Hi all, (there's a TL;DR in the end)
Since the last Lucene.NET release the original Lucene project has changed drastically - it now supports a lot more search features (like FST suggesters, better highlighters, many more powerful queriesm etc), with much better performance. As you already know, we've been hard at work for some time now to drive development for Lucene.NET. We are trying to revive the project, and aiming for a 4.8.0 release in the very near future. We are in a very good place now - most of the crucial code has already been ported, and most tests are now green. There's still plenty left to do. Mainly to port some more subprojects + their tests, make sure all tests are green (we are using randomized testing and have many permutations, so that might take some time), and then start optimizing things for the CLR. Future plans also include PCL support, better testing, and running natively on Mono, mobile and Azure - among other things. Once 4.8.0 is done, we will stabilize the codebase and make sure we have the tools and methods to keep this project up to date with Java Lucene. There's demand for a strong Lucene on the CLR, all we need to do is be able to supply. While I'm going to continue working on this open-source effort unconditionally, I'm slowly realizing the effort required is way more than I can currently put. I'm freelancing and need to work on contracts, while this project can benefit from at least 2 months of full-time work. I'm not quitting - far from that. I'll keep pushing hard until we release, and after that as well. But I thought I'd post this open letter to say I'll be happy to work on Lucene.NET full-time for a while, if any company would like to sponsor that effort. If you are interested in helping - please feel free to email me privately. I'm also considering a crowd-funding campaign, but admittedly that's even harder to pull off. We have been wanting to release a more up-to-date version of Lucene.NET for a while now, its time to make it happen. *TL;DR*: We all want better Lucene.NET, and I'm pushing this effort forward unconditionally. I'd like to be able to dedicate more time to the project, but as a freelancer that's hard to do. If there are any companies who would like to sponsor some of that it will greatly help. I'm also considering a crowd-funding campaign. Cheers, -- Itamar Syn-Hershko http://code972.com | @synhershko <https://twitter.com/synhershko> Freelance Developer & Consultant Microsoft MVP Lucene.NET committer and PMC member
