FreeAmp is dead. Hello Zinf ! Options

[PatchWorKs]

From FreeAmp website:

FreeAmp will soon be going away! The Zinf project will continue where FreeAmp left off.

From ZINF website:

Zinf Audio Player
The Zinf audio player is a simple, but powerful audio player for Linux and Win32. It supports MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV and Audio CD playback, with a powerful music browser, theme support and a download manager.

It is based on the FreeA*p audio player which was developed by EMusic. The FreeA*p project was discontinued due to a trademark conflict and EMusic being acquired by Vivendi.

For the existance of Zinf, please thank the original FreeA*p team at EMusic: Gene Hoffman, Brett Thomas, Jason Woodward and Mark Elrod.


Project Goals
The FreeA*p source code that Zinf is based on has a number of bugs and few basic design flaws that limit the scope of future features. We'll work to fix the bugs that are currently present in Zinf -- no problem. However, fancy big new features such as visualizations or arbitary audio/DSP plugins do not make sense in the current codebase.

If you're thinking of adding big nifty new features, be warned. It'll be smarter to think of Zinf as a basic, yet powerful audio player. The basic set of features that are in place today are pretty good and they make for an easy to use audio player.

Zinf adheres to the KISS principle: Keep it simple stupid!

New features in the player should focus on providing basic music playback features that make sense for everyone. Forget the 50,000 plugins model. Give me basic and stable music playback and skip all the bloated thrills.


Help Wanted
The Zinf team is looking for dedicated and talented developers who would like to continue working on FreeAmp. We need:

- Project leader
- Windows (win32) programmers
- Linux programmers
- User support people (answer help e-mails)

If you would like to help out and be part of Zinf, please drop him a line.

[dev0]

Replace the MP3 Decoder!!!

I always liked Freeamp's Media Library, but the rest is simply outdated and needs to be replaced by something newer/better.

dev0

[rc55]

Zinf!

Argh. Why are there so many crap names for tools!

Anyway - I hope this does better than its predecessor which in my opinion bloats quite badly.

Ruairi

[c-prompt]

I don't understand. The webpage says "Zinf is based on the FreeAmp® source code. However, AMP® is a trademark of PlayMedia Systems, Inc., and therefore the original name of the project cannot be used any longer."

Is it just the word amp that messes them up?

If so, could WinAMP be effected by this?

[Sawg]

I think PlayMedia already sued AOL/Nullsoft a few times now. But anyways, they can now just asy AMP is AOL Media Player
(Winamp Is Not AOL Media Player)

[SometimesWarrior]

Originally posted by Sawg
I think PlayMedia already sued AOL/Nullsoft a few times now.  But anyways, they can now just say AMP is AOL Media Player
(Winamp Is Not AOL Media Player)

I'm glad AOL acquired Nullsoft just because that acronym is so witty.

One thing's for sure: The Program Formerly Known As FreeAmp will never have to worry about trademark infringement with the "Zinf" name. Let's hope it doesn't have to worry too much about trying to maintain a decent user base, either. (In other words, I wish it some success.)

[Timothy Pequigno...]

Of course you have to realize that it will have to be know as
WinAMP...(WinA*P Is Not AOL Media Player)

[spoon]

WinAMP was not sued because of the word AMP, but rather because its mp3 codec at the time contained code from Playmedia (right from the very first release of Winamp). Playmedia got greedy when Winamp was so popular when it came around to re-license the codec, they didn't get agreement - Winamp said they had removed all playmedia code - playmedia must have run tests, disagreed and sued.

On a 2nd lawsuit brought by Playmedia against AOL - this was because they had included the Winamp mp3 codec in their own player - but the licensing of said codec said it was only for use with Winamp. Playmedia won an injunction - it would have cost AOL a packet...

BTW I am not worried that my converter and player are called dBpowerAMP - registering one word does not stop others from using said word as a makeup of otherwords, also I had the name dBpowerAMP before they got the trademark.

[Böreck]

BTW: What happened to the dBpowerAMP-website? Is it under construction?

[spoon]

An Idiot internet naming company has knocked it out again - since Sunday it has been down. BTW everything is accessible through the mirror site - www.dbpoweramp.net

I am seriously considering a Law suit of my own, it was pure incompetence on their part. This seriously affects it - after the last outage in March it has only just recovered the last few weeks, and now it has been knocked out yet again - all the sites that link to it (such as download.com) have already removed it from their listings (I was ready to jump over that Windows Media Player in popularity, 21st most popular mp3 program), my blood boils!