Nullsoft, 1997-2004 AOL kills off the last maverick tech company (2004)

ddownbad_ 3 days ago 23 commentsRead Article on slate.com

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SyneRyder•about 1 hour ago

For those who might not know:

> With Nullsoft gone and Frankel spending his time building a special-effects computer for his electric guitar...

I don't know what happened to the Jesusonic he was building then, but Justin Frankel ended up creating Reaper, the cross-platform Windows/Mac/Linux digital audio workstation that is a solid Pro Tools competitor in a mere 16 MB download:

https://www.reaper.fm/

The installer for the whole DAW is smaller than most add-on VST effects. Some of my favorite albums have been recorded with Reaper, and obviously I'm a Reaper fan and use it too. Just like Winamp, you can pay for it, but if you really can't afford it, there's no time limit and it won't stop you from using it.

Showing my age here, but if you have a copy of the Walnut Creek CD-ROMs with demoscene archives, there's a demo by "Nullsoft" from pre-Winamp days hiding somewhere in there as well.

EDIT: Aww, fwirt beat me to it while I was typing! I guess I'll leave my comment here to add the Nullsoft demo mention. Found a link to his MSDOS demos here: https://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=1618

EDIT TWO: You can run his Ademo demo on archive.org, type "ademo 1" at the C:\ prompt in the web based DOSbox to run: https://archive.org/details/demoscene_Ademo-Nullsoft

AlyssaRowan•4 minutes ago

It's a straight line from Jesusonic to Reaper: Jesusonic JSFX script is in Reaper, and there's a whole selection of stock JS plugins that come with it and it's actually quite easy to program.

jackconsidine•37 minutes ago

Went down the Frenkel (Nullsoft founder) rabbit hole. Check out his forum where they've recently discussed AI bots scraping his forum [0]. Or his question submission page; he hasn't "left a reasonable question unanswered since 2009" [1]

> nothing specific against cloudflare, but the point of the internet is that it's decentralized and I'd hate to contribute against that (though we already do somewhat, hosting on aws etc). anyway our homegrown solution is working nicely these days! for now - Justin January 2026

[0] https://www.1014.org/index.php?article=930#cl3

[1] https://www.askjf.com/

Fwirt•about 1 hour ago

For anyone who was also curious what Justin Frankel got up to after the speculation at the end of the article, he founded Cockos Software and is the lead developer on the excellent REAPER DAW.

misnome•about 1 hour ago

Oh, I had no idea. It's been a few years since I used it in anger but it was a very pleasant package to use, with an extremely friendly licensing scheme (purchasing a permanent license for <current.X> got you all releases up until version <current+1.max>)

entropicdrifter•about 1 hour ago

Not to mention it's about as easy to use without a license as WinRAR, so you can trial it indefinitely and then pay the mere $60 for it when you're ready to release some music commercially

sbuttgereit•36 minutes ago

Easily one of the best values in commercial software if you have a need for what it does. I think I paid something ~$70 a couple of years ago. While there's a limitation on the number of updates you get based on release version, I'm still getting updates under the license a couple years on. All that and you get a genuinely professional level tool for much less than what similar software from competitors offer.

I couldn't more highly recommend it.

lorecore•about 1 hour ago

Publishing Gnutella while being acquired by a greedy media company was such a baller move.

rickcarlino•about 1 hour ago

The network still lives, even today. This is so underrated.

dexwiz•20 minutes ago

We had a private network on campus circa 2010. Streaming was up and coming but not huge. Gnutella was great on the gigabit intranet. You could download entire HD movies in minutes where conventional torrents may be hours.

ecliptik•29 minutes ago

My favorite Nullsoft software that came out the end of this era was WASTE [1].

Peer-to-peer (back when P2P was all the rage), encrypted, decentralized private networks.

Group of friends and I used it post-college as a way to share files and chat, and was much better than AIM or other instant messaging at the time.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE

downbad_•3 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13559415

tombert•about 1 hour ago

I am always confused when BigTechCos buy SmallCos and then unceremoniously kill them off fairly shortly after. I guess it's basically to cannibalize the source code?

Aurornis•36 minutes ago

The usual play is to acquire the customers and brand, with the team as a bonus.

Except for rare unique products, the source code might not matter at all. They're after the business, brand, and customers.

Having been in acquired SmallCos a couple times: There are always plans and justifications involving the products being acquired, but most don't survive impact with the acquiring company. People in a BigCo have their little fiefdoms established and everyone resists the sudden appearance of new developers and new code that weren't under their control. To be fair it goes both ways and the SmallCo developers who were previously in charge of everything don't like giving up control of parts of the system to the established teams and procedures in the BigCo.

rkagerer•30 minutes ago

It's because BigCo's tend toward decisions with dumb outcomes, while SmallCo's still benefit from the strategic direction of their founders. Although not a hard and fast rule, if you take a good look at where innovation occurs you'll often find the most successful products of big tech companies (after the initial one that made them big in the first place) came from acquisitions. Just look at Google's case: Android, YouTube, Maps, etc.

Sometimes the aquisition doesn't pan out as planned, or they were just after the talent or to snuff out a potential competitor / snag its customers (like Postini), or it was a dumb move in the first place and the numbers finally bore that out. BigCo's don't usually have the same determined, long-term dedication to their acquisitions as the people who the founded them, so you also see premature shedding of ventures that could have a ton of potential over time.

okanat•about 1 hour ago

Source code is only useful when you want the actual product, which is the rare case. Most of the time they want the patents, naming rights or just customers.

lorecore•about 1 hour ago

This was during the dotcom bubble and AOL/Time Warner need to optically look like they were doing something relevant with the internet to justify their valuation. It was pure messaging, with a bit of killing a threat on the side.

arjie•about 1 hour ago

It could just be a failed acquisition but an variant sometimes happens. OpenAI bought Statsig and then sold the Statsig brand and customer base to Amplitude.

munk-a•about 1 hour ago

Eh, I think that does happen but is much less likely then either acquihiring or killing a potential competitor.

esseph•about 1 hour ago

The want the: developers, IP, customers, to kill some competition, or some combination.

htx80nerd•about 1 hour ago

they want a popular thing, then that thing falls under the control of Big Business Meeting Thinking , and suffers the expected fate

ethagnawl•24 minutes ago

It's a shame some of those other names mentioned didn't wind up fading into obscurity.

DeathArrow•18 minutes ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBY52n7luM8