OpenSearch: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:27, 10 June 2025

Unfortunately, OpenSearch is two completely different things. Or, actually three. The Open Search Foundation is a European-based group trying to create a transparent, free Internet Search.

Open Standard

The OpenSearch specification - an open standard for publishing search results came first in 2005. Ironically, it was developed by an Amazon subsidiary^[1]. OpenSearch was (and still is) a way for people to directly use search engines from their browser. In addition to web search results, users could get product search results from Amazon, encyclopedia results from Wikipedia, movie information from IMDb, and countless more. Famously, MediaWiki includes this capability in the software, which means that you can directly search any wiki site (not just Wikipedia) from your browser.

There are many references to the OpenSearch standard on this site - explaining how to implement and use this search feature.

Software

OpenSearch (software)

Almost 20 years later, OpenSearch (software) is a family of software products created by Amazon in 2021 as a fork of Elasticsearch due to a licensing (money) dispute. The project is organized under the umbrella of the OpenSearch Software Foundation which is a project of The Linux Foundation organized to support the OpenSearch software project. The mission of the OpenSearch Software Foundation is to provide infrastructure and other resources to enable the long-term sustainability of the OpenSearch open source project and the OpenSearch ecosystem. Leadership starts at $150K annually. It is spearheaded by contributions from Amazon, SAP and Uber.

OpenSearch is a Lucene-based search engine that started as a fork of version 7.10.2 of the Elasticsearch service.

OpenSearch Dashboards started as a fork of version 7.10.2 of Elastic's Kibana software, and is also under the Apache License, version 2.

https://opensearch.org/

Version 3

Version 3.0 has been released as of May 6, 2025^[2] - based on Lucene v10 and Java 21 plus support for the Java Platform Module System.

Experimental support for protocol buffers (protobuf^[3]) over gRPC transport

Experimental Model Context Protocol (MCP) support on both the server and client side as an experimental feature, enabling seamless integration with AI agents.

References

↑ A9 (short for Algorithm) The chief product was a browser toolbar.
↑ Blog announcement https://opensearch.org/blog/unveiling-opensearch-3-0/ Release Notes https://github.com/opensearch-project/opensearch-build/blob/main/release-notes/opensearch-release-notes-3.0.0.md
↑ Protocol Buffers is a free and open-source cross-platform data format used to serialize structured data. Think JSON, but faster (and less readable).

[1] A9 (short for Algorithm) The chief product was a browser toolbar.

[2] Blog announcement https://opensearch.org/blog/unveiling-opensearch-3-0/ Release Notes https://github.com/opensearch-project/opensearch-build/blob/main/release-notes/opensearch-release-notes-3.0.0.md

[3] Protocol Buffers is a free and open-source cross-platform data format used to serialize structured data. Think JSON, but faster (and less readable).

[1]

[2]

[3]

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+Unfortunately, OpenSearch is two completely different things. Or, actually three. The [https://opensearchfoundation.org/en/ Open Search Foundation] is a European-based group trying to create a transparent, free Internet Search.
-Unfortunately, OpenSearch is two completely different things.
 == Open Standard ==
@@ Line 10: / Line 9: @@
 == Software ==
 [[File:Opensearch Logo.svg|alt=OpenSearch (software) logo|thumb|OpenSearch (software)]]
-Almost 20 years later, [[wp:OpenSearch_(software)|OpenSearch (software)]] is a family of software products created by Amazon in '''2021''' as a fork of [[Elasticsearch]]. Now a Linux Foundation project, it is spearheaded by contributions from Amazon, SAP and Uber.
+Almost 20 years later, [[wp:OpenSearch_(software)|OpenSearch (software)]] is a family of software products created by Amazon in '''2021''' as a fork of '''[[Elasticsearch]]''' due to a licensing (money) dispute.  The project is organized under the umbrella of the '''OpenSearch Software Foundation''' which is a project of '''The Linux Foundation''' organized to support the OpenSearch software project. The mission of the OpenSearch Software Foundation is to provide infrastructure and other resources to enable the long-term sustainability of the OpenSearch open source project and the OpenSearch ecosystem. Leadership starts at $150K annually. It is spearheaded by contributions from Amazon, SAP and Uber.
 '''OpenSearch''' is a [[wp:Lucene|Lucene]]-based search engine that started as a fork of version 7.10.2 of the Elasticsearch service.
@@ Line 27: / Line 26: @@
 https://github.com/opensearch-project/opensearch-build/blob/main/release-notes/opensearch-release-notes-3.0.0.md</ref> - based on Lucene v10 and Java 21 plus support for the Java Platform Module System.
-Experimental support for protocol buffers (protobuf<ref>[[wp:Protocol_Buffers|Protocol Buffers]] is a free and open-source cross-platform [[wp:Comparison_of_data-serialization_formats|data format used to serialize structured data]]. Faster than [[JSON]].</ref>) over [https://grpc.io/ gRPC] transport
+Experimental support for protocol buffers (protobuf<ref>[[w:Protocol_Buffers|Protocol Buffers]] is a free and open-source cross-platform [[w:Comparison_of_data-serialization_formats|data format used to serialize structured data]]. Think [[JSON]], but faster (and less readable).</ref>) over [https://grpc.io/ gRPC] transport
 Experimental Model Context Protocol (MCP) support on both the server and client side as an experimental feature, enabling seamless integration with AI agents.