On October 30, 2014 at 2pm Pacific Time (5pm Eastern, 21:00 UK/GMT, 22:00 CET) we’re going to upgrade the RAM in our database server. This means that we’ll have a complete site-wide outage for about 15 minutes.
We’ll tweet details from @musicbrainz as the time approaches and we’ll have a notice on the site shortly before the down time.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Version 1.3 of Picard has been released today, with some notable features and bug fixes.
This release has few visible changes, but overall performance and stability were much improved. A lot of minor annoying issues were fixed. Cover art code was reworked, and notably one can now enable fallback on release group cover art if no cover art exists for a specific release.
Logging was improved, user can now enable debug mode from About →View Error/Debug Log, it may help to see what is going on if needed, passwords and sensible information were hidden from the log, so user can now safely post his log to get help.
To report any issue concerning this release, please use our bug tracker. As usual you can also get help on forum or on IRC (freenode, #musicbrainz).
Special thanks to Sophist, Wieland Hoffmann, Michael Wiencek, Johannes Dewender, Lukáš Lalinský, Frederik “Freso” S. Olesen, and the whole MusicBrainz Team.
Many thanks to all users, developers, bug reporters and translators. Code contributions since 1.2 are visible on Github Contributors graph.
Unfortunately the OAuth support patch (PICARD-305) didn’t make it in this release.
Picard 1.3 can be downloaded on the Picard’s website.
Be aware that downgrading from 1.3 to 1.2 may lead to configuration compatibility issues, better save your configuration before installing 1.3 if you intent to go back to 1.2.
At the MusicBrainz Summit last month in Copenhagen, one of the topics to
be discussed was the state of the style guidelines and style process.
One thing those present agreed on was that the process was in need of
reform, for several reasons: the complexity of the process,
inconsistency with other processes in the project, the high level of
individual commitment required to make changes, long-running discussions
without conclusion or followthrough, and ultimately the state of the
final product, the style guidelines themselves. The inaccessibility of
our existing process meant that many users, both new and old, avoided
the style process, and this hurts the project: style is part of what
makes MusicBrainz what it is, and low participation means our guidelines
have grown both internally inconsistent and out of sync with community
practice. Nor is the style process a new problem for MusicBrainz:
historically, it’s changed several times and some past style leaders
have vanished into thin air. After all, it is a hard job, for a
volunteer, to convince many voices to come to a consensus.
To improve upon these issues, we’ve decided to make two major changes.
First: to designate our JIRA issue tracker at tickets.musicbrainz.org as
the central coordination point for style issues. This way, any issue, be
it style-related or code-related, is reported and discussed in the same
place (and should an issue be misfiled, it’s easily corrected). The
issue tracker can also collect links to other discussions, in edit
notes, the forums, IRC, etc., and store links to related issues such as
features in need of implementation.
Second: to promote our current Style Leader to Style Benevolent Dictator
For Life (Style BDFL). Nicolás Tamargo (reosarevok) will then be in
charge of considering tickets and implementing changes in the style
guidelines. This change shifts the burden of evaluating style issues
from the community to our newly appointed BDFL. For simple changes and
for simple improvements to consistency and writing style, the BDFL can
change things directly, without need for lengthy discussion. Of course,
his work won’t happen in a vacuum: for changes that are complex or
contentious, the role of the BDFL will be to gather feedback and
determine the next steps before making changes. To this end, he may
occasionally call for a non-binding vote on a particular topic, to
collect a snapshot of community opinion to augment existing discussion,
all in order to make a better informed decision.
We hope that this new process will make contribution to the creation of
style guidelines easier and less onerous a commitment for everyone, and
that the resulting style guidelines will be more up-to-date, more
consistent, and more clearly written and organized. To test it out,
we’re going to try this process for 6 months, and then review how things
have progressed and if the process needs further tweaking or even
complete replacement.
I’m slacking again and it’s a day late, but here’s another server release, almost kinda on schedule!
We’ve included a few nice improvements this release:
The git tag for this release is v-2014-10-13.
The full list of issues, as usual:
Music Hack Day Boston is happening on Nov 8-9 and I am looking for someone to attend and represent MusicBrainz/CritiqueBrainz there. Ideally this person would be knowledgeable about how our Web Service works, what data MusicBrainz has and how our schema is laid out. You must be comfortable giving a short (~5 minute) presentation about MusicBrainz/CritiqueBrainz at the beginning of the event. And you should also be comfortable answering questions during the event.
If you live in or near Boston and are interested in helping out and attending MHD Boston, please leave a comment here and I will get in touch.
Thanks!
Paul Taylor has written a few fixes for the current search server, which we just deployed. Thanks for your hard work on this release, Paul!
Release Notes – MusicBrainz Search Server – Version 2014-10-08
MetaBrainz Blog 