Many of you know about mp3 music files (Those of you who don't, ask a freshman computer geek). The software player most people use for playing mp3s is a program called Winamp.
Winamp wasn't the first player to be released, not was it the best in the beginning. However, its author, Justin Frankel of Nullsoft, Inc. was dedicated to putting out a quality program and making his users happy.
Pure altruism wasn't his motive, though. Justin also asked for compensation for his efforts. Winamp was marketed as shareware, wherein the user was to evaluate it for a set amount of time, 14 days, after which the user was obligated to register the program.
Winamp costs a mere ten bucks.
And in its newest incarnation, 2.03, it's a very capable media player, not anymore just playing mp3s but also supporting WAV, MOD, and VQF files and even CD audio. Sounds like a deal to me. What do you think?
I was irked the other day when I came across a 'Winamp Key Generator'. A key generator is a program which, given a few text fields, will output a registration key for a piece of commercial software. Keys are often needed to install or register software, and most of the time they must be bought. I'm aware of such key generators for Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, and any number of expensive, i.e. costing multiple hundreds of dollars, programs. This was the first one I'd ever seen for a ten-dollar program.
That's pathetic. Somebody wrote a program so that Winamp users didn't need to pay for it anymore. Not like it's'cripple-ware',where the software isn't fully functional without registration. Winamp's completely usable in its unregistered form. The only tangible thing registering Winamp gives you is your name on the dialog boxes. It's the intangibles that count, the idea of supporting a software artist and an emerging music standard, and the sense of doing the right thing. Anyone willing to cheat someone out of ten bucks (and Justin was a college student like us), just to have a personalized, 'regged' program, is the lowest of the low. Nevermind the fact that half of the mp3 usage out there is a little left of the law.
Register Winamp. It's the right thing to do.
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