Discontinued the development of the player Winamp Bashny.Net

"Site Winamp.com and related web services will not be available after December 20, 2013. In addition, Winamp Media Player will no longer be available for download. Please download the latest version prior to that date. See. release notes with information about improvements in this latest version. Thank you for supporting Winamp community for more than 15 years », - sad news today published on the website Winamp.com. < br />
Thus, the version of Winamp 5.66 will be the last in every sense of the word. The glorious history of the legendary program is now complete.

From the article The Men Who Stole the World 2010:

In 1997, Justin Frankel (Justin Frankel), 18-year-old hacker from Arizona, has written a free MP3-player, named WinAmp, which has become a mandatory program for computers with Windows, and helped the digital music revolution. 18 months after the release of 15 million people have downloaded his program. Three years later, Frankel wrote Gnutella, p2p-protocol file transfer, decentralized, unlike Napster, therefore it could not be turned off by force. Millions still use it.

Justin drew profits very early. In 1999, after WinAmp shot, AOL bought the player and the company Frankel Nullsoft, approximately $ 100 million. Frankel became an employee AOL, also very rich in their 20s.

It was not a remarkable confluence. Together with Nullsoft Frankel had to write better software, which he could and give it away into the void. In AOL trading software detrimental effect on the quality of the product. Frankel says: "That is something I worked, it was like trying to make a profit on each product. We make a deal with these companies, so the product must earn. But no one cared user opinion ».

Meanwhile, Frankel wrote Gnutella in his spare time. It was a great idea: Unlike Napster, the system is completely decentralized, without a main server and no button "OFF", which could push the lawyers. He laid it on the Internet in March 2000 memo, "See? AOL can do good things! "But reinvention Napster did not make love Frankel AOL, a huge Internet companies trying to reunite with Time Warner, just in time for the trial of Napster. He retired in 2004.

Then he instead bask in the glory of his creations, just gone. He is no longer involved in Gnutella and did not try to benefit from this project, even after 10 years LimeWire - the most popular client network Gnutella - still has 50 million users. "I wrote Gnutella as proof that it is possible. Let's not reap the profits. So it does not make sense to do anything with it, a concept »

Frankel, recently moved from San Francisco to New York, is now working in the company Cockos (do not ask), which develops audio package Reaper. He is constantly improving it, and works very closely with their customers, tens of thousands, not millions. "It is not the task of constant growth and the struggle for the company's image. I just enjoy the process and do what I like ». Blockquote>

Source: habrahabr.ru/post/202964/