It is possible-kartal
I don't disagree with you that it's possible. I just wonder how
probable it would be.
Firefox made into a somewhat stable semi non profit corporation from donations, Wikipedia managed to grew steadily. Although both has started getting massive donations from Google recenty.
If people have managed to write an operating system like Linux on mostly voluntering basis, if people let their cpus run for searching for aliens then it is possible to create an open search engine.
Very true also, even if the various flavors of Linux, and some of the major FOSS projects, aren't without their own agendas. Note that not too long ago, Mr. Shuttleworth even made a statement to the effect that Ubuntu's development map was "not a democracy" in response to some well intentioned criticism of certain unilateral design changes Ubuntu was making to the Gnome interface.
But even without getting into that, developing a search technology is further complicated by the fact that it isn't just software that's needed. It also requires a substantial physical "plant" to run it on. And we're talking
significant hardware.
Software is essentially free, except for the
time invested in getting it written and debugged. Setting up the massive and high-availability server farm needed to provide a workable meta search-spider that can keep up with the growth of the web is an entirely different matter. And hardware expenses, unlike programming time, will almost always have to come out of somebody's pocket.
Then there's the issue of power. Even if all the servers get donated, the electricity certainly won't be. Especially if the utility providers you deal with are anything like they are in the USA.
But that idea you have about building it using a
distributed computing model such as the SETI or gene folding project uses - possibly with a query mechanism that works something like a P2P tracker - now THAT is a
very very very interesting and powerful idea! Secure too since the actual search database would not be in any one place thereby making it exceptionally resilient.
I haven't heard
anybody else propose going in that direction. If that's your own idea, it's a pretty awesome one. And it could very well be worth pursuing.
Bravo!`
Maybe you could do up a white paper on how you envision it might work and get it out to the FOSS community? It just might get some traction with that crowd.
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