The European Open Source Academy is “The home of European excellence in Open Source” – or it was, until it decided to induct our very own Robert Kaye (aka mayhem/rob). Now it is the home of excellence and total mayhem! Congratulations Rob, this is a very well deserved honour 🎉
Back in the mists of time, in the year 2000, a limber and sprightly young Rob created MusicBrainz. He had just witnessed the corporatization of CDDB and embarked on the creation of a collaborative music database that could never be snatched from its contributors. For over 25 years now Rob has guided MusicBrainz along its open-source path, nestled in the non-profit arms of the MetaBrainz Foundation, birthing an array of cute offspring over the years. Offspring such as MusicBrainz Picard, BookBrainz and ListenBrainz, as well as the occasional troublesome rascal – looking at you AcousticBrainz!
With 134,520,082 MusicBrainz IDs serving billions of global requests and young ListenBrainz rapidly growing to 1 billion+ listens, it is doubtless that Rob’s open-source efforts have changed the landscape of music data and, by extension, human culture (which relies on open and accessible histories) and the lives of musicians. It’s changed not just for us die-hards who live “in” the MetaBrainz ecosystem, but also for the millions of people using one of the thousands of services that interact with MetaBrainz’ data. It’s probably no exaggeration to say that most people have interacted with, seen or used MetaBrainz data at some point in their lives, most often without knowing it.
Just like our projects, Rob’s efforts aren’t always seen. He’s still a hacker at heart, but now spends much of his time dealing with the humdrum day-to-day of what has become a substantial operation. He now has a respectable row of servers and employees, all clamouring to be kept warm, dry, fed… and paid! Rob deals with finances, bills, a daily pelting of admin emails, the board, hectic international summits, 100’s of students and new contributors on their first foray into open-source, and still finds the time to roll up his sleeves and hack on some of the most experimental of our output.
Rob, we are so glad that you are being acknowledged by the European Open Source Academy. Let me also thank you, on behalf of MetaBrainz’ employees, open-source developers, editors, musicians and users, for your immense efforts and unwavering commitment to the public good for these 25 years. Keep the mayhem coming!!