Freedb.org Ending

haroldag writes "Freedb, the free music database used by tons of CD ripping software, has been shut down due to a disagreement among its developers. One of its developers used a data dump from the original freedb.org and is providing the service at freedb2.org, though, and will be adding features and posting them at his site as they become available. Unfortunately, a database dump or source code for freedb2.org is yet nowhere to be found."

Comments

Re:Nothing to see?

[haroldag]

Actually, there is some code out there: http://asmith.id.au/mod_libpq.html

Damn.

[bcat24]

That sucks. I hope that freedb2 will be compatable with the old freedb protocol. Pretty much every open source tagger/ripper/whatever I know of uses freedb.

Then again, maybe it's time for MusicBrainz to take over. :)

Re:Damn.

[RackinFrackin]

I suspect that you are right, but I wouldn't use the word "knockoff". Freedb was more like a replacement of cddb, for when cddb was sold out from under the community that built it.

Re:Damn.

[fireman sam]

Damn, I entered the code in your sig and my TV went blank.

Re:Damn.

[BrynM]

Really? So you are saying no corporation has ever lost money pursuing some product or service because the CEO was stroking his ego?

I give you a prime example to support how much an ego can change the path of a company for the worse: Darl McBride. Turned a company that once had many products to a shitty litigation house with few products which have dwindling customer numbers (SCO Unix has lingered at version 7.1.4 for a couple of years now). How much empty ego do you need to say something like "And C++ programming languages, we own those, have licensed them out multiple times, obviously. We have a lot of royalties coming to us from C++." (source)?

Re:Damn.

[Fnkmaster]

No, that's an example of terrible board oversight. The whole point of a Board of Directors is that they have a fiduciary duty to represent shareholder and company interests and are supposed to be composed of a mix of folks representing different constituencies.

They are supposed to make sure a CEO's ego doesn't take precedence over the interests of shareholders, employees and other persons with an interest in the company's success. When the Board fails in this role, as at SCO, the consequences can be dire.

I seem to recall that the SCO Board was padded with Ralph Yarro and a Mormon cabal of Ray Noorda (founder of Canopy Group, SCO's largest shareholder) buddies. Yarro put McBride in the CEO's chair and his yes-men bought into their immensely stupid plan. The end result was millions squandered, an old UNIX brand absolutely destroyed forever, and worst of all, several suicides, including Ray Noorda's daughter. She had apparently engineered Yarro's ouster, which was followed by the mysterious settlement transferring all of Canopy's SCO shares to Yarro immediately before her suicide - I don't know if all of these events were ever adequately explained.

Truly one of the most sordid tech industry stories in years.

Re:Good riddance

[spoco2]

The quality of submissions were total, utter shit. You'd be better off typing in the info yourself.

Not so, well, not really. If you used it as a starting point, and checked the entries against the CD you were ripping then by and large the entries were really good. (Some freaky choices in categories sometimes)

Where there were issues, it was far easier to quickly edit one or two entries or the artist name etc. rather than type the whole thing in.

It is/was a great service.

good database, but could have been so much more.

[CaptainCheese]

I'm sorry the staff fell out, costing us access to a useful resource. freedb was a useful tool but it was always in need of improvement.

It really should have had facilities for submitting an md5 hash of the CD so end-users could avoid collisions, perhaps an easy way to edit or rate database entries, so that submissions where the track titles were wrong could be corrected by the community, etc...

Hopefully whatever replaces it will be better and more robust..

"/." Schizm.

[Anonymous Coward]

""Freedb, the free music database used by tons of CD ripping software, has been shut down due to a disagreement among its developers."

And in other news. Slashdot has been shut down due to a disagreement between Taco and CowboyNeal. The former likes the new layout, while the latter hates it. Apparently one of the readers has mirrored a copy of the "/. database to slashdot2, which will be undergoing a year long "burning server" effect.

freedb2.org compatibility

[Horar]

I am the author of freedb2.org. It currently supports a subset of the old freedb protocol, enough to rip your CD's. Just point your software at http://freedb2.org/~cddb/cddb.cgi. There are also some new features which I will be documenting shortly. For some source code and a development history, please see http://asmith.id.au/freedb.html and also http://asmith.id.au/mod_libpq.html.

Re:freedb2.org compatibility

[bcat24]

Thanks a lot for that! Also, freedb is still accepting lookup requests, at least for now. I guess things aren't that bad. It's just weird to see a project that I thought was stable end so suddenly.

Re:freedb2.org compatibility

[smallpaul]

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.

Is it true that you accepted money (which is how I interpret "support") to do open source development and then did not release the code? I'd like to hear your side of the story.

Re:freedb2.org compatibility

[Horar]

Accepted money? Hell no. I've spent 6 months full-time out of the last 19 months, and most of what little money I had, to develop freedb2.org. The fact is I've had very little useful support from anyone and one hell of a lot of obstruction.

The so-called freedb team has always been incompetent and dysfunctional and I have made it my mission to fix that. Kaiser and Hevers have behaved like a pair of spoiled brats from beginning to end and now you see the result of that splashed all over the internet.

Whatever freedb2 ends up becoming I can guarantee you that it will be even more free than freedb.org. Please see http://freedb2.org/news.html for the specifics on that.

Re:no honor amongst theives

[swimin]

freedb had absolutly nothing to do with filesharing. If you had a cd, and wanted to rip it to mp3, ogg, flac, etc, you would want that file to be properly tagged. Everyone wants information like title, artist, name of album, order of songs on album, and year released, in every song they have stored digitally. Freedb only stored this information, to be used as you were ripping the cd, to automaticlly fill in all applicable information.

Re:no honor amongst theives

[Kjella]

Just stop being a bunch of cheap a-holes and BUY music that you like.

Umm if I was downloading MP3s from P2P networks, why would I need a freedb tagger? Find a source with EAC verified, high bitrate, properly tagged music and forget using this, chances are if it doesn't got the tags it'll suck anyway. CDDB, FreeDB and the like are fixes for an outdated format (CD Audio) from a time when noone needed those tags. Unless you think all the people ripping their own CDs to their iPod / PCs / HTPCs / media centers are thieves. This is too braindead to even be good flamebait.

Ahhh, those were the times

[m94mni]

I just now remembered what I did once, quite a while ago:

I recorded some of my (difficult-to-find) LPs to .wav, burned them to CD using gcdmaster, and ripped them to OGG, only to find that the ripping program actually guessed *correctly* the album and the titles of all the included songs.

Note that even though I marked the beginning and end of each song manually, it still found the right titles. freedb really rocks!

Get what you paid for?

[Kadin2048]

On one hand, I guess I can't criticize them too harshly, because it's not as though many of us (myself included) who are using the service were paying the developers any for their time, on the other hand, it seems a little unfortunate that the one developer decided to just abruptly pull the plug on the service when it was in use by so many people, without trying to see if there were others in the community of users willing to take over the project, if he no longer wanted to manage it.

It seems like there were three people on the project, and two of them wanted to take it non-free, one didn't; although I'm glad the remaining developer didn't go along with the other guys if they really wanted to make it non-free, I can't really understand why he would choose to just kill it outright rather than find people who were willing to maintain it, if nothing else.

I'm not sure whether this shows a shortcoming of the collaborative development model or not. It seems like it might be -- although I suppose projects managed by a "benevolent dictator" are also prone to shutting down if the person moves on / dies / whatever; however it seems like the a not insignificant number of projects that are run by teams without a clear leader close due to 'personality conflicts' over time.

On the other hand -- what is it with CD meta-databases and going non-free? Is it just that they seem like tempting revenue sources or what?

Re:Get what you paid for?

[megari]

It seems like there were three people on the project, and two of them wanted to take it non-free, one didn't

This is not true. He may have misunderstood us despite our repeated assertions that we have no intention of endangering freedb's freeness. We simply wanted to get things worked out so that all the requirements for freeness and other issues would be fulfilled so that everyone would be happy. He did something unexpected and unilateral while there was an effort to fix things which made us feel he didn't feel like discussing his actions with everyone anymore. This combined with all of the difficulties and the situation being effectively deadlocked eventually led into the decision of both of us leaving. Now having slept on it, I am not sure about whether it was right for me to feel that I couldn't continue with the person left. It is strange how one finds oneself blaming oneself over hastiness even though the decision took three days to make when faced with the need to make one. I'll see how things turn out. Things may or may not get well again. In any case, see this. It may help clear things out a little bit as it contains input from everyone involved. Also, the full front page of freedb.org contains some of our reasoning. The person left removed our response to his allegation that we wanted to make the project less free giving a somewhat distorted image of us to the general public, which has prompted me to make this response to make sure that misinformation doesn't turn into something everyone regards as the undisputed truth.

A quick fix

[houghi]

Not sure if the following will work, but if the directory structure is the same and you only need to change the URL, you could just edit your hosts file (or do it on router level or where ever). A lot easier then to update all the different programs for the different users:
Add to your hostfile:

203.58.241.10 freedb.org

Ugly, but it might work.

Re:So....

[bcat24]

The database is still there and lookups still work. For now at least.

Time to replicate the database!

[hernick]

By the Power of BitTorrent, the freedb.org database is made available to all.

Today, you can get the .torrent file on http://tracker.freedb.org/ - but if it ever becomes unavailable there, you can use a DHT-aware Bittorrent client such as Azureus and get it by using this info hash: 21AF020252FD2E556B683CEB123689733E0BC063

I, for one, have allocated a total of 16mbps of bandwith on four hosts to help seed this database. I'm seeing a total swarm performance of around 25mbps, so this should be a fast download for anybody who wants it.

Go ahead: feel the Power of BitTorrent and share this free database!

Share, my friends, share!

Gullible?

[Kjella]

Joerg on freedb:
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.

Well, if I'm reading between the lines correctly:
1) Ari and Joerg support some australian guy developing the "next-gen" freedb for two years
2) Australian guy doesn't want to release it as open/free for freedb (or all three?)
3) Ari and Joerg have either been suckers or part of an attempt at pulling another Gracenote
4) Kaiser won't play ball, it's freedb or no db at all. He finally tires and goes to the source.
5) The play is called, Ari and Joerg leave because the gig is up.

To put it this way, I would not be surprised to see another CD database show up soon, lead by an australian and maybe with a few more anonymous employees. Either that, or they're been really gullible. Never ever trust someone who says they'll open source it "soon". If that is their true intention, they would have no problem being open about it all the way. The only reason not to is when you're pulling a bait-n-switch like here. It seems clear to me that they expected it to be open source ("not yet open source", Joerg), it wasn't ("did not seem to be kept free", Kaiser) and that tore them apart.

Re:Gullible?

[Horar]

I am both "the Australian guy" and the author and host of http://freedb2.org./ I sincerely hope that in future you will spend a bit more time joining the dots before jumping to such sensational conclusions.

In the meantime, I invite you to enjoy http://freedb2.org/ and browse as much of the source code as I have had time to document and post on http://asmith.id.au/freedb.html and http://asmith.id.au/mod_libpq.html

Re:Gullible?

[arth1]

as much of the source code as I have had time to document

In the world of litigation we live in, it's all or nothing. Keeping even a single bit to your chest gives you the munitions to go after others, and prevents them from legally creating a derivative.

That you're going to release it to the public "Real Soon Now" just doesn't cut it -- it either is or it isn't, and those of us who remember GIF, RSA, JPEG and others will treat this as "isn't". This isn't paranoia -- it's experience.

--
*Art

Maybe move it to Wikipedia

[Animats]

Wikipedia is busily replicating GraceNote and IMDB, by hand, and not too well. They're using a wiki to do the job of a database. Some music types from Wikipedia should take this database and the data in Wikipedia and make something useful out of it.

Personally, I think that Wikipedia needs something like "Wikipedia Music and Movies", to which all content associated with music, movies, TV, and the people involved in the industry would be moved. More structured than Wikipedia Encyclopedia, Music and Movies would have standard database formats and slots for music and movies, indexed so that you could see all movies by some director or all songs by some musician. Wikipedia can't do that, but IMDB can.

Then Wikipedia needs "Wikipedia Atlas", a map-based system, for all those "State Route 93" entries. Wikipedia isn't spatial, and space is what keeps everything from being in the same place. An atlas system would be able to handle an endless number of "my favorite restaurant" articles. Wikipedia Travel already has something like this.

With that out of the way, Wikipedia would become more like an encyclopedia. Right now, it's drowning under the incoming cruft.

Re:Reasons for corporate setups

[NereusRen]

The reason that FreeDB stopped is because those in the lead couldn't come to a decision. This would almost never happen in a corporate environment. Any dispute would go up the chain until it hit the CEO or board of directors, where a firm decision one way or another would be made.

Did you even read the postings by any of the involved parties? Nothing would have been different in a "corporate" environment. What basically happened is a CEO-equivalent (someone who had control over the physical assets) DID make a firm decision. Then two people quit because they disagreed with the decision. It turned out these two people were the keys to the continued operation and development of the organization, so it closed down after they left. What exactly about this situation couldn't have happened in a corporation? The real heart of the problem was that the organization was so small that certain individuals were irreplacable, so maybe you were just confusing "corporation" with "large operation."

Hierarchy does not prevent disagreement. If a disagreement is small enough that nobody is willing to quit over it, then hierarchy can make a decision that would otherwise bog them down in debate and waste time... but this was obviously not such a case.

Unlike you, I won't claim to know the reasons why this happened, since I don't have all the details. I will only lament the death of an extremely useful project, and thank everyone involved for all the time, work and money they put into it. We can only hope a similar (and similarly free and open) project can rise to take its place.

Re:I'd just like to say,

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only person who took the effort to do a bit of investigation? For instance, freedb:

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.

Grandparent's urls are Australian, he calls the project freedb2, and there's very little source code to be found: I'm guessing that he's this Australian.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I have the utmost respect for people who donate their free time to making software for gratis, but when that developer pledges (of sorts) to make a replacement to an OSS product, gets support from the developers of the product being replaced (was that support monetary?), and refuses to free that code, which in turn contributes to toppling another (well known and widely depended on -- yes, I know freedb still works, but still) project, I am slightly angered, to say the least.

And what stops him from now never opening that code? Replacing a FOSS product with simply a gratis product is a net loss, from where I'm standing.

Re:I'd just like to say,

[binkzz]

He is the Aussie; from one of the original developers:

"freedb2 is the development project that played a big role in the demise of freedb. That the developer is advertising it here now, apparently trying to profit from what he caused is immoral in my opinion.
Additionally, using the name freedb2.org is stealing freedb's name. Furthermore horar has not yet released source code or a database dump, so as of this moment, freedb2 is a closed source project, which violates the GPL under which the database archives are released. Even if the GPL may not be enforceable in this case, not releasing a database dump is certainly morally wrong."

Re:Reasons for corporate setups

[DamnStupidElf]

While I believe that free, open source software is very good and should be used more widely, this is an example of where corporate solutions can prevail.

Good idea, I'll jump on my brand new Amiga and dial up Genie and Compuserve, download and buy a couple of those cool sidescrollers people call abandonware (ha!) and kill a few hours. When I'm done I think I'll upgrade my Windows 95 box with the latest patches after I buy the commercial version of Trumpet Winsock. When I'm done, I'll rip some CDs with the software that came with my CD ROM drive, and I'm sure there will be some online commercial CD database that has all the indie artists I like to listen to!

The reason that FreeDB stopped is because those in the lead couldn't come to a decision. This would almost never happen in a corporate environment. Any dispute would go up the chain until it hit the CEO or board of directors, where a firm decision one way or another would be made. In the mean time, the product would merely remain unchanged (unless company policy specifies otherwise), so there would be no interruption in service.

Half the time the firm corporate decision is to completely end a project and either auction all the IP off to some lawyer-filled clearinghouse or just let it rot until the backups are no good anymore. Corporations can die just as easily as open source projects too, but unfortunately their corpses aren't easily reanimated like the open projects.

Re:I'd just like to say,

[gnosygnus]

someone mod parent up. horar/freedb2's motives are not in full disclosure. hopefully not bad etiquette to post links to digg, but the comments are worth reading.

source of parent post: http://digg.com/software/freedb_s_future_uncertain
more comments on freedb: http://www.digg.com/linux_unix/freedb_is_closing_d own

at any rate, there seems to be more to horar's involvement than originally stated.

Re:Good riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't. CD-TEXT does not support double byte character. IOW, no UTF-*.

Re:I'd just like to say,

[Anonumous Coward]

Please do your homework. The freedb database dump is released under the GPL with the following addendum:

For purposes of interpreting the GPL in connection with this work: The
database is distributed in the form of plain text files. These
will generally be processed into to another form. The text form should
be considered "source code" and the other form should be considered a
"compiled program".

This means, the moment you publish the database in any other format than a dump (e.g. through another front end), you must publish a dump of your own. If freedb2.org is using any part of freedb.org's database, it is currently infringing freedb.org's copyrights.

Re:I'd just like to say,

[dfjghsk]

IANAL.. but in Feist v. Rural the supreme court ruled that the telephone directory (ie: phone book) was not copyrightable.

Wikipedia:

Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991),[1] commonly called just Feist v. Rural, was a United States Supreme Court case in which Feist copied information from Rural's telephone listings to include in its own, after Rural refused to license the information. Rural sued for copyright infringement. The Court ruled that information contained in Rural's phone directory was not copyrightable, and that therefore no infringement existed.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling

I would think that the case would apply here.. since both the information in FreeDB's db, and the information in the phone book are just collections of public information.