About to declare 'unmaintained'

[D Bera]

Dear friends,
You must have seen this coming. Lack of time of both me and Joe
(personally communicated) has left the beagle project practically
unmaintained. We wanted to do a final release, and Joe even managed to
check-in some patches from the bugzilla. We have been talking about it
among us since the summer and *sigh*... I havn't found the time and
right frame of mind to gather everything, do the testing and roll a
tarball. I am not sure when I will get time to do it. But the trunk is
stable, so feel free to use it.

I am still not completely demotivated, just that a lot is going on
right now, enough to keep me occupied. I try and will try to reply to
emails within a few days ... but please lower your expectations =( If
it helps, there will be one final release before this project is
officially orphaned.

As of now, the evolution backend needs a rewrite because of the new
Evolution API for indexing. I don't know much about its complexity.
There are few other backends that are obsolete due to their move to
sqlite based storage ... they need a rewrite too. There are multiple
query clients ... CLI, gtk, kde, web (the web-interface is broken in
0.3.9 but fixed in trunk) and they seem to be working fine without
major problems. Query can be done remotely and there is an RDF
interface to the indexed data if anyone is interested in data-mining.
We already support a lot of file formats and adding new format is
pretty easy (as simple as writing a script for simple formats).

There are lots of challenging improvements or bugfixes in the TODO
list, of different orders of complexity - so if you want to learn more
about beagle internals or just get your hands dirty with C# (that is
how I landed here), I am sure I can make concrete suggestions.

And once again, any support in any form is most welcome.
Thanks to all of you for your support and help in the previous years,
- dBera

--
-----------------------------------------------------
Debajyoti Bera @ http://dtecht.blogspot.com
beagle / KDE fan
Mandriva / Inspiron-1100 user
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[Adam Tauno Williams]

> You must have seen this coming.

Yep, sadly.  Beagle is fantastic but due some peoples myopia it has
never gotten the fame or accolades it deserves [and I've never
understood why more apps didn't just support it rather than just rolling
their own meta-data junk].

> As of now, the evolution backend needs a rewrite because of the new
> Evolution API for indexing.

GNOME doesn't have any official bounty system?  I know I'd be willing to
throw up some cash for that to be fixed - it is just too handy to live
without.  Again, I just don't understand why *everyone* doesn't use
this.

> There are few other backends that are obsolete due to their move to
> sqlite based storage ... they need a rewrite too.

Maybe in the long run the pervasive use of SQLite will help.  Just
trying to find some optimism.

BTW,  there is a reimplementation of SQLite in C#
<http://code.google.com/p/csharp-sqlite/> - but I assume everyone here
already knows about that.

> There are lots of challenging improvements or bugfixes in the TODO
> list, of different orders of complexity - so if you want to learn more
> about beagle internals or just get your hands dirty with C# (that is
> how I landed here), I am sure I can make concrete suggestions.

I know I'd love to but am already buried in projects.

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[guiodic]

I love Beagle. I don't want it die.
But I'm not a c# developer, so I can't help.
But Beagle is part on Suse desktop. Novell CAN'T leave Beagle unmantained.

Can you write to Novell, De Icaza or other "big"?

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[Roger Lainson]

Like others I find beagle absolutely great, but I have only minor C# skills so it's hard to help.

In my situation, I use mainly beagle on an Ubuntu server for a company-wide document search (I just use the CLI via a home-grown PHP web interface), replacing an installation using Windows and MS Indexing Service. I was unable to find any other straightforward document indexer to run on the new Ubuntu server, but beagle filled the gap beautifully. It could and should be of interest to anyone else migrating from MS to Linux (which is a popular move nowadays). Could it be worth approaching the Ubuntu server people (Canonical) to see if they have any interest?? It might narrow beagle's focus a bit, but still might be better than unmaintained. Just a thought.

Thanks for all your good work!

Cheers, Roger Lainson

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[Enrico Minack]

I also think that it is a pity that this great piece of software is
going to die. Beagle has a great clean architecture, that makes it easy
to understand, extend and improve. It provides a great indexing and
search framework that addresses all issues that you are faced when you
want to build your own desktop search engine: indexers, filters,
scheduler, monitoring consumed resources, and so on.

I like the idea to ask Novel and Ubuntu if they are interested in
further maintaining Beagle. I am using Beagle on my Ubuntu system.
Unfortunately, it is not installed and running by default. Ubuntu seems
to count on a system called Tracker (wasn't there something in Beagle's
history called tracker?), which never succeeded for me to find ANYTHING.
It looks to me like they started a new system from scratch, while Beagle
was sitting there, ready to be used or built upon. However, it would be
good to get there feedback.

I could also imagine that anybody of the search interface developers you
mentioned would be interested in Beagle to live on. Could you also write
to some of them, personally?

Well, I have to finish my encomium on Beagle by admitting that I am also
not capable (time-wise) of maintaining Beagle. But who ever takes it
over has my admiration.


Cheers,
Enrico M.

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[guiodic]

Il giorno ven, 11/09/2009 alle 10.46 +0200, Enrico Minack ha scritto:

Ubuntu seems
to count on a system called Tracker (wasn't there something in Beagle's
history called tracker?), which never succeeded for me to find ANYTHING.

true, very true.

---

GUIDO IODICE
tel. [phone]
guido.iodice@...
http://guiodic.wordpress.com
http://www.facebook.com/people/Guido_Iodice/1471180388

---

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[Joe Shaw-4]

Hi,

I just wanted to reiterate what Bera said.  Unfortunately it's been a
long time coming, and I had the revelation fairly recently that our
meager maintenance efforts were simply not going to keep up with the
positive forward progress of other projects upon which we depend, like
Evolution.

Adam asked about bounties.  There doesn't appear to be any official
bounties system, although some are posted informally here:

    http://live.gnome.org/Bounties

But there doesn't appear to be a comprehensive system similar to Elance.

A couple people mentioned whether Novell or Canonical (Ubuntu) would
fund Beagle development.  I used to work at Novell, and I had the
great fortune of working on Beagle pretty much from the start.  For a
couple of years there they paid two full time developers to work on
the project: Jon Trowbridge and myself.  When Jon left the company, it
was just me -- although there was occasional part-time help, like Dan
Winship's excellent work on the search UI.  Since I left Novell nearly
two years ago, there has been none.  I think it's safe to say that
Novell no longer has any dedication to the project.  I don't mean that
as a dig -- having worked on Ximian and SUSE distributions you have to
make strategic and tactical decisions where to put your resources,
since you can't hack full time on everything.  It appears clear that
desktop search hasn't panned out as they thought and that experimental
projects like Dashboard, Association Browser, etc. aren't feasible.

As for Canonical and Ubuntu, a number of releases ago that community
decided to go with Tracker instead of Beagle, I believe in part due to
a major backlash against Mono following the Microsoft/Novell patent
agreement.  Although I think Beagle is still for the moment ahead of
Tracker in terms of core user functionality, Tracker has a vibrant
development community backed by open source companies whereas Beagle's
is completely stagnant and bordering on nonexistent.  If I were an
impartial party trying to decide in which to invest development
resources, Beagle is simply a tougher case to make.

Having said all that, please don't let me stop anyone from making
those overtures.  Nothing would make me happier than to see the old
dog get a new lease on life. :)  As Roger said, maybe it can do so
with a reimagined focus.

Like I said, I've gotten to hack on Beagle from the beginning, which
has been five years (!) now.  I am very proud of the work I've done
personally, and that we've done as a community.  I have my regrets
too, both technical and non-technical.  But I've also moved on with my
life and I hack on other stuff now, and I don't personally have much
interest in returning to full-time Beagle development.  I take great
comfort in the fact that we created the first user-centric search
system on Linux, and that it is open source software.

Thanks,
Joe
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[guiodic]

2009/9/13 Joe Shaw <joe@...>

Since I left Novell nearly
two years ago, there has been none.  I think it's safe to say that
Novell no longer has any dedication to the project.  I don't mean that
as a dig -- having worked on Ximian and SUSE distributions you have to
make strategic and tactical decisions where to put your resources,
since you can't hack full time on everything.  It appears clear that
desktop search hasn't panned out as they thought and that experimental
projects like Dashboard, Association Browser, etc. aren't feasible.

Can Novell leave unmantained a piece of its desktop? This is a suicide for Suse.
Corporate users need to search in Evolution mail, IM messages, files, visited web pages and more in the same time. Only Beagle can do it, if upgraded and mantained.
Beagle can do the difference on enterprise desktop. To leave it unmantained is stupid.
Well, I think there are some stupids men in Novell (did someone say "Miguel"?), but I hope not so stupid.
Monotouch can't be Novell core business....
 

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[Joe Shaw-4]

Hi,

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 11:39 AM, guido iodice <guido.iodice@...> wrote:
> Can Novell leave unmantained a piece of its desktop? This is a suicide for
> Suse.

Exactly what Novell intends to do with Beagle is unclear, but I think
"suicide" is a bit hyperbolic.  From my time at Novell there was a
love/hate relationship with Beagle among SUSE users.  Some people
loved it and wouldn't live without it, and other people despised it to
the point where the very first thing they did after installing SUSE
was remove Beagle.  I think a lot of people would be pretty
disappointed if they stopped shipping Beagle, but would they lose a
lot of business?  I'm not so sure.

I don't have any inside knowledge anymore, but it is conceivable that
SUSE would ship Tracker in a future release and replace a chunk of
Beagle's functionality with that.

> Well, I think there are some stupids men in Novell (did someone say
> "Miguel"?), but I hope not so stupid.
> Monotouch can't be Novell core business....

Well, Miguel is a friend of mine, so I don't really appreciate that.

Novell's a big company, and Mono is a totally separate entity from
their desktop business.  If Novell wants to put resources toward
Beagle, it's going to come from the SUSE organization and not Miguel's
Mono organization.

I agree with you, though, in that I am not really sure what Novell's
aims are with Monotouch, but that's orthogonal to this.

Joe
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[guiodic]

2009/9/22 Joe Shaw <joe@...>

Novell's a big company, and Mono is a totally separate entity from
their desktop business.  If Novell wants to put resources toward
Beagle, it's going to come from the SUSE organization and not Miguel's
Mono organization.

I agree with you, though, in that I am not really sure what Novell's
aims are with Monotouch, but that's orthogonal to this.

I apologize for "stupid" to Miguel De Icaza, I mentioned him because his role in Mono and in Novell. Well, MdI  is *not* stupid at all. To leave Beagle unmantained is stupid.
If you are his friend, please say him Beagle is dying. Because he is not a stupid, I think MdI will do something.

I think only Novell could save Beagle: Beagle is written in Mono. No one, no company, want to write software in Mono because patent issue. You know, this issue is too dangerous for business.

But Novell have a deal with MS on patents, then Novell can. Novell can demostrate the patent deal is useful for users. If not, all FLOSS users will realize the deal is not a serious thing.

Imagine Red Hat men laughing when they see Microsoft is asking for money for patent licenses on Monotouch :)

 

 

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[Adam Tauno Williams]

> > Can Novell leave unmantained a piece of its desktop? This is a suicide for
> > Suse.
> Exactly what Novell intends to do with Beagle is unclear, but I think
> "suicide" is a bit hyperbolic.  From my time at Novell there was a
> love/hate relationship with Beagle among SUSE users.  Some people
> loved it and wouldn't live without it, and other people despised it to
> the point where the very first thing they did after installing SUSE
> was remove Beagle.

Ugh, what a bunch of irrational haters.  Those goons are still around
unfortunately.  But don't worry: they hate KDE4, and they will have
GNOME 3 and Tracker.

I imagine openSUSE will simple include Tracker at some point - hopefully
soon.  I haven't paid much attention to Tracker but at a glance it has
much of Beagles functionality and already has some integration into
Zeitgeist.  Interesting that much of what Dashboard and the like first
hoped to accomplish is finally coming into being.
<http://seilo.geekyogre.com/2009/09/some-pics-from-the-new-gnome-activity-journal/>

> > Well, I think there are some stupids men in Novell (did someone say
> > "Miguel"?), but I hope not so stupid.
> > Monotouch can't be Novell core business....
> Well, Miguel is a friend of mine, so I don't really appreciate that.

Claiming he is "stupid" is also absurd.  He wrote a good chunk of
Gnumeric;  solid evidence against stupidity.

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[Adam Tauno Williams]

> I apologize for "stupid" to Miguel De Icaza, I mentioned him because
> his role in Mono and in Novell. Well, MdI  is *not* stupid at all. To
> leave Beagle unmantained is stupid.
> If you are his friend, please say him Beagle is dying. Because he is
> not a stupid, I think MdI will do something.
> I think only Novell could save Beagle: Beagle is written in Mono. No
> one, no company, want to write software in Mono because patent issue.

BOGOSITY = 100%.  This is crap - stop spouting this nonsense - many
companies are developing code using Mono from Unity [gaming] to Quantifi
[financial] to Medsphere [medical]. And many of the leading Open Source
projects are in Mono: Monodevelop, F-Spot, Banshee, Tomboy, etc... The
Mono ecosystem is thriving, and will do so with or without Beagle.  

> But Novell have a deal with MS on patents, then Novell can.

Garbage.  This is a claim of pure unadulterated ignorance.  The "patent
deal" has nothing whatsoever at-all to do with Mono.  This has been
explained dozens of times.

An in general:
<http://www.jprl.com/Blog/archive/development/mono/2009/Jan-19.html>
<http://jeffreystedfast.blogspot.com/2008/02/lots-of-gnomemono-fud-lately.html>
<http://www2.apebox.org/wordpress/rants/124/>

That is the answer to FUD;  I won't dignify any responses along those
line - and spare polluting the list archives with more such foolishness.

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[guiodic]

2009/9/22 Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam@...>

I haven't paid much attention to Tracker

Today it doesn't work. Period.
I used tracker on tree releases of Ubuntu. After 1 week I purged it to install Beagle.
 

Claiming he is "stupid" is also absurd.  He wrote a good chunk of
Gnumeric;  solid evidence against stupidity.

I already wrote MdI is not stupid. What is stupid is to leave unmantained one of the best software developed with Mono, Beagle. Then if MdI is not a studip - and I think he is not a stupid - he can find a solution.

I hope he is not too busy with codeplex@microsoft ... ;-)

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[guiodic]

2009/9/22 Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam@...>

 

And many of the leading Open Source

projects are in Mono: Monodevelop, F-Spot, Banshee, Tomboy, etc... The
Mono ecosystem is thriving, and will do so with or without Beagle.

Banshee is leading something? when? where?
Monodevelop is a leading IDEs? when? where?
Is your a joke?

You know: RH deleted mono from Fedora. Canonical will not include Banshee in default installation of Ubuntu Karmic.
 

Garbage.  This is a claim of pure unadulterated ignorance.  The "patent
deal" has nothing whatsoever at-all to do with Mono.  This has been
explained dozens of times.

No. MS-Novell deal covers *all* MS patents. Please read it.
It is true it is not only or mainly for Mono but it covers Mono. Only Novell version of Mono, of course.




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