Open Source search engine proposal. Would you pay for data files?

FYI changed the URL to https://elefound.com/posts/elefound-the-imaginary-open-sourc... for the tech angle so that I can add a 2nd article exploring the business angle [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30374611

It depends on the size and performance of tooling. If I can query the data files from in browser, then I'd totally pay for them.

I suspect they'll be large though, and require actual infrastructure to support. Probably a mid-sized VPS at minimum.

At that point, I don't think I'd want to buy them anymore. It's going to cost more than the new crop of premium paid search engines, and I still have to do the maintenance myself.

It makes more sense to me as B2B operation than a B2C, as long as infra is required.

I like the idea and would gladly pay money for a open source federated search engine that isn’t awful.

Lately I have been admiring the efforts to make the web less “corporatized” with the open, decentralized projects of the fediverse (but not all the useless blockchain stuff that’s usually associated with “decentralized”). I think this project is a necessary step towards the future of the web, but I can’t comment on the financial viability of it.

dang, I hope having the "Ask HN" prefix is OK here. It's basically a very long lead-up to the actual Ask HN question:

Would you be willing to pay for the creation of search index data files?

(But for people to have an opinion, I thought that some context is needed)

If spammers/advertisers are willing to pay for adwords, then why would adding a fee to index data keep them out?

wouldn't some sort of group moderation be more effective?