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Altavista - Open Sourced UPDATED
Hi there,
The new affiliate program is based on a syndicated model, where we are providing the HTML and search box interface to Web sites, large and small to enable their users to access AltaVista's premier services including search, stock quotes, language translation, multimedia, news and discussion group content. Users can choose from an array of search boxes that fit their personal brand. The search box then acts as a gateway for users to tap into our robust index. Those Web sites that choose to participate inAltaVista's Affiliate Network will receive three cents per click-through when their users access AltaVista branded services. To learn more about the affiliate program visit http://doc.altavista.com/affiliate/.
This program is not to be confused with the other products we provide that do allow customers to access our source code and build their own search products. We provide an array of tools that allow customers to create their own customized engines and can be accessed at http://doc.altavista.com/business_solutions/search_products/search_intranet/ intranet_intro.shtml.
The article doesn't mention that Altavista is going to open source theit source code. It says that the source code will be given to applicants who can present a "real" web site they are running.
It would be great news if the source code would truly be GP-licensed or whatever OS license model Altavista would choose, but I doubt they will do that. Also remember that the search engine that you can obtain from Alta Vista is not the same as the one that's running their web site. It used to be downloadable before, and my information is that it does not scale as good as the AltaVista.com web page search engine does.
Yes, you are right there. -- Another glass of champagne?
..I needed something to do with that huge pile of Alphas I had just sitting in the corner gathering dust...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
and language translation service
Give a man a babelfish, he understands for a day. GPL the babelfish, then embed it, and he gets a real cool palm app next year.
(Note: the letters GPL do not appear in the article, nor is app a real word)
+&x
I think that this, and the Netscape Communicator/Mozilla effort, mark a sea change when it comes to software development. When a body of code had no value to a company, they used to quietly bury the body. Now, more and more companies release the code to the community, gaining a huge investment in goodwill.
Philosophically, it's a move away from the Marxist conception of value (which is paradoxically de rigeur in US business circles), where anything requiring work gained in value. This isn't obviously false, but false it is. Value, at least in the capitalist system, is based on the ability to sell at a profit. If you cannot sell at a profit, either using the technology or the technology itself, then it's valueless.
Most businessmen stick to the assumption that all the work put into this or that piece has made it valuable and worthy of protection. New businessmen are thinking it through - not everything that takes work is valuable, and protecting something valueless is a waste of effort. By open-sourcing the work, they turn a loss into a gain.
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There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
Having said that, note that Alta Vista are keeping their actual database to themselves - this is the one real asset other than their brand which they possess. Taking these two together, we see a core competence (i.e. leveraging them provides a return disproportionate to effort in relation to the market sector), which is now the basis of their revenue plan.
...from what I can tell, at least.
I think the journalist in the above article has got it all wrong. I can't see anything on the Altavista site regarding the source being opened up.
What they are doing, however, is running an affiliate program that pays web site owners a commission (3c per click through, in this case) for each user that is referred to one of the various AltaVista search facilities from another web page (that has applied, and been approved, for this program).
This is not anything particularly new - as it happens, GoTo.com has been running a very similar scheme for quite a while. GoTo.com's program, as well as AltaVista's, is managed by befree.net.
So, you sign up, put the search boxes on your site, typically pointing to a unique url so they can track your referals, and start collecting money. You don't host their search engine - merely point to it.
If, on the other hand, i've missed something, I would appreciate any pointers to the actual AltaVista source code.
...j
The article actually doesn't expand on the source code freedom beyond the mention in the title, which is more than a little frustrating.
Be an Internet Search Partner (from the home page). Right down the bottom of that page, you'll see a link to the AltaVista Affiliate Network, which is what the article is talking about.
T&C's, FAQs, etc., can be found at the second URL.
...j
UPDATED February 1, 2000
In a shameless attempt to gain attention from popular news sites that will post any story that includes the phrase "Open Source," internet portal site AltaVista announced that it will begin giving away the source code to it's search engine while actually doing no such thing.
Today Altavista rolled out an affiliate program which "allows" web sites to include html that links to the altavista search engine. Altavista did not address the question of why this is interesting, when people have been including search engine textboxes on their pages since 1994. Instead they prominently featured the phrase "Open Source" in the press release title, and went on to not mention even once how "allowing users to include html" could be interpreted as "releasing the source code to it's search engine."
You may still download a crippled trial version of Altavista's intranet search tools, which you may uncripple for a registration fee. But the bold maneuver of issuing a press release that uses the words "open source" is taking the internet by storm.
"We see this press release as an unprecedented opportunity to leverage traffic from weblogs that don't do even the most rudimentary fact-checking," said an Altavista spokesman. "And we know for a fact that there are some very high traffic sites which auto-post any press release that uses the words 'open source,' without a human editor even being involved."
The perl scripts which post content at the popular computer news site Slashdot declined to comment on the allegations that no human is involved in story posting anymore, saying only, "It looks like a hole in the GNU GPL [may allow] people to practically turn GNU-free software into proprietary software..."
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Note: This is intended mostly to be a flame at altavista, and to mildly poke fun at slashdot. Please take it for the humor it is. Thanks.
--The Mgmt.
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Wish you could moderate the submission queue?
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
It seems you have missed the point of Open Source entirely. OSS is not about "Anyone can get the source code", it's about "Anyone can get the source code, modify it, publish the results and do what the heck he wants with it (well, almost)".
With respect to being "worthy": I read the press release as stating that you will have to become an "Affiliate" before you get the source code; and for becoming an affiliate you have to present a web site you are running.
The press release is ambigious about this, so maybe I am wrong. (But if I am wrong: where is the download page for the source code?)
Yes, you are right there. -- Another glass of champagne?
CMGI has finally seen fit to issue a press release. Surprise! they really are cheeky enough to suggest that a snippet of HTML constitutes open source.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/00 0201/ca_altavis_1.html
Excerpt:
"The AltaVista Affiliate Network is leading the expansion of our
distinctive services throughout the Web, at a global scale," said
Rod Schrock, president and CEO of AltaVista Company. "This
program will effectively open source AltaVista Search and
translation services thereby extending our brand to the Internet
community."
Smug bastards.
bumppo
"Can't you read? From the article refrenced: ". Yeah, because we all know that ZDNet never makes mistakes or says untrue things, right?
Maybe you should go read the AltaVista press release. They don't say anything like "Here is our source code, and here is the license". They talk a lot about business solutions and how you can obtain a modified version of their search engine. In a 5 minute look around their site I wasn't able to see anything about what license they were planning to use, or even verify that the search engine they were allowing you to download was not in binary form.
I hope that ZDNet got their story right, but the way the said things I was expecting to see a press release from AltaVista saying "AltaVista open-sources search engine technology!". Not seeing that bothers me.
C'mon, you should know better than to accept at face value what you read in something at ZDNet without checking the source of the story.
As most of us know already, major search engines use a hush-hush set of algorithms to reduce the number of spam'd enteries. (text set in the same color as the page background, really small text, keyword stuffing, etc.) By releasing the source to their engine, isn't AltaVista bascially giving the thieves keys to the treasure chest?
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?