Introducing the CompatDB.org project

[Philipp Esselbach]

Hello Everyone,

My name is Philipp Esselbach and I created the
http://www.linuxcompatible.org website back in 2002.

The idea behind Linux Compatible was to create a user submitted
hardware/software compatibility list for Linux. While I thought that
it was a good idea in the first place, it appeared later to worked not
so well. A few other websites even started their own compatibility
lists in attempt to making better compatibility lists then the Linux
Compatible one, which ended up that we have nowadays a few user
submitted compatibility lists split all over the Internet, none of
them nearly complete.

I came 2005 to the conclusion that website based compatibility lists
would never worked for an operating system like Linux, so I came up
with the idea of CompatDB.org. CompatDB.org is not another
compatibility website, it is more an attempt to create a free standard
for user submitted compatibility list. Both the XML based CompatDB.org
document format as well the compatibility data are released under the
terms of the LGPL.

The initial CompatDB.org Linux compatibility data based on the LGPL'd
parts of the Linux Compatible compatibility list. Unfortunately, all
data before Summer 2005 are not under the LGPL and thus not included.

The current specifications of the CompatDB.org 1.0 XML document format
can found here – http://www.compatdb.org/specs-1.0.txt and daily
snapshots of the compatibility lists here -
http://www.compatdb.org/page9.html. CompatDB.org is currently
supporting 30 Linux distributions as well Windows and Mac OS (both
separate lists)

I believe CompatDB.org is a first step in the right direction but
nowhere nearly perfect. I hope to find other enthusiasts that like to
want participate in this project. I think that this project can grow,
but only with an active community that brings in new ideas.

Thanks for your time,
Philipp Esselbach
http://www.compatdb.org