Is there any chance to see foobar2000 open source? Or at least for Linux? I know , WINE and stuff, but I hate emulation, it slows things down, etc. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as you don't sell foobar2000, there's no point in hiding its source. I mean the core, I know that the SDK and official plugins are BSD licensed. Also, what about GPL or MPL? As I'm going to Linux now, I'm thinking about replacing foobar2000 with some other audio player until native support is available. I love foobar2000's features, TAGZ (by the way is it all-caps?), the plugins system, the standard look'n'feel, the lack of localizations... everything, but I'm not going to emulate it.
The only open source alternative for foobar2000 which at least comes a bit close to it which I found is musikCube, but it again is not for Linux and, even worse, it's interface is not *completely* standard compliant. I found another thread about porting to Linux but it said nothing more than emulating... Thanks in advance.

Search. This has been asked a million times, and the answer is always no because foobar is written in MSVC++ using win32.

I searched before I started the thread. I found nothing concrete except instructions about emulation (or shared experience about this). I wanted to get a clear view of the problem. I know it's written with MSVC++. But even so, it should be able to be compiled on gcc with minimal modifications. The parts which use the win32 API can be rewritten to use some multiplatform toolkit such as GTK+, QT, wxWindows or other. Of course, it would take lots of time and efforts but maybe it's worth it; you decide. And what about the license? Why is the core closed-source? And why are the SDK and official components BSD licensed instead of GPL or MPL?
Note that I'm just asking. I have neither right nor base to complain. But I just suggest some things. I think foobar2000 will evolve much faster if it's open source.
foobar2000 is a wonderful program. I'm very happy with it. Whether it should be open-source or not, ported to Linux or not, it's up to you. If you think it's better, throw your efforts to actual development rather than porting. I just would be happy if you don't. Thanks for the attention and excuse my extremely poor English.

What? If english is not your native tongue, you sure hide it well.

You are very optimistic.

Because Peter decided so. What's wrong with the BSD license?

If you're already rewriting the core, what do you need the source for? The SDK already defines what the core needs to do, so you could start by writing a Linux native version of that.



I think the reason to keep the core closed source was to prevent people from changing it and introducing incompatabilities within SDK versions. That way there is one foobar, but many different ways to use it.



First you want the closed source stuff released, and then you want the already open source stuff moved to a more restrictive license

Because if the source code is freely available, everyone who wants to can participate the development by contributing bug fixes and such things.That makes no sense. By that logic Mozilla Firefox should be closed source because somebody may make a version incompatible with the existing extensions. It's obvious that if I want the real foobar2000, compatible and everything, I'll get the official version from foobar2000.org and not some ugly hacked-up version from some site on angelfire...Oops, they're more restrictive? Excuse me, it seems I'm quite misunderstanding the situation with the open source licenses. I'll add a re-read of them to my to-do list. Sorry. (@foosion: this goes to you, too. It seems I need to read this stuff again. And if I'm too optimistic, sorry. I just haven't had much problems porting stuff from MSVC++ to gcc).

Peter likes a tight grip on the core to ensure quality and to make sure things move in the right direction.
That's just the way it will be and this discussion is really a waste. It has been done one too many times.

Thread closed.