back?

Re:Quality Reporting

[aftk2]

Upward, rather than forward!

And always...twirling, twirling, TWIRLING!

Hmm...

[hubang]

I guess they're too busy with their RIAA and MPAA initiatives to worry about attacking open source.

Re:Non-open source?

[DrXym]

More accurately Netscape did when it was still a largely autonomous company.

where's the aol client for linux then?

[Anonymous Coward]

So ok, AOL is all 'bout open source now. Then why is it there is no official aol client for linux?

My mother uses aol, and I have to spend ages fixing security issues in windows and generally keeping it going. I'd far rather she used Linux for the web, she'd be safe from 99% of all web exploits, and it would make admin easier for me. Plus I wouldn't have to keep cleaning up all the garbage windows collects on her system.

It took long enough to get her on the web, weaning her from aol is not something I can do. The simplest solution by far is for aol to have native linux support (note, I mean official support, not the linux aol dialer projects)

Keeping Milkdrop from going stagnant

[VanillaDeath]

I was disappointed that development of Milkdrop had died two years ago. At least now it will be able to be under development again, which is a good thing considering it's my favourite vis and the favourite vis of all of my friends nerdy enough to know what a vis is (and aware that Winamp actually has preferences to change it).
I remember when I first started using it my computer was a Pentium 233 with 64MB of RAM, but since I had a 3D graphics card it ran at a reasonable framerate and I have been hooked since. It especially complements Pink Floyd's DSotM, but now I'm getting too offtopic :P

Milkdrop?

[coyotecult]

Oh my god, I LOVED that. It was approximately my favoritest audio visualization ever.

Reasons Why Milkdrop Kicks Ass:

• Milkdrop is the reason I've never needed to take any hallucinogenic drugs.
• Milkdrop's my daddy.
• Milkdrop also fathered my superhuman genius baby.
• Milkdrop isn't God like Dan Bukvitch, but is probably pretty high up there. Like the Holy Ghost or Jesus or something.
• Milkdrop is that irresistable creature with an insatiable love for the dead.
• If Milkdrop conferenced the Middle East, peace would be achieved.
• Milkdrop is actually a gift from a mind-sucking alien race intent on sucking the awe right out of our skulls.
• Few people know this, but Milkdrop is actually nature's suction cup. Watch this. See? It sticks

It's time to learn how to port that sucker to the *Nixes (Linux, BSD, OS X)! I haven't been in Windows enough to enjoy it for a very long time.

Re:Milkdrop?

[MrNemesis]

Milkdrop is the reason I've never needed to take any hallucinogenic drugs.

Same here. Now imagine when you have a few friends over for dinner, and a few of them happen to make a "special" mushroom omelette. Just for fun, I set my two Linux machines up running xscreensaver's and my windows machine running Milkdrop. There were some fairly ecstatic grins going around... :D

On a more serious note, I cannot frickin' wait until a MilkDrop variant gets ported to XMMS (or, even better, Beep Media Player), even if it's only plugin-compatible and doesn't use the same code. Milkdrop is hands-down the thing that has kept me clinging to Winamp these past few years, and I find myself booting into windows just to play music with it. IIRC it's already been added to CVS builds of the Xbox Media Centre, and hopefully it'll also amke its way into MythMusic too.

I never thought I'd say this, btu thank you AOL for helping make my life more... colourful... swirly... urgh, I feel sick...!

Re:Milkdrop?

[kihjin]

Milkdrop: coyotecult, I am your father.
coyetecult: NOOOOOOOO!!!! ...
coyetecult: ooo pretty

Re:Milkdrop?

[coyotecult]

At this point I will ask you to notice the incestuous connotations in my list of MilkDrop AssKicking as well.

Heck, I think Milkdrop just achieved what Lazarus Long could not.

Re:Milkdrop?

[coyotecult]

From sniffing around the comments, it looks like Milkdrop has already been ported to places! Time to find an OS X port!

If not, it'll be an interesting work -- it would have to be ported from DirectX first to OpenGL.

recompilation/proting of Winamp code

[bogaboga]

My wish is for an experienced hacker to port Winamp to Linux the moment the code is open sourced. Will this happen? I do not see any Linux native application that can stand in place of Winamp.

I know we have the likes of AmaroK, XMMS...but none of these does any video!

Re:recompilation/proting of Winamp code

[BiggyP]

I'm not really interested in winamp in particular, however, AVS and Milkdrop are very nice indeed, it would be great to have these vis systems available on the linux players.
As for video playback, XMMS certainly used to do it, I don't know the current status of the SMPEG plugin but it was good at the time. really though, who would want to play videos in a winamp style interface? if you need help finding alternatives head over to this page, totem's nice.

Re:recompilation/proting of Winamp code

[Erpo]

My wish is for an experienced hacker to port Winamp to Linux the moment the code is open sourced. Will this happen? I do not see any Linux native application that can stand in place of Winamp.

I may be wrong, but I think AOL is only open-sourcing Winamp's AVS and Milkdrop, not Winamp itself. Considering that one of the big draws to "upgrade" to the paid version of Winamp is a compiled-in limitation, AOL certainly seems to have a motive.

As far as Winamp on Linux, you might be surprised to hear that it worked very well under wine the last time I tried it.

Re:recompilation/proting of Winamp code

[emidln]

It's been done on the old codebase. Winamp3 was released in alpha form for Linux a few years back. I have a copy somewhere in my archives. I seem to remember that I couldn't make it work on RedHat 9 at the time, though it may have possibly been RedHat 8 or an equivilent Mandrake release. I don't know what the license is, but when I get to an ssh-capable machine, I'll search for it and post it if the license allows. (I doubt it though.)

Re:recompilation/proting of Winamp code

[AugstWest]

Milkdrop has already been ported to XBMC.

Re:recompilation/proting of Winamp code

[Mr.Radar]

Most of the video stuff in Winamp is based on Microsoft's DirectShow technology and so you'd essentially have to re-write it. You'd probably be better off just adding video support to an already mature linux-naitive audio player, like XMMS or AmaroK.

Open source abandonware?

[Animats]

This sounds more like open sourcing of abandonware at its end of life. After all, that's what they did with Netscape.

Does this mean Freeamp can start using its own name again? AOL made them change their name to Zinf or something like that, and they were never heard from again. Especially since one of those directory spammers took over their "freeamp" domains, and AOL did nothing about that.

Re:Open source abandonware?

[ZuperDee]

This sounds more like open sourcing of abandonware at its end of life. After all, that's what they did with Netscape.

Actually, the open sourcing of Netscape ocurred well before AOL bought them, and before they spun off the Mozilla Foundation into its own independent entity. I remember at the time of AOL's purchase of Netscape, there were some people in the community wondering what AOL's purchase of Netscape would mean for Mozilla.

On the other hand, if you are talking about the Mozilla Foundation, that's a different matter. I'd say Red Hat's spinoff of the Fedora Project today is VERY similar to AOL/Netscape's spinoff of the Mozilla Foundation into its own entity.

Re:Open source abandonware?

[bobv-pillars-net]

Yup; six months from now, AOL will announce its "New, improved" IM client, which will be nothing more than a re-skinned version of Microsoft Instant Messager. Six months after that, a new AOL Media Player will come out, which will be a re-skinned version of Microsoft Media Player.

Re:Open source abandonware?

[AaronLawrence]

That sounds reasonable. Kind of a simple social contract: we try and make it work as closed source. If it falls over, we release the source so a) the effort wasn't wasted and can be continued and b) those people who did take it up aren't left without support.

Re:Open source abandonware?

[evilviper]

AOL made them change their name to Zinf [zinf.org] or something like that, and they were never heard from again.

Well, the reason they were never heard from again is because it never got any better. The interface needs much improvement, it needs to support many more formats, and it crashes regularly when I try to use it...

I would consider it one of the first adware open source projects... Several things in there they are getting paid to have in there, that you can't disable. I'll be sticking to XMMS.

if AOL really wants to live, they need to head ...

[WindBourne]

to OSS. But even more than offering OSS, they would be wise to do a Linux connection, even possibly a Linux disc. One idea would be to work with major distros geared towards the desktop such as Novell, Mandrake, and Linspire.

Leaks from other topics?

[HawkinsD]

I know this is off-topic, but... Does anybody else see significant numbers of posts that appear to belong to other topics sprinkled throughout Slashdot today?

The other replies to "You BASTARDS" seem to belong to the article regarding IE memory leaks.

Maybe it's just my browser.

Re:Leaks from other topics?

[Talking Goat]

Yes... This story's comments are a trainwreck. Half are regarding AOL, the other half are regarding IE vs. Firefox memory leaks. Something's b0rk3d.

Re:Leaks from other topics?

[falsified]

Nope. It's definitely happening to me, too. A couple other things are acting up on the site as well.

It must be evil.google.com acting up again.

Re:Leaks from other topics?

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't been reading /. too heavily these last few days, but before that I had started noticing that -- totally unrelated replies, that seemed to belong to other topics. I believe they are always from ACs, so that leads me to believe it's someone's script trying to create havoc in /. (if it weren't for the AC factor, I could see it as being a server error and the replies were being sent to the wrong article).

tmegapscm

Re:Leaks from other topics?

[SirTalon42]

This happened a week or so ago with a massive amount of posts, then slashdot required ACs and low karma users to put in an authentication code for every post and they stopped for a while, I don't know if the authentication codes are still required or not (never had to use them), but I just started seeing them around yesterday again.

Re:Leaks from other topics?

[falsified]

Exactly.

Re:Leaks from other topics?

[ssj_195]

I've seen one of mine pop up, reposted anonymously. I feel so violated :(

AOL / Milkdrop

[slamden]

What does AOL have to do with the open sourcing of Milkdrop? Milkdrop was written by Ryan Geiss, the supergenius who wrote the old skool 'Geiss' screen saver. It totally rocks, and according to geisswerks.com, he opened the code up almost a month ago now.

But I can't see how that anything to do with AOL, other than the fact that it was only a Winamp plugin before...

Open source Ultravox?

[leathered]

Does Midge Ure know about this?

Three letters

[mikefe]

NIH.

Jabber is "Not Invented Here". So that makes it worthless and crappy.

Just because they are open sourcing some of their tech does not mean that they are willing to give up on something they have invested *years* developing.

Re:Three letters

[tapo]

That's not the problem. AOL's problem isn't three letters, but two words.

Network Effect.

The only way AOL manages to keep their AIM software popular is because that's the only program people can talk to their friends with, and they dont want to bother switching networks, as they'd lose all of their friends.

Jabber, if implemented, will allow the users to select a client, and server that is not AOL with ease. Aside from that, there's AOL's bad experience with Microsoft using AOL's own TOC protocol to allow AIM-MSN communication, which allower AIM to grow. With Jabber being an open protocol, this could easily happen again.

That could be very clever

[NickFortune]

The next-generation AIM release will also be an open platform, which AOL says 'could rival even Mozilla due to its scale and the massive AIM user base.'"

Which could be the cleverest thing AOL have done for a long time, depending on whether the company can muster the will to see if through to the end. MS lost money for years trying to destroy AIM and AOL. For their part, AOL lost the top spot in the messenger wars, but kept a large userbase.

By opening AIM, AOL stand to gain a lot of new users, and to force MS into re-investing in MSN just when they'd really like to divert resources back to IE.

As I say, it all depends on whether they have the will to see the process through to the end. And I suppose, upon what they mean by an "open platform". Open Source a la mozilla would be fine, but the proposal may wind up being watered down into something akin to MS's "shared source" mockery. A shame if so, since they could be onto something with this.

hi i am aol

[demon411]

aol head: "hey i don't think spamming people aol cds is working anymore what can we do?"

"let's buy netscape"

AOL buys them and now AOL has a deal with Microsoft for using IE.

later ...

aol head: "hmm that didn't work what should we do now?"

"umm. how about buy winamp for 100 million dollars"

Justin Frankel (winamp creator) resigns

5 years later ...

aol head: "we are still broke, whatever happened to that winamp stuff we bought?"

"um we are working on some cool plugins! hey maybe we could make it open source! i hear mozilla is doing well and they are open source"

aol head: "good idea, we can make aim open source too"

Re:hi i am aol

[TheHawke]

Replace "aol head" with Steve Case, up until 5 years later.

You get the idea.

AOL Open Sourced Milkdrop? I think not...

[inmate]

actually, milkdrop was opensourced by geiss himself in may this year.
see http://www.nullsoft.com/free/milkdrop/ for more details.

I think it a rather poor show that AOL grabs the bragging rights. AFAIK, they had nothing to do with it!

Ignore those

[WindBourne]

it appears to be either someone, or some bot that is reposting old postings. they are either being themselves (an asshole), or it is designed to decrease the signal to noise ratio so as to drive ppl off this site. For some odd reason, I suspect the later.

Re:Ignore those

[Perl-Pusher]

I see, checking other threads it seems to be getting worse. I reported it to the site admin.

Re:Ignore those

[cortana]

Is the new Captcha that ineffective then?

Visualization plug-ins?

[youknowmewell]

Who friggin' cares about those? Open Winamp so I can use it on Linux!

Re:Visualization plug-ins?

[TheStonepedo]

Exactly. There are times for "ooh" and "aah" but seriously what is gained from open sourcing trippy visualizations? More developers will spend more time dicking with the output of a closed program for a closed OS. I think the real concern is that these cats are listening to music so crappy that they have no choice but to watch trippy visualizations or the music would be intolerable.

Re:Visualization plug-ins?

[/dev/trash]

What's wrong with XMMS?

Screw Midge Ure!

[Black-Man]

John Foxx is the *real* UVox singer!!

Mod Notification Leaks

[Doc Ruby]

And in the past 24 hours, I've gotten notifications of moderations not reflected in the report in the moderated post itself (click the post's ID, no moderation shows).

Re:Mod Notification Leaks

[Doc Ruby]

Wow, this thread leak is worse than it first looked. Hopefully Slashdot is backed up pre-sieve - I don't want to lose all my old comments.

Other AOL Open Source

[Skynet]

AOL also open sourced the modified version of Midori/Mobile Linux it used on the Gateway appliance.

Hence, http://opensource.aol.com

Xbox Media Center

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

The milkdrop source was added to the XBMC cvs a couple of weeks ago.

It looks purty.

See Here.

It already is

[Mitchell Mebane]

"It's great to hear Milkdrop is finally being open-sourced, let's hope projectM can work better as a result."

It already is. From the projectM home page:

5/6/05 - projectM 0.97 Released!

Nullsoft released the Milkdrop source code so I have fixed the behavior of waveforms 2, 3, & 5, zoom, and custom shapes (tex_ang and tex_zoom). I also added the Darken, Brighten, and Solarize filters. Things look much better with these added features. We also have some stability patches for xmms-projectM in this release courtesy of Richard McKnight.

So this is just the beginning. Now that the Milkdrop source is out, expect good things. This is just a quick release to show how much progess we've made in just a few days with the source. Expect more.

Re:It already is

[w1z7ard]

I poked around the milkdrop code for a while trying to figure out how the evaluator worked. Apparently the equations are compiled on the fly into assembly, which is not even close to the way I am doing it in projectM. My code is just a prefix operator tree, nothing particular fancy. Its a goddamn miracle it runs about as fast as milkdrop seeing as I have significant recursive overhead when doing evaluations.

As for the next feature, I am going to take a look at his smooth preset switching code and hopefully mimic the procedure in projectM.

Cheers, Carmelo

Player Souce/API?

[Doc Ruby]

I wish they'd open the source to the base WinAmp5 player, at least Read-Only. I've been trying for months to figure out the API for a few essential functions to make an interactive playlist plugin that replaces, or at least can be used instead of, the default playlist GUI. Wasabi was a project forked off WinAmp3 that released its source years ago, but that's a dead end (no codebase shared with WinAmp5).

If you've got insights, how would you implement my playlist, which lets you click Artist - Title - Album "columns" in the display of song rows, sorting the clicked column, and restyling (eg. italicizing, bolding, underlining) the font of all text only in that column? It has to 1> get the click, 2> know which row was clicked, 3> get the data from that row, 4> resort the rows in the display, 5> restyle some of the text in each row. If I can't get the coordinates of the click, I can just rotate the sort column after each click. And if I can't restyle some of the row text, I can insert "***" characters or something. And if I can't make a plugin override the default playlist (make it appear instead), I suppose I can make it a MediaLibrary plugin or something. And for real wizardry, I'd like the plugin to use WinAmp's builting HTTP client to periodically retrieve and install plugin updates from my Internet server.

I don't need the algorithms to do those things, I need the API hooks to call the rest of WinAmp to do its part. I want to call them, but I also want to trace them for debugging, as the datapath "submerges" into the main app. If AOL won't open the source to WinAmp5 entirely, maybe some Slashdotter already knows how to do it "anyway".

Milkdrop's source has been available...

[Stalin]

Since July of 2003 -- http://www.nullsoft.com/free/milkdrop/. The author of the plugin is Ryan Geiss. His plugins are the best I have ever seen.

Re:Milkdrop's source has been available...

[Stalin]

Seems that I can't read very well. It was released this past May.

He released the source to one of his applications a while back I just can't find it now... oh well.

That's good...

[Spy der Mann]

now we should wait for them to opensource winamp the app.

More coasters?

[oneandoneis2]

As if AOL didn't send out enough CDs already. Now they're moving towards FOSS, can "AOLoppix" be far behind?

Re: lamapods

[Anonymous Coward]

yes and we could be listening to lamapods

Source for Winamp 2.x available?

[The Bungi]

There's more talk about Winamp 5.x here but I noticed a few people mentioning there were forks of WA 2.x around? Was the source to 2.x released at some point and I missed it?? I'd love to get my hands on that!

yes, it does

[cahiha]

AOL users don't have to understand what open source is in order to benefit from the wider range of clients available for AOL services that will be available as a result.

Not Open Source ...

[opencomputing]

Note that the article states the AOL's "next-generation AIM release will also be an open platform" - OPEN PLATFORM, NOT OPEN SOURCE.

Two very different things - what this means is that AOL will open up it's platform to the AIM system (not client) for licensing. This is classic big company marketing spin - has nothing to do with open source or Mozilla.

AOL is clearly floundering when they have piggy back on the movement of Mozilla / Firefox. Even the abandoned but still barely breathing Netscape division of AOL is piggy backing on Mozilla / Firefox. Hell, they used to own / manage Mozilla before their brilliant executive management decided to let them go because they were clueless on what to do with Open Source technology (and thank God they did for Mozilla's (and our) sake).

Additional proof that AOL executive management for the past 10 years are complete boobs and absolutely clueless about real consumer software - AOL killed or derailed every innovative company they purchased during that time period: WinAMP, PersonaLogic, CompuServe, GNN, Netscape, Mozilla, Spinner, ShoutCast, WAIS, InfoGate, Mapquest - ICQ, MovieFone and Signingfish are they only companies they did not F-up (yet).

Heck, they launched AIM into the non-AOL member base market 8 years ago to attempt to capture more web users but completely failed due to executive managements ignorance of the market changes and lack of any strategic vision - they are doomed within the next 1-2 years.

But they do make a great mass CD marketing company with that CD distribution model and modem pool management (only after the whole America Offline debacle of course) - that is about the only two things they seem to know how to do - maybe that is their next stage (ha ha ha). CD distribution and the Internet boom of the late 90's is the only thing AOL can be thankful for - AOL has nothing of value long term.

Right here, on their download page.

[lullabud]

Download AIM for Linux

Re:Right here, on their download page.

[AndyBusch]

They want the full AOL client to access AOL content. Not just the AIM client.

Re:Right here, on their download page.

[Disoculated]

Uhm, why? You can get all the content off aol.com and you can use IMAP with AOL to get your mail. The only thing that they don't have (that they should) is a Linux dialer.

Geiss

[drteknikal]

I don't understand something. Milkdrop is from Geisswerks. Winamp AVS is from Nullsoft, which AOL owns. I get that. I wasn't aware of any relationship between Geiss and AOL. How does AOL get credit for open sourcing Geiss' software?

good idea

[Khashishi]

not that I think it will happen, but that would be a great idea. They would create a free distribution that is preloaded with AOL. Casual users who only need a computer for the internet could buy a box (it wouldn't need Windows), and pop in the AOLoppix cd, and sign up for AOL internet.

opensource AIM server and win

[Cheeze]

They will totally win the instant messaging wars if they open the AIM server, or at least a working copy of it.

How are patents related to my dirty Milkdrop lovin

[coyotecult]

Don't get me wrong, but I don't see what the hell that had to do with my comment. I don't think Milkdrop is patented, it was just closed source -- isn't that exactly what you're talking about? Copyright and licenses doing its work?

Am I wrong here -- is Milkdrop patented or something?

HAHA

[ToasterofDOOM]

Me too! (just check the jargon file for AOL)

oh, for godsakes ...

[jabberwock]

AOL didn't even get you ON the Internet until they got scared by a couple of years of explosive dial-up growth. And it did so poorly, even then ... I think it was 1997. The growth of the Internet terrified AOL. It forced them to go to "unlimited" dial-up. They were lucky to keep up long enough to stay at the top for a few short years.

XBMC

[Penguinoflight]

XBMC already ported the open sourced milkdrop in early may. It runs well, but theres a few bugs (player skips) at random with a complex visualization like this.

The XBMC team came up with a port in about a week, so assuming the xmms core visualization code is solid, porting this wont be hard.

XMMS does video

[BinLadenMyHero]

XMMS has a plugin to play videos using MPlayer.
But I miss AVS.
There are some XMMS vis plugins that does something in the lines of AVS (a scriptable generic effect engine), but the real value of AVS is on the fantastic presets that comes with it.

MilkDrop can also show the lyrics as they're sung!

[ClioCJS]

Well, not by itself. There's a program called EvilLyrics. It can display the lyrics of a song AS THEY ARE SUNG. It can send it to milkdrop using milkdrop's internal messaging system.

Best visual music-listening experience ever!

However, the idea of an external program rewriting milk_msg.ini every few seconds is a less-than-perfectly-elegant solution. Better would be for milkdrop to be able to somehow receive an entire file of lyrics+timing, queue it up, and display them without any kludges. Someone please add this! It could simply be sent the filename of an LRC file, which has a timestamp and line of lyrics on each line.