Musikdatenbank freedb.org wird eingestellt
Wie auf freedb.org nachzulesen ist, wird das Projekt, das eine freie Version der lizenzpflichtigen Musikdatenbank CDDB verkörpert, aufgrund von Differenzen zwischen den Betreibern in naher Zukunft eingestellt.
Freedb.org wurde im Jahre 2000 gegründet, um eine freie Version der lizenzpflichtigen Suchsoftware, mittels derer man anhand einer automatisierten Internetabfrage Name, Titel und weitere Informationen einer eingelegten CD abrufen kann, zu erstellen. Während kostenpflichtige Programme zum Teil auf die kostenpflichtige Version von Gracenote zurückgriffen, nutzten Freeware-Programme vermehrt die OpenSource-Version, welche dadurch zunehmend beliebter wurde und mehr und mehr an Verbreitung und Akzeptanz gewann.
Aufgrund interner Querelen haben letztes Wochenende die drei Betreiber der Seite nach und nach das Handtuch geschmissen. Ob und inwieweit das Projekt nun aufgeteilt, oder zur Gänze eingestampft werden wird, ist noch unklar. Das Einzige, was Michael Kaiser auf seiner Seite Freedb.org dazu schreibt, ist, dass das Projekt ohne Jörg Hevers und Ari Sundholm technisch nicht fortgesetzt werden kann.
Hier die Beiträge der drei Betreiber im zeitlichen Verlauf:
Today, after six long years, it is time for me to say goodbye to freedb. I started off creating database archives for download and finding ftp mirrors to host it in 2000 and ended up being responsible for basically every aspect of freedb. I feel like freedb is a part of my identity and it is ripping me apart, having to leave it now.
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.
With every chance gone for the developed software to become part of freedb and with the necessary basic level of trust between the owner of the domain freedb.org and me being destroyed, I see no more point in investing my spare time in this. I am not sure what me leaving will really mean for freedb, but considering my experiences from the past six years, I expect the future is not looking too bright. It is devastating for me to see that this issue could accomplish in a matter of weeks what Gracenote couldn't do for 7 long years since freedb was started.
I would like to thank the freedb community who made this service what it is today by helping out in various ways and submitting lots and lots of new database entries to us. We started with less than 200.000 database entries - today we have more than 2.000.000. YOU are the ones who made this worth doing and who make it so hard for me to leave.
I would also like to especially thank the mirror administrators for contributing their time, bandwidth and servers. Without them, freedb would not have been able to cope with the load that came with it's success. Special thanks go to Drew Streib, who has provided our master server for free for all this time, and Ari Sundholm, who has run freedb together with me for the past few years and tried to work on a solution with me till the last minute.
If you really need to contact me for some reason, use my personal e-mail address j.hevers at web.de.
[p]
After several years of successful work I am leaving freedb along with Jörg due to the current situation being unbearable. Without Jörg most of the fun of being part of freedb is gone and I do not believe I could work successfully with Mr. Kaiser whose definition of teamwork seems to vary from day to day and whom I have lost trust in.
I thank all the users, mirror server administrators, contributors, users and lurkers who have with their interest and support made this work worth it. Because of you I leave with a heavy heart and great sorrow and anxiety over the future of freedb.
Ari Sundholm
[p]
freedb is not able to operate without Joerg and Ari. There are other - hopefully free - projects that will take over freedbs heritage in a better way and stay free. freedbs future did not seem to be kept free regarding the lastest developments, so I tried to steer against this as I felt it more important to stay free instead of getting fancy web 2.0 features. But unfortunately Joerg and Ari (the main doers behind freedb) disagreed with me and decided that they want to go another direction. I will refuse to comment their postings in plublic and I will thank both Ari anf Jörg for their work and their support.
Now being sick of how things turned out lately and I am not being able to run the project with the people in freedb left, I will stop this project in the forseeable future.
If somebody is interested in a pretty well-known domain, send an offer to: lurchentsafter at gmail.com
Sorry for this.
[p]
Mittlerweile steht ein Mirror der freedb.org-Datenbank im Internet zur Verfügung. Die komplette Kopie (Dump) ist unter der Adresse http://www.freedb2.org/ zu erreichen. Wie es sich mit der Aktualisierung der Datenbank weitergeht, ist bis dato noch unklar.
Fabian und 
Jan-Frederik