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November 25, 2008 11:07 AM PST

LinkedIn and MySpace upgrade search with open-source Lucene

by Matt Asay
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TechCrunch reports that LinkedIn just upgraded its people search, but fails to mention the technology behind the upgrade: Lucene, the open-source search project. Nor is LinkedIn alone: MySpace has also used Lucene to revamp its search functionality, as Ars Technica reported earlier in June.

Indeed, borrowing from open source is now standard operating procedure for Web companies. What is interesting in the use of Lucene is how the Web is branching beyond the familiar LAMP stack to build in technologies like Lucene, Yahoo!'s User Interface Library, and other open-source components.

Arguably, the Web could not exist without open-source software, which is why I continue to believe it's critical that we find ways to encourage open-source contributions in a Web world that isn't bound by Open Source 1.0's licensing. It's therefore unfortunate that the Web lacks the "Software 1.0"'s licensing restrictions.

Perhaps the market will sort all this out, with Google and others seeing a strategic interest in open-source contributions, despite a lack of compulsion from open-source licensing. Perhaps. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay.
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by Daniel_Tunkelang November 25, 2008 12:55 PM PST
Matt, LinkedIn has certainly made the most of Lucene in its new search platform. But, as I point out in my review, they still fail address some of the highest-value use cases for a professional networking site. I don't know that these can't be addressed using Lucene, but my experience in talking with developers suggests that it's hard to do so.

http://thenoisychannel.com/2008/11/25/linkedins-new-search-platform-a-review/
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by kkrugler December 1, 2008 7:12 AM PST
Hi Daniel,

I checked out your blog post about the new LinkedIn search support - it seems that your major complaint is the lack of faceted search, for exploratory browsing.

I agree that would be a welcome enhancement to LinkedIn, but I'd have to disagree that it's hard to do with Lucene. Solr (another open source Apache project) supports this out-of-the-box, and it's totally built on top of Lucene. While there are situations that cause performance to suffer, it's been steadily improving and feels more than ready for prime time.

-- Ken
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About The Open Road

Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to the Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

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