Open Source Search Myth 1 - Enhancements by Committee

This is part of a series addressing the misconception that open source search is too risky for companies to use. You can find the introduction to the series here; this is Part 1 of the series; for Part 2, click Potentially Expensive Customizations.

Part 1: Enhancements Subject to Committee

The original article back on LinkedIn called out one 'flaw' of open source search the belief that updates and improvements were made only on a timetable selected by the community - presumably the committers.  

One of the hallmarks of Apache open code projects is that, when you make a change or make an enhancement to the code, you submit the changes back to the Apache project. 

My employer, LucidWorks, enhances Solr, and we push back changes we make for consideration of the entire Solr community. Many of these changes are accepted and become part of Solr - almost all because of demand/need we see in our commercial customers, which helps everyone. 

Occasionally, a customer has a specific need and asks us to develop capabilities that are not part of the standard release. Sometimes the enhancements are on the Apache project plan; and sometimes they are unique. In any case, we create the enhancement and submit them for consideration in the standard Solr trunk. Once we’ve done so, anyone can download our enhancements and use them. And, as we do at LucidWorks, anyone can write enhancements for themselves and make them available.

Compare this to commercial search vendors who update on their own (typically unpublished) schedule; and no one can add a feature on their own. The vendor decides, and the consumer can only hope. And you pay upward of 20% of the list price every year in anticipation of the change you hope for but cannot add on your own.

And no matter what happens to Solr, our customers have the source code to self-support forever - no involuntary forced conversion.