Nullsoft, Inc. is a software house founded in Sedona, Arizona in 1997 by Justin Frankel. Its most famous products include the Winamp media player and the SHOUTcast MP3 streaming media server. In recent years, their open source installer system, NSIS, has also risen in popularity as a widely used alternative to commercial products like InstallShield. The company's name is a parody of Microsoft. Mike the Llama is the company's mascot; this is frequently referred to in promotional material (especially for Winamp) citing llamas.

Their latest developments included the Nullsoft Streaming Video (NSV) format, which was intended to stream media that uses any audio or video codec. NSV is currently being used in a venture named " Nullsoft Television", and in the Ultravox system, which is under development. Nullsoft is also famous for the creation of Gnutella and WASTE.

Nullsoft was sold to America Online on June 1, 1999, and thereafter existed as a subsidiary of America Online. After the acquisition, Nullsoft headquarters were moved to San Francisco, California. Nullsoft subsequently released several new versions of the Winamp player, and has grown its monthly unique subscriber base from 33 million users to over 52 million users over the course of 2005. Nullsoft's San Francisco offices were closed in December 2003, with a near-concurrent departure of Justin Frankel and the original Winamp development team. Nullsoft is now a division of AOL Music.

References

1. The World's Most Dangerous Geek, Rolling Stone, 2004

External links

• Nullsoft Homepage
• Death Knell Sounds for Nullsoft, Winamp