Boy, I wish I had said it this well, Hoss. +1.
I totally agree. I very much respect what Marvin is doing with KS and
the contributions to Lucene he has made and I'm definitely not trying
to cast out the people who feel strongly about a C-based search
library. I just know that Lucy doesn't meet the standard of what an
Apache project should be and it has been given ample time to become
that. It is very much a tough thing for me to even suggest, because
I know how much Marvin cares about it and I'd be happy to see a port
of Lucene in every programming language there is if it is useful to
people.
However, as PMC chair, I've had to fill out the board reports for a
good while now with what amounts to "Lucy: No activity to report" (at
best it says "minimal activity"), see [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5] (and
I could probably keep going, see http://www.apache.org/foundation/board/calendar.html)
. In fact, in [2] (Sept. '08), the report was:
"LUCY
Lucy will develop a shared C-based core for ports of Lucene to other
languages, such as Perl, Python and Ruby. No progress has been made
this quarter, but we have been in contact with the committers and
they are still interested in the project and plan to be more
active in the near future."
So, it is not like my concern (or other that of other PMC members) is
all of a sudden news.
However, since September, little has happened since the PMC contacted
Dave and Marvin (Doug was obviously contacted since he's a member of
the PMC, and that accounts for all the committers).
From http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/lucene/lucy/, there hasn't been a
commit in 6 months. The website itself is still showing only the
original news item announcing the project back in 2006. Since Sept of
'08, there has been a sum total of 39 messages on the mailing list.
While it is clear Marvin very much has some notion of Lucy alive
somewhere, it is, unfortunately, not alive at Apache.
However, what about some type of interim probation, for lack of a
better word? Marvin and Nathan (and whoever else), how about putting
forth a plan for going forward with some reasonable milestones that we
can all point to and see the progress? And don't feel like it has to
be some huge leap, either. While this may seem like it is just
"jumping through hoops", I don't think it is. Lucy will never attract
other developers if all the discussion of how to implement Lucy takes
place on the KS and Lucene Java mailing lists.
Hope this helps,
Grant
[1]
http://www.apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/2008/board_minutes_2008_12_17.txt
[2]
http://www.apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/2008/board_minutes_2008_09_17.txt
[3]
http://www.apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/2008/board_minutes_2008_06_25.txt
[4]
http://www.apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/2008/board_minutes_2008_03_19.txt
[5]
http://www.apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/2007/board_minutes_2007_12_19.txt
On Mar 8, 2009, at 6:17 PM, Chris Hostetter wrote:
: It *is* actively progressing. It's just that neither you nor
Grant are
: willing to acknowledge that any of the design work I just did (in
happy
: collaboration with Java Lucene devs) applies to Lucy.
I don't really believe that's a fair characterization of the
comments made
in this thread.
The fundemental issue is really wether Lucy, as a project, is "alive".
This is not about wether progress is being made towards a good C
Library
for search, or wether there have been good design discussions to
further
that goal, or wether there has been good collaboration amongst various
people towrds common goals that can be implimented in multiple
projects --
the answers to all of those questions may be "yes" (and i genuinely
believe that they are) but that doesn't mean that Lucy, as a
project, is
alive.
: The proposal remains sound, and there is a deep hunger out there
for a solid C
: IR library similar to Lucene. The KS-then-Lucy progression is the
fastest and
: best way to get there.
Marvin, I respect your opinion. If you believe that the best long
term
strategy towards making Lucy into a solid project is to first focus on
KinoSearch, then I have faith in your judgement -- but from my
perspective, that seems like a strong argument in favor of archiving
Lucy
at this time and reviving it at a future date when you feel the time
is
right to bring he apprpriate code from KS into the apache fold via
software grant.
: >From my perspective, what we have is an optics problem. I'm
working full
: time, and I've been plenty active in the Lucene forums, but you
and Grant only
: see a big fat zero. :(
At this point (from my perspective) Lucy as a project is not
"alive" ...
that doesn't mean i don't respect your participation in Lucene as a
whole,
and I do recognize that you've been making a lot of progress; but
one man
isn't a community, and KS isn't Lucy. I don't see a zero, I see a
large
blank area that can be filled later, but for now it confuses people.
It seems to me that (to borrow a cliche) Lucy was an idea ahead of
it's
time, so we should be honest to the world (and ourselves) about the
state
of things. If people want to work on a project developing a C search
library with bindings for dynamic langauges let's not frustrate them
with
a 3 year old website, and ghost town mailing lists and code base --
instead let's encourage and promote groth in the internals of
KinoSearch,
so that at a future point we can revive the Lucy project, with a
healthy
developer community.
This discussion isn't about "killing" a project -- it's not an
execution
-- it's about acknowledge that Lucy hasn't really been born yet.
-Hoss
