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If it were me, I'd go with Java and use the Eclipse IDE. Java is fairly easy to learn, fairly powerful and has large, useful standard class library and has a wealth of additional libraries (many F/OSS) available. If you're interested in grabbing stuff off the 'net, look into Jakarta Commons HttpClient. Or, for other protocols than HTTP, look into Jakarta Commons Net. If you want to invoke web-services calls, you might find Apache Axis useful.

As far as look and feel, Swing has come a long way as a GUI toolkit, but a lot of people like Eclipse's SWT. If you use Eclipse and the Rich Client Platform as a base for your applications, you get a lot of functionality "for free." It's probably worth your time to give it a look see at least.

If you don't like any of that, just use GNUStep and Objective-C.

If it were me, I'd go with Java and use the Eclipse IDE. Java is fairly easy to learn, fairly powerful and has large, useful standard class library and has a wealth of additional libraries (many F/OSS) available. If you're interested in grabbing stuff off the 'net, look into Jakarta Commons HttpClient. Or, for other protocols than HTTP, look into Jakarta Commons Net. If you want to invoke web-services calls, you might find Apache Axis useful.

As far as look and feel, Swing has come a long way as a GUI toolkit, but a lot of people like Eclipse's SWT. If you use Eclipse and the Rich Client Platform as a base for your applications, you get a lot of functionality "for free." It's probably worth your time to give it a look see at least.

If you don't like any of that, just use GNUStep and Objective-C.

If it were me, I'd go with Java and use the Eclipse IDE. Java is fairly easy to learn, fairly powerful and has large, useful standard class library and has a wealth of additional libraries (many F/OSS) available. If you're interested in grabbing stuff off the 'net, look into Jakarta Commons HttpClient. Or, for other protocols than HTTP, look into Jakarta Commons Net. If you want to invoke web-services calls, you might find Apache Axis useful.

As far as look and feel, Swing has come a long way as a GUI toolkit, but a lot of people like Eclipse's SWT. If you use Eclipse and the Rich Client Platform as a base for your applications, you get a lot of functionality "for free." It's probably worth your time to give it a look see at least.

If you don't like any of that, just use GNUStep and Objective-C.

Its primary focus is Java, but you can use it for multiple languages. If you were to spend time with an IDE (and some would say that in itself is evil) Eclipse is the one I would pick.

http://eclipse.org/downloads/

Going further, I'd probably say you want to putter around with web applications. (Tons of people out there doing PHP, etc, but I would stay on the Java side of the fence) Building web apps, you can start with the spaghetti pages filled with scripts, start encapsulating code, pick up on a MVC framework, DB access, or deployment frameworks. I'd shy away from doing client applications. Again, from the Java camp, I'd snag a copy of Tomcat for my local playground. Anything you do inside the JSP/Servlet container is more or less applicable to BEA or IBM's application server. Nice debugging tools that let Eclipse and Tomcat play together.

http://tomcat.apache.org/

XML code, you say? Ever hear of Jelly? http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/jelly/

In any case, I hate to paraphrase Larry Wall, but programming languages are indeed just data structures. XML is a formatting specification, and if you reformatted C code into XML, it would work just the same (assuming you had a compiler). In the case of the example above, I assume he had such a processor.

The CLR affords far better platform specific integration than Java. JNI is complicated and horrible. COM Interop and API invocation in .NET is fairly easy and straight forward. This is important for adoption considering the huge amount of legacy code that often needs to be interop'd with.

Yes, if you wish to restrict your environment to Microsoft platforms. However I work in a world where there are over 800 core applications running on everything but the kitchen sink. The environment grew organically and will take a long time to standardize. Furthermore, not all business requirements can be well supported in one environment. .NET requires one environment (Microsoft's), while Java does mot.

In short, I can change the technologoy, but I have much less freedom to change the business.

While both .NET and Java are free, the application servers they run on are not. For ASP.NET, IIS is the application server. For Java/J2EE, it could be Web Sphere or a variety of others. In pretty much every case a Windows license will be a lot cheaper than the license for the J2EE app server... especially Web Sphere.

First of all, while the actual CLR is free, the tools to build enterprise level applications in .NET are not. In order to get the tools, you will need to probably purchase a professional version of Visual Studio .NET.

As far as application server costs (both capital and continuing), this depends on your environment's comfort with freely available software. There are at least three good J2EE servers available (Jonas , JBoss, Geronimo ). There are several flavors of Linux available. If you do not need EJB functionality, then there are several freely available JSP/Servlet containers available with Tomcat probably being the most well-known.

In short, if you have an organically grown environment or are not in a position to dictate the environment, Java is a good choice. If you can completely dictate the environment and force it to be Microsoft - only, then .NET may be a viable option.

As far as a technology being so pick your timeframe, that's just marketing speak. You pick the tool for the task at hand. People who create IS environments based on marketing rather than business, technical, and business culture requirements get what they deserve.

They get expesive, poorly functioning, business-inhibiting environments that can only be changed by the forklift upgrade method.

The CLR affords far better platform specific integration than Java. JNI is complicated and horrible. COM Interop and API invocation in .NET is fairly easy and straight forward. This is important for adoption considering the huge amount of legacy code that often needs to be interop'd with.

Yes, if you wish to restrict your environment to Microsoft platforms. However I work in a world where there are over 800 core applications running on everything but the kitchen sink. The environment grew organically and will take a long time to standardize. Furthermore, not all business requirements can be well supported in one environment. .NET requires one environment (Microsoft's), while Java does mot.

In short, I can change the technologoy, but I have much less freedom to change the business.

While both .NET and Java are free, the application servers they run on are not. For ASP.NET, IIS is the application server. For Java/J2EE, it could be Web Sphere or a variety of others. In pretty much every case a Windows license will be a lot cheaper than the license for the J2EE app server... especially Web Sphere.

First of all, while the actual CLR is free, the tools to build enterprise level applications in .NET are not. In order to get the tools, you will need to probably purchase a professional version of Visual Studio .NET.

As far as application server costs (both capital and continuing), this depends on your environment's comfort with freely available software. There are at least three good J2EE servers available (Jonas , JBoss, Geronimo ). There are several flavors of Linux available. If you do not need EJB functionality, then there are several freely available JSP/Servlet containers available with Tomcat probably being the most well-known.

In short, if you have an organically grown environment or are not in a position to dictate the environment, Java is a good choice. If you can completely dictate the environment and force it to be Microsoft - only, then .NET may be a viable option.

As far as a technology being so pick your timeframe, that's just marketing speak. You pick the tool for the task at hand. People who create IS environments based on marketing rather than business, technical, and business culture requirements get what they deserve.

They get expesive, poorly functioning, business-inhibiting environments that can only be changed by the forklift upgrade method.

While both .NET and Java are free, the application servers they run on are not. For ASP.NET, IIS is the application server. For Java/J2EE, it could be Web Sphere or a variety of others. In pretty much every case a Windows license will be a lot cheaper than the license for the J2EE app server... especially Web Sphere.

• JBoss
• Jonas
• Geronimo
• Tomcat (web tier only)
• Jetty (web tier only)

While both .NET and Java are free, the application servers they run on are not. For ASP.NET, IIS is the application server. For Java/J2EE, it could be Web Sphere or a variety of others. In pretty much every case a Windows license will be a lot cheaper than the license for the J2EE app server... especially Web Sphere.

• JBoss
• Jonas
• Geronimo
• Tomcat (web tier only)
• Jetty (web tier only)

Regarding the AppServer issue you mention, I disagree, there are really good professionnal J2EE servers available for free:
  - Apache Tomcat (http://tomcat.apache.org/)
Combined mod-jk and Apache HTTPD (and specially with the new 2.2) it really does its job perfectly well for large scale site (lots of our clients use this architecture for very frequented web sites)

  - Caucho Resin (http://www.caucho.com/)
Useful for developpment and debugging purpose as it recompiles classes on changes and provides detail information on exception. (though with tools such as Eclipse and MyEclipse, I don't use it anymore)

1. I never claimed that the user of the framework writes any JavaScript. I've always said that the JavaScript validations are generated by the framework from the same validation declarations that the framework does its server-side validations based on. Those server-side validations can't be bypassed. Learn to read.

2. You happen to be wrong again. Struts does generate client-side validation from the same i18n-capable XML file it uses to do server-side validation. It has been able to do this since version 1.1, which was released several years ago. See http://struts.apache.org/struts-action/userGuide/b uilding_view.html#validator
Note how it does not have to be custom built. Note how it is not merely checking that fields are filled in.

3. You should learn to read and see how many frameworks already let you declaratively validate against regular expressions, number ranges, boolean expressions, etc. and have those declarative validations be applied on both the client and the server.

4. You look dumber every time you post. Take a minute to read up on what it is you're arguing about before you try again.

I'm currently looking for suggestions on what sort of 'interesting statistics' I could create from 275+ million lines of open source C/C++ code.

• Percentage of functions named "deepThroat" (0%)
  
• Number of comments mentioning a "girlfriend" (11) or "wife" (29) to "Natalie Portman" (41)
  
• How many variables named "penis" are of type "long" versus type "short" (unknowable!)
  

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The earth-shattering feature of Apache 2.2 is RFC 2817 SSL Upgrade. Basically, any HTTP connection can upgrade itself to HTTPS without reestablishing.

This means you can do SSL on virtual hosts without a dedicated IP address. This will greatly increase the penetration of SSL (plus free certs like CaCert) and encryption in general. The $5/mo webhosters will be able to offer SSL to clients. Ubiquitous encryption considered good.

This is, of course, a Catch-22 - there are no browsers with the capability yet (let's get Mozilla going...) but this is the necessary first step. Come back in a couple years and see how things are going.

Oh, and I'm happy about the Cookie proxying patches which I reported against 2.0 but were applied to 2.1. This is the only Apache feature I've ever had a hand in designing so I'm happy to see it available. Basically, anything you do with cookies (paths, domains) should be properly proxied now. I've been waiting for this for a long time. Yay!

See the docs on stopping and restarting for reference.

Since version 1.x you've been able to make config changes without a restart. Just edit your config files and then run "apachectl -k graceful" or send a USR1 kill signal to the parent Apache process. Apache reloads the config without restarting.

I suspect it's actually not mod_rewrite. More likely, they used either SetHandler on the / Location to have their CGI handle every request, or MultiViews and a lot of CGI scripts.

I suspect it's actually not mod_rewrite. More likely, they used either SetHandler on the / Location to have their CGI handle every request, or MultiViews and a lot of CGI scripts.

Read what Killjoe and BuildGate said, they are mostly right. Read some books on object oriented design/programming, like design patterns.

Well, there is also Tapestry framework for webapps.

There's lots of stuff that helps at http://jakarta.apache.org/

My advice- stay away from EJBs.

What else? If you run into trouble come to irc.freenode.net #java

--Coder

• ion | ratpoision; Pane-based (v. window-based) window managers. Little to no wasted screen real estate. Significantly reduced mouse usage.
• emacs: Wickedly powerful text editor/operating environment.
  • WhizzyTeX: Updates DVI in another window as you edit TeX/LaTeX.
  • AUCTeX: Very powerful emacs extensions for TeX/LaTeX.
• fetchmail + procmail + mutt + spamassassin + msmtp: No-nonsense mail reading and sending.
• bash completions: Quasi-telepathic tab completion.
• Firefox
  • Adblock: Saves an astonishing amount of screen real estate.
• screen: Among many other abilities, screen+ssh can provide VNC-like capabilities for your terminal sessions.

• Build Tool - Ant (http://ant.apache.org/)
• Unit Test - JUnit (http://www.junit.org/)
• Application Framework - Spring (http://www.springframework.org/)
• Security Control - Acegi (http://acegisecurity.sourceforge.net/)
• UI Framework - JSF (MyFaces) (http://myfaces.apache.org/)
• J2EE/Web Server - JBoss/Tomcat (http://www.jboss.org/)
• OR Mapping - Hibernate (http://www.hibernate.org/

• Build Tool - Ant (http://ant.apache.org/)
• Unit Test - JUnit (http://www.junit.org/)
• Application Framework - Spring (http://www.springframework.org/)
• Security Control - Acegi (http://acegisecurity.sourceforge.net/)
• UI Framework - JSF (MyFaces) (http://myfaces.apache.org/)
• J2EE/Web Server - JBoss/Tomcat (http://www.jboss.org/)
• OR Mapping - Hibernate (http://www.hibernate.org/

OK, I didnt know that.

All I knew was that MSDN Universal sent me a note telling me I had one to choose between the three, my time had expired the previous week with no warning and that I was going to get professional by default.

if architect is the superset, then I dont see why I shouldnt have been given that.

Regarding your tester comment, yes, they are undervalued. And making them run tests and record results is part of the reason, that is grunt work for which machines can do themselves. Everyone should be writing tests, and having the machines run them, the architects by writing XML documents that represent SOAP messages on the wire, the developers writing unit tests for their classes as they write their code, and the testers by architecting the high level test suite for the system.

And yes, a complex test system is an architecture all of its own. I'm collaborating with PhD students at CERN, and a brazilian university to get our distributed testing framework right, because it is the kind of thing that PhDs are still being granted for. This is not grunt work, this is research

see: http://people.apache.org/~stevel/slides/testing.pd f

I don't know about decent, but Apache has an open source one called Xindice. I last used it about 9 months ago, and there were problems, but you may want to check it out to see if it's gotten better. http://xml.apache.org/xindice/

In fact, I'd say it's extremely foolish to think they'll do anything other than subvert the standard in a way that's designed to most benefit them.

"Anything but subvert" seems a bit harsh. Every day I work with at least one standard that Microsoft took a role in the development of. One with the apparent intent of specifically avoiding lock-in in several respects. The (arguably) best implementations isn't Microsoft's own, and in most cases they communicate with each other quite happily. And, similar to this latest proposal, it's based upon existing standards which might help in curbing abuse.

Oracle has a good fuzzy text search engine? I'm not aware of it, but please point me to it.
I typically use Lucene when I need to perform full-text and other IR-style searches on a data corpus.

It seems that their server could use some open source software.

"3, Insightful"? How 'bout "0, Uninformed"? The crimes laid out in Thomas Penfield Jackson, U.S. District Judge's COURT'S FINDINGS OF FACT are criminal under any reasonable legal system, including those of a 'truly free society'. There is an old saying: "your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose" that is applicable. 5-year perspective on the case is interesting. Microsoft regularly flexes their patent muscle by refusing to grant use of patents it owns to competitors. E.g. Bill Gates himself has turned down patent licensing requests for use of Microsoft patents proposed as IETF standards. (google Microsoft IETF patent or read this) Their anti-competitive practices most certainly do involve patents. Patent abuse is even an incriminating component of the above FINDINGS OF FACT. And Microsoft's abuses go far beyond those discussed in the FINDINGS OF FACT; see http://kmfms.com/whatsbad.html.

According to Apache's web site, quite a bit of Apache is actualy developed on FreeBSD servers. As far as the individual developers go, I believe Brian Behlendorf makes a good representative of senior Apache developers.

According to Apache's web site, quite a bit of Apache is actualy developed on FreeBSD servers. As far as the individual developers go, I believe Brian Behlendorf makes a good representative of senior Apache developers.

I've been monitoring Roller's transition through Apache's incubator process. You can get a glimpse of all the legal licensing issues a project has to go through to become compliant. Definitely an interesting read:

http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator -roller-dev/200511.mbox/thread

Actually, Java projects are a minority of the Apache projects, they just happen to get a lot of press because of Tomcat and the IBM acquisition of Gluecode (and some Geronimo team members).

Apache recently has gotten a lot of new committers in XML and web services development. Like with Axis2 and Synapse.

They also have a project called Maven, which is a development environment framework.
There is also SpamAssassin, which is a product I use quite a bit. They claim to be the #1 open sourec spam filter. I don't know if this is true, but I know a lot of people who use it.

Actually, Java projects are a minority of the Apache projects, they just happen to get a lot of press because of Tomcat and the IBM acquisition of Gluecode (and some Geronimo team members).

Apache recently has gotten a lot of new committers in XML and web services development. Like with Axis2 and Synapse.

They also have a project called Maven, which is a development environment framework.
There is also SpamAssassin, which is a product I use quite a bit. They claim to be the #1 open sourec spam filter. I don't know if this is true, but I know a lot of people who use it.

Actually, Java projects are a minority of the Apache projects, they just happen to get a lot of press because of Tomcat and the IBM acquisition of Gluecode (and some Geronimo team members).

Apache recently has gotten a lot of new committers in XML and web services development. Like with Axis2 and Synapse.

They also have a project called Maven, which is a development environment framework.
There is also SpamAssassin, which is a product I use quite a bit. They claim to be the #1 open sourec spam filter. I don't know if this is true, but I know a lot of people who use it.

Actually, Java projects are a minority of the Apache projects, they just happen to get a lot of press because of Tomcat and the IBM acquisition of Gluecode (and some Geronimo team members).

Apache recently has gotten a lot of new committers in XML and web services development. Like with Axis2 and Synapse.

They also have a project called Maven, which is a development environment framework.
There is also SpamAssassin, which is a product I use quite a bit. They claim to be the #1 open sourec spam filter. I don't know if this is true, but I know a lot of people who use it.

And some morons seem to think that this constitutes good software engineering...

The "moron" in question here is Nicholas Lesiecki, author of Java Tools for Extreme Programming: Mastering Open Source Tools Including Ant, JUnit, and Cactus. This review in Dr. Dobb's Journal calls it "original and useful".

He is also a contributor to Cactus, "a simple test framework for unit testing server-side java code", part of the Apache Jakarta project.

He is currently a software engineer and programming instructor with Google.

If you must write in C, use the Apache Portable Runtime.

If PostgreSQL's full-text indexing is anything like MySQL's, I urge you not to use it. Things I heard about MySQL's full-text index are horrible! Instead, integrate Lucene with your application/database. If you need a book, there is Lucene in Action with free code and sheap eBook version. Full disclosure: I'm one of the authors. Simpy is a good example of PostgreSQL + Lucene integration.

Oh, and if you want non-Java solution, there are several Lucene ports available: C++, Python, Perl, C#, Ruby...

If you want to dictate how the JVM starts up at a fundamental level, go hack on Apache Harmony, the open source Java implementation. They're just getting started so your contribution could go a long way.

I doubt government funds could be appropriated in this fashion. Instead what will happen is this would be treated like any other government contract. Companites, rather then individuals would compete, and skill/quality would be low on the list of requirements.
 
I am a big open source advocate where I work, and I feel the Apache model has the most merit. Of course projects such as Apache only really succede when they are large enough to attact a large number of developers and companies to support it. As with any open source projects, the vast majority of ASF's projects fail, mainly do to lack of intrest. But they come out with the ocasional gem.

Many applications use the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) to make them less dependent on the underlying OS (as long as its windows or a unix-like operating system).

Type in "server" and you get http://httpd.apache.org/
Type in "os" and you get http://www.apple.com/macosx
Type in "operating system" and you get http://www.debian.org/

Oh you could have lots of fun here! :)

Yes you do. The advantages of being able to develop on my local linux notebook and deploy to a Solaris cluster should not be overlooked simploy because it's important at dev time, not production time. Recompiling on another platform means retesting on that other platform. I'd rather run my unit and integration tests off the production & staging environments, load test in staging and no testing in production. This way unit and integration can be part of my build process (http://maven.apache.org/ and not something I have to redo on the final production hardware.

And your overlooking the JIT as well.

There's just one problem. This perception of the software-as-services model is a jaundiced misrepresentation of the way that on-demand applications actually work. No on-demand customer pays simply for the privilege of accessing the software. They pay because the software delivers business results. And that simple distinction exposes once and for all the clay feet, the emperor's new clothes, of the traditional applications software industry. Their products don't actually work until they've been tweaked and customized by customers or partners, and therefore the licence of itself has no out-of-the-box value to the end user. Asking people to pay for the privilege of using the software isn't offering a service, it's taking a liberty. It's as much of a nonsense as asking a punter to pay a performance fee for whistling a copyrighted tune. If I'm paying a fee to watch a movie, listen to a song, or use an application, I expect to experience a professional, finished execution.

True on-demand application vendors understand this. Conventional software vendors seem to think the world still owes them a living, just for bothering to write some software.


This article sounds as if the guy was jaded from the start. His complaints are similar to those people who first scoffed at the notion of leasing a car instead of buying it. Some may consider it foolish, but some also see the benefits. In my experience you can lease a car for 12 months, have the "owner" of the car (or software) continually maintain it when it needs it.

Don't read too deeply in on that analogy, please.

But BOTHERING to write some software? By us Bothering to write some software you have some of the best software out there that's been used to secure most of the IT infrastructure the world runs on. Apache, The Linux Kernel, The Various BSD's, SQL Databases, Iptables, SNORT IDS software, OpenSSL, and many many more!

This guy is just trolling. The article is slanted because he believes that once written, any bugs, flaws (as in it doesn't do this the _way_ it should for ME) should all be done for free simply because he or general consumers are greedy. To a point, bug fixes should be fixed like glaring security flaws that could be used to take over your computer (ala windows in general, yes I'm biased) or damage your information etc.

But get real. If you paid ONCE for your anti-virus software and expected it to work flawlessly and capture all viruses, worms etc without having to pay extra every year to maintain that reliability you're just out of your mind. There is no incentive to keep something up for free especially in an evolving industry. One that evolves and almost 2-5 times the normal rate of other industries.

Think of it this way. You pay a subscription service similar to that of an anti-virus vendor. Receive continual updates, bug fixes, serious flaws get fixed for an annual price. This ensures the developers can work and continue to live as well. Why not? If you don't pay for the next years license, you simply don't get major version upgrades (maybe a serious bug fix or service pack) or new "features".

I'm not keen on the idea of keeping your apps on a server/central location, unless it's on my home network and I have the option to install it centrally or on each workstation. It's just foolish to do it that way. But this guy's "it's mine, I want it all forever" after a simple purchase doesn't cut it. Want that new fender or tires? They're better quality than the current tires you have, then pay for them. Don't expect it for free buddy.

This guy really pissed me off. And I have a football game to watch.

Here's my chance to blab about the PVR I built myself. It's not pretty, but it runs great.
Here are the specs: Leadtek WinFast PVR 2000 TV/FM tuner card; P4 2.8E / ASUS P4P800; onboard sound; 512MB RAM; 80GB + 120GB HD; WinXP Pro.
The software I built uses: Windows Media Encoder SDK; Visual Basic 6; PHP; FireBird; Apache.
Using VB, I wrote code that goes to Zap2It and downloads 12 days worth of TV show programming and parses it into my FireBird DB. From there I have a web front end that lets you search/sort though shows. You can choose to record one show or create a rule that would record a certain show every time it's on. It also handles scheduling conflicts by prioritizing rules and doesn't record a show if it's been previously recorded.
The back end is a VB app that runs all the time and checks the FireBird DB for the next show to be recorded. When it finds one and it's time to start recording it issues a command line request to the Windows Media Encoder to start recording on channel x for x number of seconds. The size and audio/video bitrate are set using the encoder's profile editor.
The profile settings I use consist of: Windows Media Audio 9.1/Video 9; VBR quality base of 90 (usually has a video bitrate of just over 1000kbps); Video size 320 x 240. At these settings the CPU uses about 20% and 1hr worth of video is about half a GB.
I play the shows by streaming them to the Xbox running xbmc.
I also have a command line script that runs every night and deletes any shows that are older than 15 days. If I haven't watched it by then, it's not worth watching.
This setup has worked great for me for the last year. The next step would be to replace the whole setup with MythTV. I'd have the back end on my computer and the front end on the Xbox.

But here's a question for you. If you're required to give "any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License", does that mean that the extended work has to be under this license? Or does it just mean you have to give the license to them, even though it isn't applicable.

It means exactly what it says (see the original; the above suffers from crcual typo's) - you must pass on the license (which include the important disclaimers) along and as it pertains to the agrement under which you got the apache code under - but that does not mean that it applies in a contaminating sense to your own code, code you have added, nor does it mean you have to provide soure or certain licenses pertaining your own work along as wel further downstream.

This is not the same as making a contribution back to the ASF, which is what most of the license is about; and in that case it gets a bit more complex; and you specifically need to take patents into account as well.

Just out of interest, here's the mod_perl graph (a little out of date though). *sigh*

Also, here's SecuritySpace's Apache module survey which covers everything else.

I really can't see this as anything that'll come as a surprise to anyone, nor the fact that apache came first. I also have a feeling that the apache guys see this the same way, as it is nowhere to be found at http://apache.org/foundation/news.html/. but i guess any round number is worth celebrating, after all free as in drunk, is as important as any other freedom ;)

So I noticed mod_smtpd in there.

Is there some corollary to the well known quote like "Every daemon attempts to expand until it can schlep mail" that I'm not aware of?

See http://lucene.apache.org/nutch/ and look for Nutch NDFS (something similar to Google's FS you mentioned). I use Nutch over at Simpy (think Web 2.0) and am very happy with it.