Plans going forward with my "Web Search with .NET"

I got the following question on Sunday regarding my posts about the Spider and associated Web Search:

I'm curious: is there a possibility you will ever release the source of your pet project? =)

I've been reading your posts for the last days, and i'm truly impressed by what your doing and it would be *great* to learn from your skills :)

1/11/2004 5:48 AM | David Cumps
First off, I think David gives me too much credit. I don't feel that I am a great programmer as much as I know what to do, and more importantly, what not to do.  Afterall, I am not a muscian like my buddy Rob Birdwell, or a mathematician like David Penton, or a complete genius like Paul Wilson, or anyone at Microsoft, or ..... (you get the picture).  I'm a guy just trying to get by.
 
To answer this question, I really need to figure out where I am going with this pet project.  Here is where I think I am going.  Please note that there is nothing I am going to say is set in stone.
  1. Build a web interface to my application.  Note that I am almost done with a rudimentry search interface using ASP.NET and the Datagrid.  This interface is not great, but it is a start.
  2. Web Service interface.  I am thinking about implementing a Web Service interface to this application so that a Winforms app could connect over the Internet.  While I am not interested in making this a public search engine, I am more interested in using this as a demo of our capabilities at our company.
  3. Convert the Spider from the ThreadPool to Managed Threads.  This will remove a bottleneck.
  4. Get rid of “magic numbers.”  I have several situations in my code where I am using magic numbers that I just plugged in because they worked but are essentially hardcoded values with no rhyme-or-reason behind them.
  5. Remove certain assumptions, such as the uniprocessor assumptions.  There was some logic within the system that assumed I was running on a single processor system with regards to the TP.  I believe that I have successfully completed this, but I don't have a system to test this on.
  6. Convert to a Windows Service.  Right now, this runs as a Winforms app, but I want to change this to a Windows Service.
  7. General code cleanup so that I am not too embarrassed by what the code that I put out with my name on it.
  8. Convert the code to take advantage of Yukon and the .NET 2.0 framework.  I have had some ideas for this code for a while, but the push I needed to get started was a talk I listened to regarding Yukon and the .NET 2.0 framework.  There are a couple of items within this application that literally SCREAM for Yukon and the .NET 2.0 framework (.NET sprocs, server-side cursors, and a new implementation of TOP come to mind).
  9. Figure out a license scheme to properly implement.  I would love suggestions on this.  While I am a programmer, I am also a capitalist.  I don't want others to unfairly profit from my work.  At the same time, I don't want to stop others from learning.  Something must be done that is fair to everyone, including myself. 

Anyway, these are my current thoughts, with nothing set in stone.

Wally

2 Comments

  • Very curious to what the license scheme will be :p



    You can say you're not a great programmer, but to me you are very experience, i'm still a student after all :)



    I'm hoping there exists some kind of non-profit educational license out there that you like and could use, cos you're really implementing all kinds of .net aspects in one program, which i am only starting to think about, so it's with admiration i'm looking to the progress of this :)

  • Do you just want to be paid if people release commercial software using your code? Or whenever someone uses your code as is for commercial purposes?



    If the former, the GPL works well. If someone builds software with your code, they have two choices: 1) release their own code under the GPL, or 2) negotiate with you for some other license.



    Quite a few successful projects make money with this model, including MySQL and QT.

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