Open Source Search Tools

I was answering an email tonight from the hyperestraier list about Xapian and Lucene and KinoSearch, and as I was googling around to find all the email threads I remembered being a part of on the topic, it was interesting to see intersections I hadn't remembered, like how the same people (like me) keep popping up around these tools.

There are some folks who just need to implement a search engine for their website/company/intranet. These are the sysadmin types who just need something that works so that they can move on to the next project.

Then there are folks working in the IR field itself who are trying to build the Next Big Search Thing, following in google tradition. Good luck to them. They'll need it.

Then there are folks like me, who are a little OCD over things like IR and search. I consider the developers of the projects I list above in that camp. It's a good camp to be in.

Open source search tools have come a long way and there is really some good momentum now in implementing multiple terabyte, high volume search projects using open source technology. I like working in IR at a time like this. Hopeful. Almost. :)

File under projects Fri May 11 20:56:58 CT 2007