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The Development of MusicBrainz

MusicBrainz is being developed in small evolutionary steps and this Wiki provides an important resource for this process.

There are some MigrationGuidelines emerging. They are not fixed yet, but should help you get an idea of how a change migrates form idea to its final implementation.

How Development Works

There is a common misconception about HowDevelopmentWorks, that has emerged around 2005. It is that every user has a say in development. While we value constructive feedback, MusicBrainz is a very complex system and it takes a lot of time to get accustomed to it, so that your ideas make sense for the whole system.

In order to rectify this a bit we will list the MajorContributors. This should make one thing clear: Just because developers listen to and value the input of some MajorContributors, they might not enjoy your whining. This is a pretty harsh statement, but it refects quite well, how the major developers feel.

So remember MusicBrainz is a meritocracy. The people who do the work decide how things are done. If you want to have a say in that, too, get involved. Learn and become a MajorContributor, too.

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• Status: The following stuff is pretty outdated. We use Trac as a BugTracker now and the timeline should give you an idea, what is planned for the near future. Also the MajorContributors post to the BrainzBlog every once in a while.

Ideally, each idea, feature, and piece of work has a FeaturePage of its own in this Wiki. The pages FutureWork, CurrentWork, FinishedWork and DormantWork list the respective features, their status and who is working on them. This way an idea moves from NewFeatureSuggestions to a FeaturePage of its own, which will be listed first in FutureWork, then CurrentWork, and finally FinishedWork or DormantWork.

If you'd like to help develop more MusicBrainz features, but are uncertain on where to start, take a look at the DevelopmentToDoList that gives lots of details on what features need to be implemented or improved.

If you have a cool idea for MusicBrainz you can list it under NewFeatureSuggestions. But If you are more serious about it or want to contribute, a good place to find out what to do might be TurningYourIdeasIntoReality. You might also read HowToWriteFeatureSuggestions.

Before writing up your suggestion, you may also want to look at the list of CurrentProblems with MusicBrainz (for complex issues where it isn't clear what the best solution is), and the list of known bugs for simpler issues.

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FutureWork

• FutureWork lists Ideas suggestions and plans for future development of MusicBrainz that have come up in the MailingList. Small unspecific ideas can be listed in NewFeatureSuggestions until they grow up enough to have a FeaturePage of their own.

• FutureWork implies that the idea is something that has already been discussed at least once and is beeing worked out, but has not been started yet. You can use NewFeatureSuggestions for suggestions and discussion that go beyond the scope of the MailingList, but haven't been OK'd yet, as something that MB needs, or wants. Once an idea has been polished up, and deemed something that would be good for MB, it would move to FutureWork, which should list only those ideas that are definitely on the slate of things that 'will' be worked on... just not yet.

CurrentWork

• CurrentWork links to FeaturePages of features that are currently worked on by somebody. This is the most interesting part of MusicBrainzDevelopment.

FinishedWork

• Once things are finished they move to FinishedWork. Hopefully the feature will then get intertwingled into the MusicBrainzDocumentation

DormantWork

• We also have efforts documented here that are not finished, outdated, discarded or the like. DormantWork is the appropriate index for this (as it might be taken up again).

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Stuff

Status: The following is more or less garbage. This section has not been restructured yet. It countains a list without much explanative text and thus many outdated and misplaced/misnamed pages.

• There is some stuff left, that was listed under CurrentWork but seems to be EditingGuidelines or something similar. This is part of the BigMess.

  • OddReleaseDiscussion -- Examples of releases that are hard to categorize

  • UnresolvedStyleIssues -- Style issues not resolved by the style guide

  • MusicBrainzPhilosophy -- Discussion on guiding principles and philosophies

• There is a lot of stuff that I do not know enough about to decide myself whether this is FutureWork, CurrentWork or FinishedWork, or something completly different. Some of these pages are outdated and others are very specific. I cannot tidy this section. Can someone please help here! --DonRedman

  • TechnologyIdeas -- Ideas relating to MusicBrainz's underlying technology

  • SingleToMultiEnhancements -- Enhancing the conversion from single to multiple artists.

    • What is the status of this page? It should be called SingleToMultipleArtistsConversion by the way --DonRedman

  • Database

    • CopyProtectedCDs

    • LicenseTag

  • Server

    • AutoInsertFromFreeDB

    • TriggerBasedReplication

    • SoapInterface

    • PythonMusicbrainz

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CategoryDevelopment NeedsUpdating NeedsEditing