[Search-l] Any updates?

[Jeremie Miller]

Thanks Paul, you said it way better (and with more authority) than I  
ever could :)

To re-iterate, I'm working on this project because I believe in it and  
I believe (fully) open infrastructure is critical for our collective  
future, search is far too important and powerful to only have a few  
viable commercial options.

Wikia's "results" will of course be at *.wikia.com and be tailored to  
Wikia's interests, but it is BUILT on open source and all of the open  
resources hosted at the ISC are available for anyone to utilize (of  
course they're still a work in progress).

Jer

On May 10, 2008, at 11:57 AM, Paul Vixie wrote:

> newsmarkie at googlemail.com ("Mark (Markie)") writes:
>
>> ...
>>
>> as for the fact that wikia is a for profit, i cant see, at this  
>> time it
>> affecting us.  they have provided huge amounts of resources,  
>> including
>> 1000 servers, at least 2 staff members working full time, lots more  
>> part
>> time coding from the different departments, pr efforts, HUGE  
>> amounts of
>> bandwidth etc etc.  also at this stage i cant see them just pulling  
>> the
>> plug on it, but hey.....  i also think that at this point there  
>> isnt much
>> point in setting up a diff org, but the way that search is done, if  
>> we or
>> you want to do it, then every things free :-p
>>
>> ...
>
> i've been pushing jer and the others to move the servers out of  
> swlabs.com
> and into search.isc.org.  the servers were donated to isc, not  
> wikia.  the
> bandwidth they use is provided by isc.  wikia has donated a 15-ton air
> conditioner, a smattering of network switches and front end servers,  
> and a
> heaping lot of jer's time and other wikia staff time.  wikia has  
> agreed in
> principal to underwrite the power costs of the isc physical plant  
> used by
> the crawlers and indexers.  but as for a "diff org" there already is  
> one
> (see www.isc.org, ugly though it is) and i think it's odd that  
> anybody is
> still worried about that part.  ISC is a 501(c)(3) whose mission is  
> public
> benefit.  if anybody here thinks we're either incompetent or  
> untrustworthy
> with regard to owning and operating a search engine backend, i'd  
> thank you
> very much to call me on the phone and explain your concerns to me  
> realtime.
>
>>> ...
>>>
>>> So I think they will accept whatever the community accepts. I'm much
>>> more concerned about Jeremie Miller accepting what other people  
>>> come up
>>> with, because he is the one most actively involved and also the  
>>> person
>>> (probably among others) who can commit the code and launch it in
>>> production. And I think he is doing a great job at that, both with  
>>> his
>>> code and with giving some feedback to what is happening, but we  
>>> still
>>> need more communication with the delevopers. And I think he likes
>>> coding more than he likes talking, otherwise I'd just "vote for  
>>> him" to
>>> be the boss... hehe
>>>
>>> ...
>
> if wikia goes poof, or decides to exit the search business, then ISC  
> will
> find some other sponsor for this work, including paying jer and the  
> others
> if they want to keep working on this.  we're not rich, so there  
> would be
> some rocky times while we figured stuff out, but wikia's interests and
> capabilities are of interest to this project only as long as wikia  
> wants
> them to be.  (note that wikia seems VERY interested in, and quite  
> capable
> of, continuing to sponsor this project.)
>
>>>> ...
>>>>
>>>> Wikia, and Wikia Search with it, is a corporate endeavor.  The
>>>> authority people are there, but they currently choose not to act,
>>>> apparently.  Wikia Search looks free, but isn't.  They can pull the
>>>> plug at any time.  As long as this is so, I invest only a little  
>>>> time
>>>> in it.  ...
>
> that isn't so.  please feel free to invest as much time as you have  
> into it.
>
>>>> ... Some others see this the same way, at least it appears this way
>>>> to me.  In the long run, we need an independent, not-for-profit
>>>> search infrastructure, similar to Wikipedia.
>
> you have that.  wikia foresaw a need for that in the earliest days,  
> which is
> how ISC got involved in the first place.  if you have concerns about  
> ISC,
> raise them here in public or on my phone or to my face, and i'll  
> answer.
> -- 
> Paul Vixie
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