Zinf is a

free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procur ...

audio player for

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

and

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

operating systems. Zinf is released under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

. Zinf is a continuation of the FreeAmp project and uses the same source code.

Technical features

Zinf can play sound files in

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjun ...

, and

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Wind ...

formats, among others. It supports skins and is part of the

MusicBrainz MusicBrainz is a MetaBrainz project that aims to create a collaborative music database that is similar to the freedb project. MusicBrainz was founded in response to the restrictions placed on the Compact Disc Database (CDDB), a database for sof ...

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

. The player features an optimized version of the Xing

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...

decoder, a powerful music browser and playlist editor, and a built in

download In computer networks, download means to ''receive'' data from a remote system, typically a server such as a web server, an FTP server, an email server, or other similar system. This contrasts with uploading, where data is ''sent to'' a remote s ...

manager which supports downloading files from sites using the RMP ( RealJukebox) download process. Zinf was also notable for handling all audio files based on their

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

(Author, Album, Song Title), and hiding more-technical details like actual locations and file names (but these features are now standard in many players).

Naming

Zinf is a

recursive acronym A recursive acronym is an acronym that refers to itself, and appears most frequently in computer programming. The term was first used in print in 1979 in Douglas Hofstadter's book '' Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'', in which Hof ...

that stands for "Zinf Is Not FreeAmp!" Use of the name FreeAmp had to be discontinued due to

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others ...

issues, as "AMP" is a trademark of PlayMedia Systems, Inc.

History/Funding

The FreeAmp project was originally funded by

EMusic eMusic is an online music and audiobook store that operates by subscription. In exchange for a monthly subscription eMusic users can download a fixed number of MP3 tracks per month. eMusic was established in 1998, is headquartered in New York Ci ...

, who paid the salaries of 3 developers working on the player. Later, Relatable joined EMusic to help support continued development. In January 2001, after 2 years of funding the project EMusic pulled their support, and subsequently fired the developers.Important project update
The Zinf project was unable to find another sponsor, and development slowed greatly. The most recent release was made in early 2004. As of 2008, nearly all development of Zinf has ceased.

Adoption

Once a popular open-source Linux audio player, it has now been largely surpassed by newcomers such as

Audacious Audacious may refer to: * ''Audacious'' (album), a 2016 album by Cupcakke * Audacious (software), an open-source media player Ships * List of ships named ''Audacious'' * HMS ''Audacious'', various ships of the British Royal Navy * ''Audaci ...

, Amarok,

Exaile Exaile is a cross-platform free and open-source audio player, tag editor and library organizer. It was originally conceived to be similar in style and functions to KDE's Amarok 1.4, but uses the GTK widget toolkit rather than Qt. It is writte ...

Banshee A banshee ( ; Modern Irish , from sga, ben síde , "woman of the fairy mound" or "fairy woman") is a female spirit in Irish folklore who heralds the death of a family member, usually by screaming, wailing, shrieking, or keening. Her name is c ...

and (more recently)

Songbird A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds (Passeriformes). Another name that is sometimes seen as the scientific or vernacular name is Oscines, from Latin ''oscen'', "songbird". The Passeriformes contains 500 ...

. This is largely because Zinf has not seen an official new release since early 2004, and many new features that are now standard in rival players have not been implemented; such as cover art and lyric support. In 2010 the zinf.com website was bought by a domain squatter for the purpose of capitalizing on the site's traffic for monetary gains. A new link called "QnA" and "Ads" are now visible on the zinf.com website that is a redirect to the squatter's site.

References

External links

* {{Media player (application software), free Audio player software that uses GTK Free software programmed in C++ Cross-platform software Free audio software Free media players Linux media players Windows media players 2002 software