Freedb.org Seeks Volunteers 29
dtype writes "freedb.org is asking for your help. With the ever increasing popularity of freedb, the all-volunteer service has required more and more time. Joerg Hevers has been absorbing the brunt of the load for some time now, and we should all thank him for that. We're now looking for volunteers who would like to spend time on this great service, so that we can continue to serve the community at expected levels."
Re:alternative (Score:3, Insightful)
Now we're supposed to go back to cddb? um...
Re:alternative (Score:1)
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.
Re:alternative (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:alternative (Score:3, Informative)
Re:alternative (Score:3, Interesting)
Furthermore, I have never seen - and Gracenote has seemingly never provided - evidence that they have turned a profit on the rape of their initial users labor. They could be gone tomorrow, and it is more likely that they will go away then freedb.
Re:alternative (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, "if you want to use us, we get to be a monopoly". Your application can't even offer the end user an option to select between using ccdb and some other cd databse.
Sorry. Even Microsoft doesn't require a developer to use only its API if he uses any part of Microsoft's API.
Screw ccdb: I'll type in the song names before I'll use a service that tries to arrogate itself to monopoly status, especially when they rely on end users to do the actual data entry.
Re:alternative (Score:3, Informative)
For example, freedb is open source, which means anyone can upload track listings. The result is 30 spellings of "Oops I did it again!", while anything that isn't in the top 40 is unrecognized.
I'll grant you the spelling issues, but I have a fairly eclectic collection, and I think the only one that freedb came up empty on was an obscure local band. Anyway, if it misses, you add them for the next person. That's the whole point of the system, isn't it? If you just want to leach off of the work of others, then stick with CDDB.
Fool me once (Score:1, Insightful)
Uh-huh, I've never heard that story before. no way. nuh uh. [cddb.org]
Translation: "Shit, gracenote made a pile of cash, we can do the same thing, and eventually rip everyone off and make a pile of cash too!". I was fooled once before, I will not be fooled again.
Re:Fool me once (Score:1)
Did you ever worked for a project that takes more that 15 hours a week of your spare time to set up and start working? Right now, it takes even more time to keep this service running.
We spend/spent a lot of time an money getting where we are now, we are doing this for fun and to don't even think about commercial ads on our website or charing the user for the service or ANY other way to lower our personal financial expenses and we try to assure everyone that freedb will NEVER take the gracenote-way. That's why we put everything under an open licence.
Re:They just told you... (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:They just told you... (Score:1, Flamebait)
No paragraph of introduction on the home page. (Score:1)
Re:No paragraph of introduction on the home page. (Score:2, Informative)
It's really not tough. It's almost, dare I say, intuitive. Slashdot's homepage doesn't have a description about how it works, but even you managed to figure it out. So why are you complaining?
Re:No paragraph of introduction on the home page. (Score:2)
Re:No paragraph of introduction on the home page. (Score:1)
The only time that someone needs an overview of a project is the first time they check it out. If that person is too lazy to click two links to get a general overview, then I don't think it's the open source home page that has the problem. The pages obviously cater to the people who contribute to the project (and, indirectly, those who just want to follow the project's progress). If someone is interested enough in a project to help it out, they'll follow the 'About' link.
Re:No paragraph of introduction on the home page. (Score:2)
Well, OK.
But you do see that this is the problem your typical Windows user has with open source, right? That it's too complicated, too obscure, too concerned with "in-crowd" obfuscation and jargonizing, and not anywhere as user-friendly as Microsoft's talking paper-clip?
No way I'm going to devote hours and hours to a project, just to see it languish without users because I can't point to a crisp, clear, informative homepage.
But if you have other agendas, like showing the in-crowd how cool and terse your documentation can be, so be it. Whatever floats your boat, it's all good.
Re:No paragraph of introduction on the home page. (Score:1)
First time I went there it took a few frustrating seconds to pick up on the fact that I'd have to click on "about" to find out what it was. This was caused by my expectations of what product homepages usually are, and it would have been nice to have been given an instant pointer to the info I needed initially to know.
I agree that you have to be pretty stupid to not be able to work it out, but some people are pretty stupid.
It's fun to violate DMCA (Score:3, Interesting)
One that acts as a proxy to intercept requests going out to CDDB.
This is a direct violation of the DMCA. The CDDB protocol version 2 (used in newer apps) is proprietary and encrypted, and it controls access to a copyrighted compilation of data maintained by Gracenote. However, for CDDB 1 apps, a napigator-like program that intercepts DNS for cddb.com should work fine.
DeMoCrAcy?
I *gotta* start reading these things (Score:1)
Yeesh.