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Freedb.org Ending 245

Posted by jamie from the this-too dept.
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."
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Freedb.org Ending More

Freedb.org Ending

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  • Damn. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bcat24 ( 914105 ) on Sunday July 02, 2006 @09:14PM (#15647733) Homepage Journal
    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 [musicbrainz.org] to take over. :)

    • Re:Damn. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Sunday July 02, 2006 @09:22PM (#15647757) Journal
      Freedb is a knockoff of cddb, so I'd imagine that the grandknockoff is going to continue with the same protocol.

    • freedb2.org compatibility (Score:5, Informative)

      by Horar ( 521864 ) <horar99NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday July 02, 2006 @09:32PM (#15647784) Homepage
      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 [freedb2.org]. 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 [asmith.id.au] and also http://asmith.id.au/mod_libpq.html [asmith.id.au].

      • Re:freedb2.org compatibility (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bcat24 ( 914105 ) on Sunday July 02, 2006 @09:59PM (#15647862) Homepage Journal
        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.
      • So how come my client says "invalid response format" when I use freedb2.org, but still works fine with freedb.org?
      • Well, I've got the freedb from last year in MySQL format if you want it. It's available at http://www.indycomics.org/FreeDB [indycomics.org] (please be kind to my T1) Granted it is from November (20051104) from last year. I will be releasing the current update in MySQL format soon. All of the source code used to generate the MySQL version is available at the same place. Hope someone finds it useful.
      • There are also some new features which I will be documenting shortly.


        Document, as in release the code, as in free, as in freedb?
        Ah. Thought not. Please take your advertising elsewhere, then.

        --
        *Art

      • Re:freedb2.org compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)

        by smallpaul ( 65919 ) <paul @ p r e s c o d . net> on Monday July 03, 2006 @02:21AM (#15648497)

        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:Damn. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Sunday July 02, 2006 @09:32PM (#15647785)
      This is one of the most significant flaws of using Open Source Software: egos .

      Damn is right.

      • Re:Damn. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by fiendo ( 217830 )
        How is this not also a flaw of collaborative closed source software? Are they not also susceptible to egos??


        At least when egos get in the way of OSS, the community can muddle along with the source code. When the same thing happens to closed source software, what are we left with?

      • Re:Damn. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by LinuxGeek ( 6139 ) * <djand...nc@@@gmail...com> on Sunday July 02, 2006 @09:50PM (#15647843)
        This is one of the most significant flaws of using Open Source Software: egos .

        Damn is right.


        Yeah, we all know that egotism would never play a part in any closed source project or company.

        • Re:Damn. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by JohnnyBigodes ( 609498 )
          It does, but then money comes along and closes the argument right there, right now.

          • Re:Damn. (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Waffle Iron ( 339739 )
            It does, but then money comes along and closes the argument right there, right now.
            Not really. Countless companies have been destroyed as a consequence of the egos of the people running them, regardless of how much money they stood to gain or lose.
          • Really? So you are saying no corporation has ever lost money pursuing some product or service because the CEO was stroking his ego?

            I know for a fact 75% of all decisions in the companies I worlked in were made from a position of ego. It mattered very much who came up with the idea, way more then what the idea was.

            • Re:Damn. (Score:5, Insightful)

              by BrynM ( 217883 ) * on Sunday July 02, 2006 @11:26PM (#15648099) Homepage Journal
              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 [wikipedia.org]. Turned a company that once had many products to a shitty litigation house with few [sco.com] 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 [wikiquote.org])?

              • Re:Damn. (Score:5, Interesting)

                by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Monday July 03, 2006 @02:42AM (#15648536)
                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.

      • Free software for maintainance. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jbn-o ( 555068 ) <mail@digitalcitizen.info> on Sunday July 02, 2006 @09:55PM (#15647856) Homepage
        At the end of proprietary software development, the project ends and the free software community has to either do without or start anew from whatever they've got (which is not the proprietary program's source code and a license to run, inspect, share, and modify at any time for any reason). At the end of a free software project, others can pick up where the former free software hackers left off and continue improving the free software. If the license for the program is a copylefted free software license, the improved software continues to be free.

        Let's hope source code for freedb2.org and database dumps from freedb2.org are shared under a free software license so that if freedb2.org dies we're not left with nothing but an increasingly out-of-date freedb.org database and freedb.org software.

        Thanks so much for all the work, freedb.org hackers. Your efforts are greatly appreciated.

  • good database, but could have been so much more. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CaptainCheese ( 724779 ) on Sunday July 02, 2006 @09:24PM (#15647761) Journal
    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..

    • Get what you paid for? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kadin2048 ( 468275 ) <.ten.yxox. .ta. .nidak.todhsals.> on Sunday July 02, 2006 @09:43PM (#15647826) Homepage Journal
      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? (Score:4, Informative)

        by megari ( 986305 ) on Monday July 03, 2006 @06:56AM (#15649068)
        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 [digg.com]. 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 blob field for album covers would be great too, so programs like Amarok don't have to point to Amazon.com's limited collection.

  • "/." Schizm. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02, 2006 @09:28PM (#15647771)
    ""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.

  • have you got ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ElephanTS ( 624421 ) on Sunday July 02, 2006 @09:31PM (#15647782)
    "Another One Bites The Dust" ?

  • Ahhh, those were the times (Score:4, Interesting)

    by m94mni ( 541438 ) on Sunday July 02, 2006 @09:42PM (#15647823)
    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!

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday July 02, 2006 @09:51PM (#15647847)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Reasons for corporate setups (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RyoShin ( 610051 ) <<tukaro> <at> <gmail.com>> on Sunday July 02, 2006 @09:56PM (#15647859) Homepage Journal
    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.

    I've used FreeDB for a while now with the CD ripping program I use (Goldwave, highly recommended), and it had its pros and cons.

    On the plus side, I could find listings for more foreign/anime CDs than I could using CDDB (a corporate company, used by the likes of WinAmp and WMP, I believe).

    On the minus side, there were a few moderately popular to very popular CDs that had no listing. Also, more than a few CDs (including the foreign CDs mentioned) had more than one listing, each with small differences (some with large differences, such as translated song titles, or even just misspelled words), so you had to go through each one to find one that suited you. (One might argue that the choice was good, but in this case it was just annoying.)

    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.

    Had FreeDB used a similar hierarchy (which they may have had, but it just fell apart), this might have been avoided. The programmers/engineers would dispute something, and the project lead/lead engineer would hear both sides and say "This is this, and that's that."

    Certainly, this will be an inconvenience to those who use programs that use FreeDB, but have no idea that the program does.

    • Re:Reasons for corporate setups (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NereusRen ( 811533 ) on Sunday July 02, 2006 @10:35PM (#15647945)
      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.
      • However, in the corporation, they could probobly offer up the salaries provided to the 2 former workers and grab a few new hires to take over the position. They would most likey have the skillset but not the familiarity with the software so there would be some training time before they could begin to implement new functions. In the mean time, the project would continue to run as it is (though, freedb is still there...the front page has a link to take you to the site...its just that it might go away any ti

      • Re:Reasons for corporate setups (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jeriqo ( 530691 ) <jeriqo&unisson,org> on Monday July 03, 2006 @01:18AM (#15648379)
        "What exactly about this situation couldn't have happened in a corporation?"

        If you don't see the difference, then just wait for CDDB to stop, and call me back.
      • Well, it isn't a question of whether it could happen in a corporation -- such things do happen occasionally. However, they are much less likely to because the people involved rely on their jobs to do things like pay for food. You don't just decide to quit your job immediately because you're unhappy with somebody else's decisions -- that's just the time that you start looking for another position.

        In a well-run for-profit software development group, there is nobody who is indispensible -- companies don't wa
    • 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.

      Bonkers

      Had FreeDB used a similar hierarchy (which they may have had, but it just fell apart), this might have been avoided. The programmers/engineers would dispute something, and the project lead/lead engineer would hear both sides and say "This is this, and that's that."

      And what happens, when they still disagree ? Bad enough that they want to quit ?

    • Re:Reasons for corporate setups (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DamnStupidElf ( 649844 ) <Fingolfin@linuxmail.org> on Sunday July 02, 2006 @11:19PM (#15648081)
      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.

  • Time to replicate the database! (Score:5, Informative)

    by hernick ( 63550 ) on Sunday July 02, 2006 @10:13PM (#15647891)
    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/ [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? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Sunday July 02, 2006 @10:22PM (#15647908) Homepage
    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? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Horar ( 521864 ) <horar99NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday July 02, 2006 @11:02PM (#15648025) Homepage
      I am both "the Australian guy" and the author and host of http://freedb2.org./ [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/ [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 [asmith.id.au] and http://asmith.id.au/mod_libpq.html [asmith.id.au]

      • Re:Gullible? (Score:3, Funny)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )
        I sincerely hope that in future you will spend a bit more time joining the dots before jumping to such sensational conclusions.

        Hell no. This is slashdot, I never let the facts, logic or reason get in the way of a good conspiracy theory. Also I clicked one page past what's linking in TFA, that's practicly research! Slashdot - Fox News for nerds (with a different political slant, too!). I do know how to make serious research and sometimes I do, but mostly it's just much more fun to see what will get modded up

      • Re:Gullible? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Monday July 03, 2006 @12:16AM (#15648217) Homepage Journal
        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

        • Re:Gullible? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Ohreally_factor ( 593551 ) on Monday July 03, 2006 @01:04AM (#15648351) Journal
          I don't buy the all or nothing thing. If he releases the code in the next several weeks, and as he says, he's adding documentation, cleaning it up. etc., where is the problem? If he just dumped the code, there are likely to be just as many complaints.

          If I take some GPL code, I can make any changes I want to it and no one can force me to distribute the source. (As long as I do not attempt to distribute/sell the binaries, of course). If Andrew (or whatever his name is) hasn't attempted to distribute binaries that contain GPL code (and I'm not sure we know that he has for a fact), then we need to back the fuck up.

          • Re:Gullible? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Carewolf ( 581105 ) on Monday July 03, 2006 @03:11AM (#15648581) Homepage
            The fact that he has promised to release the source "the next couple of weeks" for the last 2 years?

          • I don't buy the all or nothing thing. If he releases the code in the next several weeks, and as he says, he's adding documentation, cleaning it up. etc., where is the problem? If he just dumped the code, there are likely to be just as many complaints.

            I think the point being made was that in a world where someone can be sued and forced to remove software from distribution - either from legal rulings or the threat of litigation forcing a chioce of financial priorities - saying that the source will be relea

            • Fair enough. Perhaps part of the problem is that we are relying on two imperfect mechanisms for conflict resolution: The courts and the court of public opinion. Someone wants this tried in the second court, thus the spill-over to slashdot.

              I think that what bothers me is the tendency (of both humans and slashdotters) to form lynch mobs based on incomplete facts or even distortions of the facts. I can't really even tell what the conflict is about from the "article" (lack of article); seems more like a develop

          • Re:Gullible? (Score:3, Informative)

            by Bob9113 ( 14996 )
            If he releases the code in the next several weeks, and as he says, he's adding documentation, cleaning it up. etc., where is the problem?

            The problem is, right now, he's asking us to contribute data to him while trusting to his good will. That is exactly what CDDB did. Do you remember CDDB? They were the FreeDB before FreeDB. They took our data, then told us to fuck off while they sold it.

            If he just dumped the code, there are likely to be just as many complaints.

            True, but making the code better will not chan
      • I'll check into that real soon now.

      • Re:Gullible? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Monday July 03, 2006 @10:45AM (#15649961) Journal
        In the meantime, I invite you to enjoy http://freedb2.org/ [freedb2.org] and browse as much of the source code as I have had time to document

        The GPL does not allow you to wait until the code is polished and documented to distribute it. If there are users, they must have access to the code, in whatever state it's in. Post a tarball now, and post a revision when you're done documenting it. Anything else is criminal.

  • Maybe move it to Wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday July 02, 2006 @10:28PM (#15647926) Homepage

    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.

    • Better organization sounds like a good idea, but perhaps it could be done with less work for the editors. I believe those pages already have standard templates that are used, so couldn't you just make the templates special? I mean, provide a way for a template variable to be treated as metadata for a page, so if you have a song template and an artist variable, a search could be done for songs by that artist. It would not make sense to give this treatment to the vast majority of template arguments, so there

  • freedb has sucked for ages, though... (Score:3, Informative)

    by yoasif ( 969247 ) on Monday July 03, 2006 @12:35AM (#15648270)

    freedb has sucked almost since it's inception. Multiple entries for the same album, hard to do Various Artist albums, lots of misspellings and mistakes, and no way to ""fix" the problems.

    I really hope people take this opportunity to check out Musicbrainz [musicbrainz.org], a MUCH nicer alternative. It's (mostly) open source, runs on Linux, Mac and Windows.

    Also, it's community moderated like Wikipedia, and it has loads of information about releases, something which was nonexistent on freedb.

  • would a massively-replicated and -distributed p2p database of song information be a better answer to this need? why put all the eggs in one cranky-developer basket, especially when such a large number of individuals have contributed their typing to building it?

  • Who cares? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Monday July 03, 2006 @08:14AM (#15649319)
    The essential part about all this is the collaboratively filtered and collected data, right? And that is out in the wild and still available as a package, correct?
    Copy, Fork, Install, Build a cool website, have yourself a fresh OSS project. No big deal.
    Ideal for anyone who needs to make themselves a name as DB admin / web services expert. ...Mmmmh... Coming to think of it ... does anyone know the mean load of late freedb?

    Anyway, a handfull of weeks and we'll have an alternative and freedb will be history (no pun intened).

    My 2 cents.

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