freedb has been taken over by a private, for-profit company and there
are big changes going on:

http://www.freedb.org/

Note there's a prominent "beta" logo on the site.

> Text-based search online again
> 
> The functionality of the old, well-known text-based search engine is
> available again with some optimizations at www.freedb.org. We are
> planning further improvements with regard to usability and expert
> search, speed and shortcuts, which explains the beta version status.

> Continuation of the free database guaranteed
> 
> With the acquisition of the www.freedb.org domain MAGIX also takes on
> all duties regarding the worldwide freedb community:
> 
> * the entire freedb service has been running since the middle of
> September on the MAGIX servers (including the FTP download function of
> the open source database and archive)
> * this service will remain license-free and will be available for
> unrestricted use by any commercial or non-commercial user or developer
> * all updates to the database will also continue to be regularly
> and freely available
> * the licence for the data and the corresponding server or service
> software will remain under GPL
> 
> Furthermore, MAGIX runs the mirror server and hosts the website as well
> as the new forum. This secures a basis for theprosperity of freedb and
> its main aim: the data collected by the users for the users will be
> kept freely available in thefuture - guaranteed. MAGIX will add its
> know-how to help with the continued development of the service
> according to the GPL.Every developer from the present community is
> invited to continue to actively contribute to the successful continuity
> of freedb.

Despite assurances to the contrary, I believe this can't be good.  The
same thing happened to CDDB which was converted into Gracenote and then
closed to many applications.


-- 
Mark Lanctot
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Lanctot's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2071
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=40840

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