Foreword

Lucene started as a self-serving project. In late 1997, my job uncertain, I sought something of my own to market. Java was the hot new programming language, and I needed an excuse to learn it. I already knew how to write search software, and thought I might fill a niche by writing search software in Java. So I wrote Lucene.

In 2000, I realized that I didn’t like to market stuff. I had no interest in negotiating licenses and contracts, and I didn’t want to hire people and build a company. I liked writing software, not selling it. So I tossed Lucene up on SourceForge, to see if open source might let me keep doing what I liked.

A few folks started using Lucene right away. In 2001, folks at Apache offered to adopt Lucene. The number of daily messages on the Lucene mailing lists grew steadily. Code contributions started to trickle in. Most were additions around the edges of Lucene: I was still the only active developer who fully grokked its core. Still, Lucene was on the road to becoming a real collaborative project.

Now, in 2010, Lucene has a pool of active developers with deep understanding of its core. I’m no longer involved in day-to-day development; substantial additions and improvements are regularly made by this strong team.