Frequently Asked Questions
This is a list of questions commonly asked. If you want to know something that is not here, contact us!
What is BeeSeek?
BeeSeek is a project that aims to develop an Open Source search engine based on a Peer-to-Peer technology. Learn more about the project.
Open Source? Free Software? Search engine? Peer-to-peer? What are you talking about?
1) Open Source and Free Software means that the code that run BeeSeek is available to everyone, and everyone can download, study or hack the code for whatever reason. Check out Wikipedia for more info about open source and free software.
2) A search engine is a software that scan the Internet looking for pages that match your search. If you've ever used Google or Yahoo, you should know what we are talking about.
3) Peer-to-Peer is a technology that doesn't use the standard client - server architecture. In this technology, members of the network are peer nodes working both as client and server simultaneously. This is a rather technical concept, check out Wikipedia for more information.
Sounds good! But what it does, exactly?
Our purpose is to release a search engine whose source code is freely available by everyone. Internet has a lot of search engines, but none of these let us know how they work internally. This is a concern for users' privacy and rights.
How can I help BeeSeek?
BeeSeek is always looking for good hands willing to help our development. Currently, we are looking for programmers, web editors, graphics, experts in marketing. So, almost everyone can help us. You can learn more about the structure in the GettingInvolved page. Join these teams if you wish to help our project! Soon we'll also make available a donation page.
What makes BeeSeek different from Google, Yahoo, MSN and so on?
BeeSeek is based on Free Software (free as in free speech, not as in free beer). This means that every user knows exactly what BeeSeek does, and is certain that his/her own data are completely anonymous.
What kind of technology do you use for BeeSeek?
Being a FOSS project, BeeSeek uses and requires only FOSS technologies. Our website and the search engine itself is hosted on a Ubuntu server. We use standard-adherent (X)HTML and CSS for our web pages and Python for the engine code. Our Version Control System is Bazaar. The only closed-source software we are using at the moment is Launchpad, where we host and coordinate our project. The decision of using Launchpad has been taken for the will of Canonical to release source code by the end of July.
How much does it cost?
Nothing. BeeSeek is and will always be free of charge for the user.
Can I try BeeSeek?
Currently there isn't a stable release of the software, but you can try the beta version visiting staging.beeseek.org. If you want to test BeeSeek in a deeper way, read the Testing page.
Who works for BeeSeek?
Currently, BeeSeek is managed by a community composed by volunteers divided in teams, each one for a specific part of the project.
I would like to give some money to help BeeSeek.
At the moment we cannot accept money, but soon we will. If you want to help us, just contact us.
Where are you from?
The project was born in Italy, but our mission is to develop a world-wide project. So, BeeSeek is open to world-wide contributions. Our official language is English, although Italian is sometimes used.