BetaNews has an announcement - AOL has released to the open source community, two popular visualization plug-ins found in Winamp, AOL's digital media player that is used by over 60 million people worldwide. AOL seems to have been quite active in the open source world, The code behind the company's Web server, which powers the AOL service, was first released in 1999. AOL has also long supported the open sourcing of Netscape, which went on to form the Mozilla Suite and eventually Firefox. In 2003, AOL pledged $2 million and personnel from its Netscape division to the newly christened Mozilla Foundation. To help reinvigorate its struggling ICQ client, AOL has also turned to open source. Version 5 of the instant messaging software, which debuted in February, was built atop the open ICQ Xtraz platform. The Xtraz architecture was designed to encourage developers to build add-ons to ICQ.

Excerpts:
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.

Faced with extending its core business strategy beyond its walled garden and rapidly falling subscriber numbers, AOL is looking outward -- rather than inward -- to bolster its arsenal of content and services. Specifically, AOL is enlisting the open source community to take over a number of projects.

First on the list are two popular visualization plug-ins found in Winamp, AOL's digital media player that is used by over 60 million people worldwide. Milkdrop and Winamp's Advanced Visualization Studio are now free for developers to tweak and utilize under a BSD open source license.

Milkdrop's predecessor, known as Geiss, was recently adopted by Yahoo for its Music Engine software. And Yahoo officials say they are now considering making the switch to Milkdrop. Developers of projectM, an OpenGL cross-platform music visualizer, have already begun to improve their software using Milkdrop's source code.

"By open sourcing these plug ins, we have empowered the passionate and highly skilled members of the Winamp community to play a direct role in the development of our projects," AOL spokesperson Deana Graffeo told BetaNews. "We're very excited to see what the community comes up with for Milkdrop and AVS."
Source: BetaNewsPrashanth RaiTags: Open Source, Audio, Video