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Ogg Frog is designed to rip CDs into OGG format and then support MP3 and other formats. It will be based on Zoolib which Mike Crawford is working on porting to different platforms with Andy Green.

Eventually Mike will take Ogg Frog out of alpha testing and move it to beta and then a golden 1.0 release in 2020, 2023 tops. By then standards will have changed to something else but the OGG audio and video formats will be used as they are open sourced and almost everything else is someone else's or company's IP and will start suing people who use them in their applications and sell music and videos in that format. Compuserve for example came up with GIF standards as I recall and started suing so people moved to TIF, JPG, PNG, etc. PNG I believe is safe from lawsuits but it is only an image format and not an audio or video format.

Usually the accuser has to prove that the song infringes on his/her own work.

Anyway different lyrics, different notes, different instruments used, doesn't follow the same pattern, doesn't use any sampling or riffs from the commercial song is usually good enough.

So then please tell me which commercial song or songs Michael David Crawford's songs infringe upon? They are piano playings and a modification in scales using computer algorithms to modify the music into a certain pattern that hasn't been used by any commercial recording yet. Mr. Crawford is ahead of the commercial recorders in that respect.

There are lots of reasons for this. Some people cannot afford the new hardware required for Mac OS X. Some of those who could buy the hardware have a big investment in software that uses Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) dongles that wouldn't work on OS X even if the newer Macs were equipped with ADB - they haven't been for years.

Some software has been discontinued, with the vendors out of business, and so will never be ported to OS X-native. If the software is useful enough to the end user, then they'll keep running Mac OS 9.

Finally, some people simply don't know how to upgrade. Until very recently a relative of mine was running Internet Explorer 5.0 on Mac OS X 10.2 - no doubt riddled with well-known security holes, but she simply didn't know better. I bought her Mac OS X Tiger for Christmas (Leopard won't run on her G3), then visited soon after and installed it for her, then downloaded and installed all the updates.

All of these are reasons that I plan for Ogg Frog to support the Classic Mac OS.

(And there are many Macs out there that are too old to run Mac OS 9; they'll be running 8.6 or some such.)

You want the best media player? Go with the Frog. Ogg Frog, that is. vlc? They can't get their mutexes right, so who knows what else they got wrong. iTunes? Sure, if you don't mind the fact the stale buffer bugs when you're ripping CDs.

Ummm, excuse Mr. Crawford, errr...Ogg Frog, but, um, your website says that Ogg Frog hasn't been released yet. Furthermore, your website hasn't been updated since 2005. I think perhaps Duke Nukem Forever has a better chance of being released before Ogg Frog.

-- Just some guy who's been wondering when you'll release the damned thing

Unfortunately, Ogg Frog hasn't been released yet :(

Consider the GPL - it's approved by both. But Red Hat doesn't publish Free Software, it publishes Open Source - and software written by Richard Stallman isn't Open Source - it's Free Software, and RMS is happy to explain the difference.

I'm squarely in Stallman's camp; my audio project Ogg Frog is definitely Free Software, not Open Source.

How the hell can software bee Free but not Open?!

I'll grant you that not all Open Source software may meet all the requirements of Free Software, but it seems to me the reverse is most definitely true.

Software is Open is the source is availlable and you can modify it if you like. I can't see any way in which a piece of Free Software would not meet those very simple requirements.

You see, the distinction isn't the license - it's the purpose behind making the project either Open or Free.

The purpose the maker had has no impact on what you can do with the software. The license does.

As Stallman explains, Open Source is about efficiency - volunteer coders, and "many eyeballs" finding and correcting bugs and security holes. Free Software is about creating a community

And so is Open Source. What do you think those volunteers and eyeballs are?

Thus I long ago gave up trying to describe Ogg Frog as Free Software in casual conversation. I only say that when speaking to others who will likely understand. Most of the time I describe it as Open Source, but feel guilty in doing so.

Don't feel guilty. Free Software is Open Source. It's a special kind of Open Source.

Consider the GPL - it's approved by both. But Red Hat doesn't publish Free Software, it publishes Open Source - and software written by Richard Stallman isn't Open Source - it's Free Software, and RMS is happy to explain the difference.

I'm squarely in Stallman's camp; my audio project Ogg Frog is definitely Free Software, not Open Source.

You see, the distinction isn't the license - it's the purpose behind making the project either Open or Free.

As Stallman explains, Open Source is about efficiency - volunteer coders, and "many eyeballs" finding and correcting bugs and security holes. Free Software is about creating a community - Stallman has made it very clear he hopes to get back to the way things were back in the day, when source was shared openly with no non-disclosure agreements, copyrights or licenses.

Unfortunately, the English language has a problem: Free can mean "as in Freedom", or "without cost". When I speak of my Free Software project to non-techie people, they think I'm just not going to charge money for it, and question my sanity. They have no clue about the meaning behind Free Software.

Spanish doesn't have that problem: Free as in Freedom is "Libre", free as in beer is "gratis". But those words don't make sense to English speakers.

I have developed a convention, but it's too subtle for most to take notice. Perhaps they will if you join me: I capitalize the "F" if it's "Free as in Freedom", but use lowercase for "free as in beer". I think that emphasizes the difference, and maybe if we all wrote it that way, more people would understand.

Stallman is a great man, IMHO, but he has a marketing and image problem: very few non-technical people have the first clue as to what Free Software means. Most think it means "freeware".

But Open Source doesn't have that problem; many who don't know source code from Shinola do understand what Open Source is all about.

Thus I long ago gave up trying to describe Ogg Frog as Free Software in casual conversation. I only say that when speaking to others who will likely understand. Most of the time I describe it as Open Source, but feel guilty in doing so. I feel like Matthew in these verses:

Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake. Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice. -- John 13, 37-38

(BTW - there's no Ogg Frog to download yet, not even CVS or Subversion. Out of consideration for my non-technical target market, I'm not releasing anything until it reaches it's planned 1.0 feature set, and is reasonably bug free. At least for non-technical users, I feel The Cathedral is better than The Bazaar.

I have come down thoroughly on the side of The Cathedral in my development methodology, because I feel that The Bazaar doesn't serve the needs of end-users. It unnecessarily subjects them to buggy, incomplete software.

I can see how The Bazaar would work well for highly technical users, for development tools, text editors and the like, but not for an audio application.

I was up all night last night trying to figure out how to use OpenOffice to print address labels from a database. When I couldn't get it to work, I downloaded the 3.0.0 Beta, only to find that all the same bugs were still there.

It didn't appear to me that the label printing function had been touched by the developers at all between 2.4.0 and 3.0.0, with the exception of a native OS X print job dialog for the Mac version.

Folks, this is a supposedly mature, full-featured and commercial-quality office productivity application, published by one of the world's largest computer companies, yet one cannot do even such a basic task as printing labels from a database?

That's just inexcusible!

I've done quite a lot of work on Ogg Frog, but it's still in a primitive state, and there are lots of bugs. I fear that if I released it, not even the version I have now, but future snapshots, it would get uploaded to all the shareware sites, where it would be downloaded by unsuspecting novice users, who would find it unpleasant to use.

That wouldn't serve their needs, and further, it would give me and my project a bad reputation. Quite likely I wouldn't get a second chance: my wife now flatly refuses to use Free Software, having had such bad experiences herself with Mozilla, The Gimp, and OpenOffice.

I know that I have the greatest chance of success if I wait until I have something rock-solid before I make its first public release.

Now, that doesn't mean the software isn't being tested, or that real end-users aren't giving me feedback. I have a small circle of testers, both end users and other developers, who are testing it for me - privately.

And that's how I think every Free and Open Source Software project ought to be run.

It does mean I get a lot of crap for not releasing yet, as evidenced by Kuro5hin's A Trolled Englishman. But it's a small price to pay for what I am confident will be my ultimate success.

No doubt I could figure it out somehow, but a FM to R would sure be nice.

It turns out that you can't boot the BeOS 5 Pro CD under either Parallels or QEMU; the boot loader can't find the kernel, possibly because it accesses the CD drive in a different way than most other operating systems.

I figured out a painful yet effective way to install the BeOS under QEMU: install it on a real machine, then copy its partition into a disk image that's booted under QEMU. It involves a lot of tinkering with dd and sfdisk, a utility that allows one to specify partitions by exact sector numbers.

Several years ago I decided to change careers into music. I taught myself to play piano many years ago, and since making that decision I've been studying it intensively with the aim of enrolling in music school someday, where I will major in music composition. I want to write symphonies!

Of course I realize that musicians rarely earn as much as computer programmers. It's going to be a while before I can pass the entrance audition; during that time I'm continuing to work as a coder, while paying down my many debts as fast as I can. I'm pretty sure I can be debt-free by the time I start school.

I'm also developing a GPL audio application called Ogg Frog, whose website also has articles and HOWTOs on the general topic of digital music. The software isn't released yet, but I'm pretty sure that by the time I do go back to school the software will have been available long enough the website will earn enough money through advertising to provide for myself and my wife.

Musicians need to be well-known to be successful. One way I've been promoting my music is by giving away free CDs of an album I recorded in 1994. If you'd like to receive one, email your name and postal address to support@oggfrog.com

I'm absolutely serious! I've given away almost two thousand of them in person; a few weeks ago I plugged my CDs here at Slashdot and got fifty requests in just one day. I expect to finally mail them on Friday. And yes I am happy to ship internationally.

The music is instrumental piano, and is all my own original compositions.

Several years ago I decided to change careers into music. I taught myself to play piano many years ago, and since making that decision I've been studying it intensively with the aim of enrolling in music school someday, where I will major in music composition. I want to write symphonies!

Of course I realize that musicians rarely earn as much as computer programmers. It's going to be a while before I can pass the entrance audition; during that time I'm continuing to work as a coder, while paying down my many debts as fast as I can. I'm pretty sure I can be debt-free by the time I start school.

I'm also developing a GPL audio application called Ogg Frog, whose website also has articles and HOWTOs on the general topic of digital music. The software isn't released yet, but I'm pretty sure that by the time I do go back to school the software will have been available long enough the website will earn enough money through advertising to provide for myself and my wife.

Musicians need to be well-known to be successful. One way I've been promoting my music is by giving away free CDs of an album I recorded in 1994. If you'd like to receive one, email your name and postal address to support@oggfrog.com

I'm absolutely serious! I've given away almost two thousand of them in person; a few weeks ago I plugged my CDs here at Slashdot and got fifty requests in just one day. I expect to finally mail them on Friday. And yes I am happy to ship internationally.

The music is instrumental piano, and is all my own original compositions.

I'm working on changing careers into music. But I'm not trying to get signed with a label; I've got my own damn label, thank you. I've got a business license, resale license, fictitious business name statement, checking account and everything for Ogg Frog.

For a few hundred dollars - a grand tops - a solo artist can purchase digital recording gear that puts the best of what the Beatles had back in the 60's to shame.

Any Slashdotter here who wants a free CD of my album - autographed! - just email your postal address to support@oggfrog.com My first batch goes out in the mail Thursday.

I've given away almost two thousand so far. my manifesto explains why I'm doing this.

You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.

I'm working on changing careers into music. But I'm not trying to get signed with a label; I've got my own damn label, thank you. I've got a business license, resale license, fictitious business name statement, checking account and everything for Ogg Frog.

For a few hundred dollars - a grand tops - a solo artist can purchase digital recording gear that puts the best of what the Beatles had back in the 60's to shame.

Any Slashdotter here who wants a free CD of my album - autographed! - just email your postal address to support@oggfrog.com My first batch goes out in the mail Thursday.

I've given away almost two thousand so far. my manifesto explains why I'm doing this.

You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.

There are both HTTP downloads and torrents. The sheet music to two of the songs is provided in PDF and Lilypond format, with the others to follow soon.

My music has the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.

I'm also offering to send free CDs - autographed - to anyone anywhere in the world; just email your snail mail address to support@oggfrog.com

While I presently work as a programmer, I have been studying piano intensively for several years with the aim of one day enrolling in music school to study musical composition. I want to write symphonies!

I'll get a PHP order form up on that page Real Soon Now.

I realize that GPLv3 was designed to address a lot of problems such as Tivoization, but in following the debate on the Debian-Legal mailing list, I'm not completely comfortable with choosing version three.

Trying to actually read the whole license to decide for myself just makes my head spin.

Note: there is no software to download yet; there won't be any until the alpha test version is ready.

Wait, last I checked, you merely had to tell people where to get the source.

I know this because I subscribe to the Cygwin mailing list, which has discussed this extensively. The Cygwin DLL is a POSIX emulation layer for Windows, and it's quite common for companies to port their *NIX apps to Windows with Cygwin, and then to bundle their app with the DLL but not its source. In particular the Cygwin developers - Red Hat - have made it very clear that just pointing out somebody else's copy of the source doesn't count.

Also, one must provide the exact same source code as was used to build the binary, and to maintain that version of the code for the duration of the license terms (two years after the last ship date I think). So if you upgrade your code, you can't take down the old version of the sources until your obligation under the GPL for that version expires.

The way I'm handling this in my own Free Software project is to roll a release tarball of the source as the first step of making a release, then to unpack it and use that to build the binary. That's the only way I can feel sure I've got a snapshot of the exact source for each binary.

I know this because I specifically asked on their developer mailing list; I'd like to support AAC in my own application Ogg Frog, but I can't, because I live in the US.

While there's been no enforcement action so far, it's my understanding that it's illegal for Americans to even download VLC, let alone use it.

I'm not sure that it's my type of music (will listen tomorrow) but I'll help with your efforts by downloading and seeding your 32 MB, 192 Kbit MP3 version.

Come on /.ers, put your bandwidth where your mouth is.

I know this because I was trying to get fiber, then found a huge long thread on Usenet as to why there's no fiber in Sunnyvale, where I live and work: basically the telcos are trying to squeeze all the money they can out of old infrastructure, without investing in new.

This left me with cable and DSL. I don't want Comcast cable internet because they filter BitTorrent. I operate a torrent tracker for legal music downloads, so I need to use BitTorrent just to check that my tracker and seed are up.

DSL seemed to out as well because I'm over three miles from the phone office. I was very surprised that something hadn't already been done to make DSL available to silicon valley residents. I'm sure there are ways they could extend the range of DSL in an affordable way.

Finally I found Stephouse which, through COVAD, offers IDSL. That's DSL over ISDN, and I'm just within range. It's what I have now.

May I suggest the un-patent-encumbered Theora instead?

I know what I'm talking about, as I'd like to support MPEG-4 audio in Ogg Frog - MPEG-4 is also known as AAC, the Apple iTunes "native" format. I've researched it, and I can't support it because I live in the US, which recognizes software patents.

Besides the more well-known wxWidgets and Qt, there is also ZooLib, which is written in C++ and has the MIT license.

I've been a ZooLib developer for seven years, and think it's the best thing since sliced bread. I'm using it to build Ogg Frog, a Free (GPL) audio application. One reason for using ZooLib is that it still supports the Classic Mac OS, even 68k CPUs.

Also many Free and Open Source software projects distribute installers via BitTorrent, notably Ubuntu Linux and OpenOffice.org.

All of these torrents are completely legal. Yet many ISPs block BitTorrent traffic - that happened to me with Eastlink back in Nova Scotia. I was therefore unable to check that my own torrents were operating properly! One can try to work around such blockage by using non-standard port numbers, but I understand that it's possible for ISPs to filter based on the content of packets, and not just the port numbers.

I can see the day coming when all peer-to-peer traffic, whether legal or not, is blocked either due to new laws or record and movie industry lawsuits. All of us who have free content and software to distribute will lose out.

Those of us who offer legal files via peer-to-peer networks - not just BitTorrent, as Jamendo also offers eMule - need to work together to lobby both national governments and local ISPs to do away with this filtering. There are many ways to download both music and software that are perfectly legal; we need to dispel the myth that free downloads are somehow necessarily violating the law.

But the AAC patent license terms don't even permit players without a licensing fee. This is a significant obstacle for a GPL program I'm working on called Ogg Frog.

You will surely raise an objection by giving the examples of VLC Media Player, which supports AAC, and the lame MP3 encoder and faad/faac AAC decoder/encoder. But VLC is from France, which has no software patents, and lame, faad and faac are distributed in source code form only, which doesn't infringe the patent.

As far as I know, it's illegal for people in the US to download and use VLC without paying a license fee to the patent holders.

Look for music with the Creative Commons seal of approval. There are Creative Commons search engines, in which you can specify whether you want music you can use commercially, or whether you can create derivative works.

There is also the Common Content Catalog, which has a Music Section.

If you like piano, there is my humble offerring, in a variety of audio formats as well as sheet music. I chose to place my music under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 license, not just to "eat my own dog food", but because I feel that doing so helps me to advance my music aspirations:

I am weary of my twenty-year career as a software engineer. I need a change. That's why I'm taking piano lessons with the aim of passing the music school entrance audition someday. I'm going to major in musical composition; I want to learn to compose symphonies.

And the lot of my compositions are going to be CC-SA licensed.

I have already found that doing this encourages more people to get to know my music. Now, I know I'm not a pop artist - in fact most people don't like my music, but many do. By giving away my music I'm building a base of fans who will buy tickets to my live concerts some day.

This last weekend I spent four hours in downtown Santa Cruz, California, walking up and down Pacific Avenue passing out handbills that advertise my downloads. On the back is the Creative Commons logo and an encouragement for the recipient to share my music over the Internet and to burn CDs for their friends. I think I gave out over a hundred handbills, and left stacks of them on the counters in two record stores and a musical instrument store.

It's funny, the reactions I get from some people. Many believe that this is too good to be true, that there is some kind of catch, or that I'm trying to sell them something, or indoctrinate them into some kind of cult.

Well, sort of: the Cult of Copyleft.

I made a couple of new friends as I did this, one of them a "Downtown Host" and the other a street musician who plays the guitar.

I also burn CDs of my music to give away. I have a CD label printer that's just a regular inkjet printer with a feed mechanism for CDs. In this way I can make CDs a few at a time, and inexpensively, yet that look professional.

I try to always carry some in my backpack to give to new friends. I also give them to any street musicians that I come across, as a way of introducing myself to the local music community.

I'll give you a CD too - autographed even - if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area or in Santa Cruz County. Just email me at michael@geometricvisions.com and meet me somewhere for coffee or a beer, and I'll bring your CD with me.