On Dec 3, 2008, at 2:27 PM, Jason Rutherglen (JIRA) wrote: > > > Hoss wrote: "sort of mythical "Lucene powerhouse" > Lucene seems to run itself quite differently than other open source > Java projects. Perhaps it would be good to spell out the reasons > for the reluctance to move ahead with features that developers work > on, that work, but do not go in. The developer contributions seem > to be quite low right now, especially compared to neighbor projects > such as Hadoop. Is this because fewer people are using Lucene? Or > is it due to the reluctance to work with the developer community? > Unfortunately the perception in the eyes of some people who work on > search related projects it is the latter. Or, could it be that Hadoop is relatively new and in vogue at the moment, very malleable and buggy(?) and has a HUGE corporate sponsor who dedicates lots of resources to it on a full time basis, whilst Lucene has been around in the ASF for 7+ years (and 12+ years total) and has a really large install base and thus must move more deliberately and basically has 1 person who gets to work on it full time while the rest of us pretty much volunteer? That's not an excuse, it's just the way it is. I personally, would love to work on Lucene all day every day as I have a lot of things I'd love to engage the community on, but the fact is I'm not paid to do that, so I give what I can when I can. I know most of the other committers are that way too. Thus, I don't think any one of us has a reluctance to move ahead with features or bug fixes. Looking at CHANGES.txt, I see a lot of contributors. Looking at java-dev and JIRA, I see lots of engagement with the community. Is it near the historical high for traffic, no it's not, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think it's a sign that Lucene is pretty stable. What we do have a reluctance for are patches that don't have tests (i.e. this one), patches that massively change Lucene APIs in non- trivial ways or break back compatibility or are not kept up to date. Are we perfect? Of course not. I, personally, would love for there to be a way that helps us process a larger volume of patches (note, I didn't say commit a larger volume). Hadoop's automated patch tester would be a huge start in that, but at the end of the day, Lucene still works the way all ASF projects do: via meritocracy and volunteerism. You want stuff committed, keep it up to date, make it manageable to review, document it, respond to questions/concerns with answers as best you can. To that end, a real simple question can go a long way and getting something committed, and it simply is: "Hey Lucener's, what else can I do to help you review and commit LUCENE- XXXX?" Lather, rinse, repeat. Next thing you know, you'll be on the receiving end as a committer. -Grant --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: java-dev-unsubscribe@lucene.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: java-dev-help@lucene.apache.org