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Freedb:

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freedb is a database of compact disc track listings, where all the content is under the GNU General Public License. It was originally based on the now-proprietary CDDB (compact disc database). As of April 24, 2006, the database holds just under 2,000,000 CDs.^[1] To look up CD information over the Internet, a client program calculates a hash function from the CD table of contents and uses it as a disc ID to query the database.

The hash function used produces a 32 bit id,

* but does not use the full range of 32 bit numbers
* only uses a small proportion of the information from the table of contents
* does not map the set of likely tables of contents to 32 bit integers in a very uniform way
* and does not even map the set of possible tables of contents to 32 bit integers in a very uniform way.

All of these factors can be deduced from the trivial hash algorithm used[1]. The net result is that collisions (where two different CDs have the same ID) are a commonplace nuisance to users.

On July 1, 2006, two of the main freedb developers resigned.^[2]. Although this caused much worrying over the future of the project, it was announced on July 7, 2006^[3] that plans were in place that would most likely find freedb a new home and it would continue its operation as normal.

On October 4, 2006, freedb owner Michael Kaiser announced^[4] that Magix had acquired freedb.

On 25 June 2007, MusicBrainz — a project with similar goals — officially released their freedb gateway. The latter allows users to harvest information from the MusicBrainz database rather than freedb.^[5]

1 Motivation
2 References
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Motivation

The original software behind CDDB was released under the GNU General Public License, and many people submitted CD information thinking the service would also remain free. The license was later changed, however, and some programmers complained that the new license included certain terms that they couldn't accept: if one wanted to access CDDB, one was not allowed to access any other CDDB-like database (such as freedb), and any programs using a CDDB lookup had to display a CDDB logo while performing the lookup.^[6]

In March 2001, CDDB, now owned by Gracenote, banned all unlicensed applications from accessing their database. New licenses for CDDB1 (the original version of CDDB) were no longer available, since Gracenote wanted to force programmers to switch to CDDB2 (a new version incompatible with CDDB1 and hence with freedb).^[6]

The license change motivated the freedb project, which is intended to remain free.

freedb is used primarily by media players, cataloguers, audio taggers and CD ripper software. As of version 6 of the freedb protocol, freedb accepts and returns UTF-8 data.