Yahoo Becomes Apache Platinum Sponsor

jschauma writes "Yahoo published a press release announcing that it has become a platinum sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation. In their company blog, Yahoo points out their particular interest in the Apache projects Lucene and Hadoop, and that they have hired Doug Cutting, creator of both projects and VP at Apache. (Lucene powers the search on Wikipedia; Yahoo also provides hosting capacity to Wikimedia.)"

Comments

Tax Break?

[ookabooka]

I was curious, can you deduct money you give to the apache foundation as a charitable donation? They are a not-for-profit organization aren't they? It certainly would be an interesting way for companies to mess with their books.

Re:Tax Break?

[explosivejared]

WP says they are a 501(c)(3), meaning they solely exist to promote science. So any donation to them would be a tax exemption just like a regular charity.

Re:Tax Break?

[jaaron]

We have incorporated. Please see my other comment. Apache is a legal US charity.

Re:Tax Break?

[wdr1]

Rumor spreads that Google is helping an open source project & Slashdot falls over with praise.

Yahoo helps open source & the first question is "Hey, are they cookin' the books?"

Go figure.

-Bill

Go Yahoo

[cumin]

I gave up on Yahoo many years ago and moved to Google in preference. More and more lately, with improved search results, useful information, less restrictive email, and now support for one of my favorite OSS projects, they lure me back.

Keep up the good work Yahoo.

Re:Go Yahoo

[Temporal]

Err... It's great of Yahoo to do this and all, but as others have pointed out, Google was already a platinum sponsor of Apache, and until now was the only platinum sponsor.

Google also contributes directly to the Linux kernel, GCC, Mozilla, and many other projects, funds tons of open source development via the Summer of Code program, releases many of its own projects open source (from small things like its Java collections framework to huge things like Android), provides free hosting for open source projects, etc.

Not trying to diminish Yahoo's contributions -- they release plenty of code too -- but just saying that you can hardly claim Google doesn't do enough for OSS.

Re:Go Yahoo

[wannabgeek]

You mean something like this http://search.yahoo.com/ ?

If Everyone

[gbulmash]

I wonder what would happen if everyone who was using FOSS software like Apache actually supported it? I'm not talking sending your favorite Linux distro the cost of Vista Home Basic, but like $20 spread across your four or 5 favorite projects. I donated to OCAL earlier this year, but I really need to send a Christmas present to the guys at Inkscape. This story's a good reminder.

- Greg

Google donates too

[Dashcolon]

All you gents lauding Yahoo for being a platinum donor in comparisons to Google should take a look at Apache's donation thanks page, where google is also listed as a platinum donor

Yes, Apache is a legal US charity (Re:Tax Break?)

[jaaron]

Yes. Apache is a US charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. See the donation FAQ.

Furthermore, Apache is still almost completely a volunteer organization. The board members, officers and members do not take a salary from the donations. The only paid staff the ASF now has include a PR person, a system administrator, and a part-time secretary.

Disclaimer: I'm an Apache board member.

Re:Lucene and Wikipedia

[Titoxd]

Wikipedia's search is crapola, and everybody and their dog knows that. However, It is not because of limitations with Lucene; it is more caused by limitations with MySQL. The MediaWiki database backend stores the text of pages in an InnoDB database, and InnoDB was used because it provides more robustness during simultaneous read and write operations (or at least that is what I understood). However, InnoDB does not allow for the creation of full-text indices, like those needed for Lucene search; MyISAM databases are required for that. So, there is an expensive replication task from the text table to the search tables in MediaWiki.

Google is also an Apache Sponsor

[jaaron]

Google is also an Apache platinum sponsor. We're happy to have both of them involved!

Wikipedia, eh...

[Frosty Piss]

Lucene powers the search on Wikipedia...

This is not meant to be a troll, though many may take it that way, but if Lucene is what Wikipedia uses, than either Lucene needs a lot of work, or Wikipedia just isn't implementing it right. Wikipedia's search is just about one of the most unforgiving search functions on the web; unless you hit the spelling perfectly, you often simply will not find what you're looking for, and better not have any extraneous words in the search string either. Which is why I use Google to search Wikipedia...

Parent is WRONG, not "Insightful".

[Eivind Eklund]

Lucene is a full text indexer. It does NOT need MySQL full text indexing; it does full text indexing all by itself. This is a primary point.

If Wikipedia had used MyISAM (or MySQL hadn't tied full text indexing to their storage engines), Wikipedia could have used MySQL full text searches instead of Lucene. That is a completely different matter, though.

So, please, mod parent to oblivion. (And when do we get a "Wrong" moderation? It could be a warning to moderators to look before they mod things up again...)

Eivind.