Technically, it's clear that Lucy is taking an innovative and
well-thought-out approach, building a search engine that folds in
what's been learned from all the painful experiences of those before
it.  Marvin gets to chuckle whenever we have one of our massive back
compat discussions...

When it hits its first release it should be a real gem.

Further, there's no question that Marvin's "closeness" has
substantially strengthened Lucene (java).  The awesome amount of
cross-fertilization, discussing design tradeoffs, etc., has led to
sizable improvements in Lucene (like the switch to per-segment
searching).

That said, yes, Lucy doesn't have a large dev community.  And Lucy
doesn't have any users yet since it has no release (though KS's users
should "count" here, once Lucy releases).  There's unfortunately (for
both projects) not enough overlap in the dev communities of Lucene
(java) and Lucy.  And, Apache does now (for better or worse) strictly
insist on non-umbrella TLPs.

So net/net I'm +1 for Lucy to move to Apache incubator with the
eventual goal of a separate TLP.

Mike

On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 7:10 AM, Grant Ingersoll <gsingers@apache.org> wrote:
> It's been a while since we've taken a look at Lucy from a PMC standpoint, but I think it is worth us reviewing once again.  And, while this isn't easy to do because I very much value Marvin as a member of the Lucene community, I think we need have a frank discussion about whether Lucy belongs as a Lucene subproject, especially in light of recent Board concerns about Lucene's umbrella status.
>
> Since the last email discussing Lucy, Marvin has been working on it, AFAICT, which is a good thing.  I still, however, don't think it meets the community standards of the ASF (see http://incubator.apache.org/guides/graduation.html#subproject for instance).    For instance, there does not appear to be anyone else who has contributed to it at any level beyond the occasional email here and there.  The last email on the dev list from someone other than Marvin was someone announcing KinoSearch on May 1st.  Before that, it was on April 6.  The last email on the user list was from Marvin in November of 2009.  And, while Marvin participates regularly on dev@l.a.o and we have had many cross pollination talks, it does not, unfortunately, make for a community around Lucy.   There also has yet to be a single release in its time here.  Even if there were an attempt at a release, how many PMC members even follow Lucy enough that you feel comfortable voting for a release?
>
> If this were a project coming from the Incubator to us via a "graduation vote", I would vote to not let it graduate.
>
> Finally, given that Lucy undoubtedly is a separate community (if it ever exists) with separate goals from Lucene and that it is considered ASF best practice for PMC's to not be "umbrella" projects, I think we should consider either Lucy going into the Incubator with the goal of growing it's own community and standing on it's own as a TLP in its own right (just as we recommended for CLucene recently) or going to Google Code or some other such hosting service where it will be free to make decisions on its future without the hinderance of a PMC that isn't aligned with its needs and objectives, as I believe is the current case with the Lucene PMC.
>
> -Grant
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