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Topic: freedb-project is dead (Read 81240 times) previous topic - next topic
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freedb-project is dead

http://www.freedb.org/

The future of freedb
   
   
Posted by kaiser on Saturday, July 01 @ 20:18:47 UTC (253 reads)
   
   
About freedb.org freedb is not able to operate without Joerg and Ari. There are other - hopefully free - projects that will take over freedbs heritage in a better way and stay free. freedbs future did not seem to be kept free regarding the lastest developments, so I tried to steer against this as I felt it more important to stay free instead of getting fancy web 2.0 features. But unfortunately Joerg and Ari (the main doers behind freedb) disagreed with me and decided that they want to go another direction. I will refuse to comment their postings in plublic and I will thank both Ari anf Jörg for their work and their support.

Now being sick of how things turned out lately and I am not being able to run the project with the people in freedb left, I will stop this project in the forseeable future.

If somebody is interested in a pretty well-known domain, send an offer to: lurchentsafter at gmail.com

Sorry for this.
   

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I quit
   
   
Posted by megari on Saturday, July 01 @ 19:06:55 UTC (106 reads)
   
   
About freedb.org After several years of successful work I am leaving freedb along with Jörg due to the current situation being unbearable. Without Jörg most of the fun of being part of freedb is gone and I do not believe I could work successfully with Mr. Kaiser whose definition of teamwork seems to vary from day to day and whom I have lost trust in.

I thank all the users, mirror server administrators, contributors, users and lurkers who have with their interest and support made this work worth it. Because of you I leave with a heavy heart and great sorrow and anxiety over the future of freedb.

Ari Sundholm

----
Goodbye to freedb after 6 successful years
   
   
Posted by joerg on Saturday, July 01 @ 19:04:52 UTC (107 reads)
   
   
About freedb.org Today, after six long years, it is time for me to say goodbye to freedb. I started off creating database archives for download and finding ftp mirrors to host it in 2000 and ended up being responsible for basically every aspect of freedb. I feel like freedb is a part of my identity and it is ripping me apart, having to leave it now.

For almost two years now Ari and I have supported a developer from Australia, who was working on the next generation of the freedb server, which would have overcome most of our current technological problems and offered text searching. This was the biggest chance for freedb in years. Unfortunately there have been rising tensions in our team about the question, how long we should support a development project, which has not yet been made open source by the developer and which is not yet running on freedb servers. Last weekend the line was crossed by the founder of freedb, who owns the domain, when he took action against that developer without talking to the rest of the team first, while we were still trying to find a solution in everyone's interest.

With every chance gone for the developed software to become part of freedb and with the necessary basic level of trust between the owner of the domain freedb.org and me being destroyed, I see no more point in investing my spare time in this. I am not sure what me leaving will really mean for freedb, but considering my experiences from the past six years, I expect the future is not looking too bright. It is devastating for me to see that this issue could accomplish in a matter of weeks what Gracenote couldn't do for 7 long years since freedb was started.

I would like to thank the freedb community who made this service what it is today by helping out in various ways and submitting lots and lots of new database entries to us. We started with less than 200.000 database entries - today we have more than 2.000.000. YOU are the ones who made this worth doing and who make it so hard for me to leave.
I would also like to especially thank the mirror administrators for contributing their time, bandwidth and servers. Without them, freedb would not have been able to cope with the load that came with it's success. Special thanks go to Drew Streib, who has provided our master server for free for all this time, and Ari Sundholm, who has run freedb together with me for the past few years and tried to work on a solution with me till the last minute.

If you really need to contact me for some reason, use my personal e-mail address j.hevers at web.de.

freedb-project is dead

Reply #1
What now?

freedb-project is dead

Reply #2
Seems like alot of really good projects are being "pronounced dead".
Man whats next.

freedb-project is dead

Reply #3
Incidentally, I had just given Peter a new version of my freedb component that allows retrieving tags directly from the CD ripping dialog in foobar2000 0.9.3 when someone posted news of this in the foobar2000 IRC channel. Talk about irony. I guess this will speed up the development of a foosic based tagging component for foobar2000. (Yes, that is a prediction about my own plans.)

freedb-project is dead

Reply #4
Well, crap.
Error 404; signature server not available.

freedb-project is dead

Reply #5
So what's going to happen now?  EAC has integration with freedb, what's going to happen to that?

It is sad really when a project that has lasted so long dies like this especially when they offered such a good service for free.  I just hope that another free alternative rises to that EAC and foobar2000 users can continue to get CD information online.

2 tears in a bucket...


freedb-project is dead

Reply #7
Has anyone got some information about http://freedb2.org/ ??

just found an article where it said that its an improved version of freedb or so.
working with your freedbtagger, foosion (thx btw, nice plugin)

freedb-project is dead

Reply #8
Maybe the big chance for MusicBrainz?
Sounds cool. Do you have experiences with MusicBrainz. Can you give me a short overview, how it works, how it can be used?
I have all my music as WAW with CUEs. Does MusicBrainz help me with these kind of files?

freedb-project is dead

Reply #9
I think freedb2.org is the improved server that all the fuss is about. By the way, it didn't work with my component until recently because of a violation of the database entry specifiction (the signature line was wrong). I contacted the author through the - now unavailable - freedb forum on Friday, and he promptly fixed that.


freedb-project is dead

Reply #11
I just don't get it how can a so widespread system be totally dependent on two people. freedb.org seems to be already down, but servers could work with the mainterance of others, couldn't ? Would it have legal issues to upload the whole database (hope the torrents are still alive) somewhere and continue with the project, perhaps under a different name?
Is the protocol on the server side available freely to the public ?

But perhaps this is not as bad as one might thing. The closedown of freedb could and hopefully will accelerate the evolution in this area and a new system built from scratch, or developed from the existing ones will be most probably superior to freedb.

And it would be good to avoid the situation, where different standards would fight for dominance
But if freedb2 (whatever it is) works with the current clients, i see no real problem

freedb-project is dead

Reply #12
This is really upsetting. This is gonna have a huge impact on a lot of free software. I hope the mirror's stay up until an alternative appear.

freedb-project is dead

Reply #13
I am also surprised the the entire freedb project is dependant on two people alone to exist.  Why can't the project be passed along to other team members or people who are willing to maintain it?  Freedb is such an excellent resource to have, especially for a majority of audio rippers, taggers, and other programs that use the database.  This is gonna cause a lot of issues for a lot of apps out there.

freedb-project is dead

Reply #14
Very sad news...


freedb-project is dead

Reply #16
Couldn't somebody just get the latest freedb database and then implement that into a new project?


freedb-project is dead

Reply #18
Couldn't somebody just get the latest freedb database and then implement that into a new project?


I just checked, the data files are licensed under the GPL so yes, one could do that. You have to make the modified data files available for download, though, so you should bring some bandwidth or hope most people will use the torrents.

MedO

PS: IANAL, and all legal opinion I give may be completely wrong.


freedb-project is dead

Reply #20
foobar2000 + EAC + Burrrn = Happiness


freedb-project is dead

Reply #22
Oh, i really hope that MB will become the new reference free-cd-db, due to its open license.


Well, if foosion's "prediction" on his own plans (lol) is to come true, we'll actually have another option
Ofcourse for that to happen, foosic will need more universal software-support.

Since it is likely that the developers of software tools that are interfacing with FreeDB will now be looking for a new service, this moment is just right to make them aware of our system of choice...

freedb-project is dead

Reply #23
After playing around with Musicbrainz...I think its a very good alternative to freedb.
Zune 80, Tak -p4 audio library, Lossless=Choice

freedb-project is dead

Reply #24
Wow.