On Aug 20, 2007, at 3:01 PM, Dawid Weiss wrote:
I like it too. And I'm wondering what the response to this will be
-- it will in a way show if TREC really stands up to their mission,
won't it?
Obviously, I hope the result is positive, but I don't know if
precluding open source is against their mission. After all, I do
understand that it takes time and money to create these collections
and that should be valued. By the same token, it is the Federal
government that is sponsoring the competition and doing a lot of the
work, so it seems one could argue for making a collection that is
free from copyright restrictions so that anyone can participate. It
is a tricky issue, however, so we can hope for the best.
I will wait a couple more days to solicit comments and then submit it
to the appropriate people at NIST.
-Grant
D.
Grant Ingersoll wrote:
How does this sound:
Dear ----,
My name is Grant Ingersoll and I am committer on the Lucene Java
search library (http://lucene.apache.org) at the Apache Software
Foundation (ASF). I am not, however, writing in any official
capacity as a representative of the ASF. Perhaps at a later date,
this will change, but for now I just want to keep things informal.
I am, however, interested in starting a discussion about how open
source projects like Lucene could participate in future TREC
evaluations, or at least gain access to TREC data resources.
While the people involved in Lucene feel we have built a top notch
search system, one of the things the community as a whole lacks is
the ability to do formal evaluations like TREC offers, and thus
research and development of new algorithms is hindered. Granted,
individuals may perform TREC evaluations given they have purchased
a license to the data, but the community as a whole does not have
this ability.
I am wondering if there is some way in which we can arrange for
open source projects to obtain access to the TREC collections.
The biggest barrier for projects like Lucene, obviously, is the
fee that needs to be paid. Furthermore, there are undoubtedly
distribution and copyright concerns. Yet, a part of me feels that
we can work something out through creative licensing or some other
novel approach that protects the appropriate interests, furthers
TREC's mission and supports the vibrant Open Source community
around Lucene and other search engines. Perhaps it would be
possible to require that any participant who wants the TREC data
must prove that they are appropriately affiliated with an official
open source project, as defined by the Open Source Initiative
(http://www.opensource.org). Many tool vendors have similar
licenses that allow open source participants to use their tool
while working on open source projects[1]. Perhaps we could
provide a similar approach to the TREC data.
I feel this would benefit TREC substantially, by providing an
open, baseline system for all the world to see and I see that it
fits very much with the motto of TREC "...to encourage research
in information retrieval from large text collections."
Naturally, it benefits Lucene by allowing Lucene to undertake more
formal evaluation of relevance, etc.
If you are interested in more background on this on the Lucene
Java developers mailing list, please refer to
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/lucene/java-dev/52022?
search_string=TREC;#52022 I look forward to hearing back from you
and I would be more than happy to answer any questions you have.
Sincerely,
Grant Ingersoll
[1] JetBrains, Atlassian, Clover Test Coverage, etc.
-------
-Grant
On Aug 10, 2007, at 4:52 AM, Tom White wrote:
Furthermore, I think it would
encourage Lucene users/developers to think about relevance as
much as
we think about speed.
+1
However I think it would be much better to start by making informal
approaches as you suggest - the open letter seems to me to be
appropriate only as a last resort.
Tom
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Grant Ingersoll
http://lucene.grantingersoll.com
Lucene Helpful Hints:
http://wiki.apache.org/lucene-java/BasicsOfPerformance
http://wiki.apache.org/lucene-java/LuceneFAQ
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