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.)"

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.

Lucene and Wikipedia

[Blue Trapezoid]

I hope Yahoo taking an interest in Lucene involves them making heavy improvements to it. Wikipedia's search is the worst.

Re:Truly do no evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo donates money to a foundation that Google has already donated tons of money to somehow makes Yahoo what Google purports to be? Yahoo's open source contributions are a tiny fraction of Google's. With the exception of Domain Keys, Yahoo hasn't really made much of an effort to contribute any meaningful tech back to the community over the last several years.

Re:Lucene and Wikipedia

[otisg]

Wikipedia search may not be great, but Lucene itself is an amazing toolkit. I tend to think that without Lucene half of the companies that have some kind of a search companies (think Web2.0) wouldn't know what to do.
Lucene is great and free. FAST, Autonomy, Google Appliance, Endeca, etc. are all *massive* and *expensive*. Compare that to the free and super-flexible Lucene! Oh, and it's not like there is no professional support and services around the Lucene stack! Just look at http://sematext.com/ [sematext.com] and its client list and you'll see some big names.

Re:Lucene and Wikipedia

[Frosty Piss]

According to THIS [typepad.com], Google runs MySQL for AdWrods.

Here is some more about Google and MySQL: http://www.mysql.com/customers/customer.php?id=75 [mysql.com]

Like a new drug?

[RealGrouchy]

One of the theories of why violent crime spiked in the late '80s is that crack cocaine was new on the market, and so the territories among the drug lords had to be established and drawn--often through violent means. After the dust had settled and the lines were established in the early-to-mid '90s, violent crime came down somewhat (both in cities like New York that had spent oodles of money on "tough-on-crime" measures, and in places where no additional resources had been allocated).

Every time I see things like Google latching on to Firefox, or the ones referenced in TFA(S), I can't help but think that Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc. are simply snatching up open-source "territory".

I wonder what it means and where it will lead...

- RG>

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

[Anonymous Coward]

so...who/what does the donated money go towards?