4 ms·

This project has been around and maintained for more than a decade! Small footprint, good speed. One downside might be GPL v2 for commercial use.

Bluestein 2y ago
In fact, AIUI it's roots go back about 3 decades. The "about" page has a nice historical overview.-
the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
The project at one point started tracking files for potential rewrite to rid itself of GPL history. I used it many years ago and I quite enjoyed it (pre elastic search times) but unfortunately the license situation didn’t help the project to become popular.
frenchman99 2y ago
You can always build a small search webservice that you open source and that your proprietary software calls out too, removing the need to open source everything. Linux is GPL too, didn't hinder companies making trillions on top of it.
- synergy20 2y ago
  you mean, don't compile it and link it within my application, instead wrap it as a separate program then call it via rpc remotely or locally?
  - frenchman99 2y ago
    Yes, exactly that.
- the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
  Linux is not a good example because of the syscall exemption. The licensing situation is not at all comparable as xapian’s original point of existence was embedding.
synergy20 2y ago
that's true, wonder if there is alternative that is not gpl
- bearjaws 2y ago
  Sonic search https://github.com/valeriansaliou/sonic https://github.com/valeriansaliou/sonic Maybe not exactly the same, its a server that you can store documents and then retrieve their ID using a search string.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  Elastic Search and its Amazon fork Opensearch perhaps?
  - JackSlateur 2y ago
    Xapian is a library, while elastic has a client-server model Xapian is more like sqlite while elastic would be mariadb
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      Thanks for the spot-on, very illuminated comparison.-
    - inertiatic 2y ago
      Lucene which is what ES builds upon is a library with bindings in languages other than Java, and it's Apache licensed.
rbanffy 2y ago
For what kind of use do you think GPLv2 would be a blocker?
donio 2y ago
A lot more than a decade. I've been using it for 15 years at it was a very mature project even then. Repo history goes back to 1999 and according to the history page the project's roots go back to the 80s. A bit like Postgres in this respect. https://xapian.org/history https://xapian.org/history https://sigir.org/files/forum/S2000/MUSCAT_note.pdf https://sigir.org/files/forum/S2000/MUSCAT_note.pdf
rurban 2y ago
I used it commercially, at a very big international company. All users had access to its unmodified source code and templates. There was no trouble at all.

Bluestein 2y ago

In fact, AIUI it's roots go back about 3 decades. The "about" page has a nice historical overview.-

the_mitsuhiko 2y ago

The project at one point started tracking files for potential rewrite to rid itself of GPL history. I used it many years ago and I quite enjoyed it (pre elastic search times) but unfortunately the license situation didn’t help the project to become popular.

frenchman99 2y ago

You can always build a small search webservice that you open source and that your proprietary software calls out too, removing the need to open source everything. Linux is GPL too, didn't hinder companies making trillions on top of it.

synergy20 2y ago
you mean, don't compile it and link it within my application, instead wrap it as a separate program then call it via rpc remotely or locally?
- frenchman99 2y ago
  Yes, exactly that.
the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
Linux is not a good example because of the syscall exemption. The licensing situation is not at all comparable as xapian’s original point of existence was embedding.

synergy20 2y ago

that's true, wonder if there is alternative that is not gpl

bearjaws 2y ago
Sonic search https://github.com/valeriansaliou/sonic https://github.com/valeriansaliou/sonic Maybe not exactly the same, its a server that you can store documents and then retrieve their ID using a search string.
Bluestein 2y ago
Elastic Search and its Amazon fork Opensearch perhaps?
- JackSlateur 2y ago
  Xapian is a library, while elastic has a client-server model Xapian is more like sqlite while elastic would be mariadb
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    Thanks for the spot-on, very illuminated comparison.-
  - inertiatic 2y ago
    Lucene which is what ES builds upon is a library with bindings in languages other than Java, and it's Apache licensed.

rbanffy 2y ago

For what kind of use do you think GPLv2 would be a blocker?

donio 2y ago

A lot more than a decade. I've been using it for 15 years at it was a very mature project even then. Repo history goes back to 1999 and according to the history page the project's roots go back to the 80s. A bit like Postgres in this respect. https://xapian.org/history https://xapian.org/history https://sigir.org/files/forum/S2000/MUSCAT_note.pdf https://sigir.org/files/forum/S2000/MUSCAT_note.pdf

rurban 2y ago

I used it commercially, at a very big international company. All users had access to its unmodified source code and templates. There was no trouble at all.