[Xapian-discuss] Re: Xapian vs Lucene

[Yannick Warnier]

Le samedi 03 février 2007 à 10:29 +0000, Jason White a écrit :
> >It should still be balanced with a quote I had the other day:
> >"I looked at the Xapian website, and it looked like it was a page
> >written by a 14 years old boy, whereas the Lucene website looks very
> >professional".
> 
> I *strongly* disagree.
> 
> The Xapian Web site was clearly written by an expert. It is well organized,
> and informative.

Written by an expert doesn't mean written for a decision-taker.

> >Another quote I had was:
> >"From what I have read, Xapian people seem to consider their way of
> >treating the indexing process/algorithms as the biblical truth, that
> >doesn't have to be discussed, while Lucen explains a lot more what they
> >are doing and why".
> 
> Have you actually read the discussion of algorithms and the introduction to
> information retrieval on the Xapian Web site?

I didn't (yet) but I sincerely believe the person quoting did.

> It's better than what most free software projects offer by way of explanation.
> It also shows that the developers have expertise in research related to
> information retrieval systems. I haven't searched the Lucene site for
> corresponding information, so this isn't a comparative comment; I'm just
> making the point that the Xapian approach is thoroughly documented.

I think making the point for making the point isn't really what it's
about here. As always, it's about trying to improve things where
possible. A quote is a quote, and if the people behind them didn't want
to bring the matter to the mailing-list themselves, it's probably
because they don't have the time to spend discussing it. Most of the
decision takers today don't have the time to spend discussing anything,
that's a problem but in my view it needs to be taken into account.

> >I haven't checked the truthness of both these quotes, so I can't coment
> >on them, but I think they must be taken into account if Xapian wants to
> >get a better public image.
> 
> These quotes are both uninformed regarding Xapian, so I suggest that they
> shouldn't be taken seriously.

They are probably uninformed, but that doesn't make them necessarily
wrong.

Anyway, my intention is not to discuss all this, unless if it is to find
a solution. My suggestion would be to have a part of the website, or a
subdomain or something, particularly addressed at decision takers and
commercial people. No project is ever adopted at very large scale
without *some* kind of lobbying from these people, and that's where I
think Xapian might reveal itself as the best solution.

And, of course, my quotes here were not intended at discouraging the
team. Actually I think it's quite positive and should be taken as the
fact that people at high levels of authority are getting interested in
the project (at least they know the name now, so if they are
dissatisfied with Lucene...)

Yannick