Social Contract

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This social contract defines the spirit behind MusicBrainz and its community. This contract is not a legally binding contract; for legal information regarding products (including the MusicBrainz Database), please consult the license page.

  1. MusicBrainz will remain 100% free: The development process will be open to the public by using public mailing lists, meetings open to interested parties, and open IRC channels. The client and server software will remain free and accessible under generally accepted open licenses. The factual database content will be in the public domain and the non-factual database content will be released under a Creative Commons license.

  2. We will give back to the web and free software community: When we add extensions to MusicBrainz we will license them as free software or content. We will make the best system we can, so that our free encyclopedia will be widely distributed and used. We will feed back bug-fixes, improvements, user requests, etc. using public mailing lists and/or open meetings.

  3. We won't hide problems and policies: We will keep all MusicBrainz related discussions open for public view at all times, regardless of their content. All problems and policies related to MusicBrainz will be visible to all.

  4. Our priorities are our users, free content, and free software: We will be guided by the needs of our users, free content and software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We won't object to commercial use of our content, companies can use the work of our volunteers without any charge, but charging for the content itself is forbidden. We aim to follow the GPL in that "You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee."

  5. MusicBrainz is interested in all types of music: MusicBrainz aims to collect information about all types of music. Published/unpublished, popular/fringe, western/non-western and human/non-human music should all be entered into MusicBrainz. MusicBrainz does not discriminate on sex, religion, race or controversial viewpoints. MusicBrainz does not prefer one type of music over another, which also means that MusicBrainz does not condemn or condone any of the music catalogued in the database. Editors and voters are expected to tolerate viewpoints that may differ from their own.

  6. No warranty or liability for errors: There is no warranty for the content of the MusicBrainz database or the software. It is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind for correctness or completeness.