Free pdf ebook download: Lucene in Action .pdf
Title: Lucene in Action
Author: ERIK HATCHER OTIS GOSPODNETIC
Format: PDF
Lucene started as a self-serving project. In late 1997, my job uncertain, I
sought something of my own to market. Java was the hot new programming
language, and I needed an excuse to learn it. I already knew how to write
search software, and thought I might fill a niche by writing search software in
Java. So I wrote Lucene.
A few years later, in 2000, I realized that I didn’t like to market stuff. I had
no interest in negotiating licenses and contracts, and I didn’t want to hire peo-
ple and build a company. I liked writing software, not selling it. So I tossed
Lucene up on SourceForge, to see if open source might let me keep doing
what I liked.
A few folks started using Lucene right away. Around a year later, in 2001,
folks at Apache offered to adopt Lucene. The number of daily messages on
the Lucene mailing lists grew steadily. Code contributions started to trickle in.
Most were additions around the edges of Lucene: I was still the only active
developer who fully grokked its core. Still, Lucene was on the road to becom-
ing a real collaborative project.
Now, in 2004, Lucene has a pool of active developers with deep understand-
ings of its core. I’m no longer involved in most day-to-day development; sub-
stantial additions and improvements are regularly made by this strong team.
Through the years, Lucene has been translated into several other program-
ming languages, including C++, C#, Perl, and Python. In the original Java,
and in these other incarnations, Lucene is used much more widely than I ever
would have dreamed. It powers search in diverse applications like discussion
groups at Fortune 100 companies, commercial bug trackers, email search sup-
plied by Microsoft, and a web search engine that scales to billions of pages. When,
at industry events, I am introduced to someone as the “Lucene guy,” more often
than not folks tell me how they’ve used Lucene in a project. I still figure I’ve only
heard about a small fraction of all Lucene applications.
Lucene is much more widely used than it ever would have been if I had tried
to sell it. Application developers seem to prefer open source. Instead of having to
contact technical support when they have a problem (and then wait for an answer,
hoping they were correctly understood), they can frequently just look at the
source code to diagnose their problems. If that’s not enough, the free support
provided by peers on the mailing lists is better than most commercial support. A
functioning open-source project like Lucene makes application developers more
efficient and productive.
Lucene, through open source, has become something much greater than I
ever imagined it would. I set it going, but it took the combined efforts of the
Lucene community to make it thrive.
So what’s next for Lucene? I can’t tell you. Armed with this book, you are now
a member of the Lucene community, and it’s up to you to take Lucene to new
places. Bon voyage!
Download the book: Lucene in Action.pdf
Author: ERIK HATCHER OTIS GOSPODNETIC
Format: PDF
Lucene started as a self-serving project. In late 1997, my job uncertain, I
sought something of my own to market. Java was the hot new programming
language, and I needed an excuse to learn it. I already knew how to write
search software, and thought I might fill a niche by writing search software in
Java. So I wrote Lucene.
A few years later, in 2000, I realized that I didn’t like to market stuff. I had
no interest in negotiating licenses and contracts, and I didn’t want to hire peo-
ple and build a company. I liked writing software, not selling it. So I tossed
Lucene up on SourceForge, to see if open source might let me keep doing
what I liked.
A few folks started using Lucene right away. Around a year later, in 2001,
folks at Apache offered to adopt Lucene. The number of daily messages on
the Lucene mailing lists grew steadily. Code contributions started to trickle in.
Most were additions around the edges of Lucene: I was still the only active
developer who fully grokked its core. Still, Lucene was on the road to becom-
ing a real collaborative project.
Now, in 2004, Lucene has a pool of active developers with deep understand-
ings of its core. I’m no longer involved in most day-to-day development; sub-
stantial additions and improvements are regularly made by this strong team.
Through the years, Lucene has been translated into several other program-
ming languages, including C++, C#, Perl, and Python. In the original Java,
and in these other incarnations, Lucene is used much more widely than I ever
would have dreamed. It powers search in diverse applications like discussion
groups at Fortune 100 companies, commercial bug trackers, email search sup-
plied by Microsoft, and a web search engine that scales to billions of pages. When,
at industry events, I am introduced to someone as the “Lucene guy,” more often
than not folks tell me how they’ve used Lucene in a project. I still figure I’ve only
heard about a small fraction of all Lucene applications.
Lucene is much more widely used than it ever would have been if I had tried
to sell it. Application developers seem to prefer open source. Instead of having to
contact technical support when they have a problem (and then wait for an answer,
hoping they were correctly understood), they can frequently just look at the
source code to diagnose their problems. If that’s not enough, the free support
provided by peers on the mailing lists is better than most commercial support. A
functioning open-source project like Lucene makes application developers more
efficient and productive.
Lucene, through open source, has become something much greater than I
ever imagined it would. I set it going, but it took the combined efforts of the
Lucene community to make it thrive.
So what’s next for Lucene? I can’t tell you. Armed with this book, you are now
a member of the Lucene community, and it’s up to you to take Lucene to new
places. Bon voyage!
Download the book: Lucene in Action.pdf
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