Re:alternative (Score 1)

Yeah, it was developed as an alternative to cddb. See, a bunch of people got really upset at cddb as they had been plugging in all these tracklists and other assorted CD info for free, and along comes Gracenote, buys out whoever was the prime mover behind cddb, and promptly starts capitalizing on a lot of work done gratis by a large community. Hence, freedb.

I don't remember exactly, but I think there's some sort of GPL-ish clause in freedb that would prevent such a crass co-opting. At least I hope so.