Open Source and Search
Contents
Synopsis
My main interest is in open source software (OSS), and I will be speaking on lessons of privacy, freedom, and quality learned from OSS that are relevant to search engines. I will connect several ideas along the path(s) from OSS to search, which may seem unrelated at first: blogs, wikis, peer-to-peer filesharing, and web services.
I am not a lawyer, so I will concentrate on the three social issues above with regard to web search and how we can achieve them to varying degrees with technology. Technical detail will be kept to a minimum in order to make it clear why everyone should care about these issues, not just computer scientists.
Readings
I'll assume a little previous knowledge: that you use the web almost every day and have at least heard of the buzzwords above. If you want a little more background information than I can cover in a 30 minute talk, here are some useful readings:
- What Is Open Source?, a good summary by Dan Woods on O'Reilly's OnLamp.com.
- The Long Tail, a Wired article by Chris Anderson on how online businesses can make lots of money from niche markets.
References
I'll be summarizing the salient points of the references below in my talk, which are really too long and mostly too technical for a general audience. I only include the links here for completeness.
- The Cathedral and the Bazaar, the most famous essay on how Linux changed the open source model, by Eric Raymond. Unfortunately lots of jargon and acronyms are used, since programmers are the intended audience.
- Among the audience, a survey article by The Economist magazine that is extremely thorough and accessible. Only the first page is "necessary," although the other articles are also good reading.
- What Business Can Learn From Open Source, the economical arguments for open source software in the business world by Paul Graham.
- Advice to Microsoft regarding commodity software, the good-bye letter of Dave Stutz, former head of the Rotor (.NET CLR) team, upon quitting his job at Microsoft.
Links
Useful links which contain too many resources or change too frequently for me to list as references above.
- Search Engine Watch, news site and watchdog organization for all issues related to search engines.
- Official Google Blog, hosted on Google-owned Blogger.com.
- Google Open Source Projects hosted on SourceForge.
