Philosophy

The information society of the 21st century is based on free access to all public information. This means that access to information should be transparent, accountable and accessible for everyone.
We want YaCy to enable this free access to information effectively and realistically!

The major search engines of the global corporations are closed systems. Their search technology is not transparent and comprehensible. We go a different way: YaCy is open-source, free software and is completely transparent: everyone can see how information is obtained for the search engine and displayed to the user.

Between free information and the user, a vital link is missing: free search

There is a lot of free content on the Internet, such as Wikipedia, free music, data under Creative Commons licenses and documents of the Open Access movement. This free content should not only by discoverable using proprietary search engines in an increasingly monopolistic Internet infrastructure because then the monopoly holders decide what information is visible:

In a monopolistic Internet infrastructure, there is a missing link in the chain from producers of free content to the user:
Free information can only be truly free if it can be found with free software. YaCy is the missing link between free content and the search-engine independent user!

Only a decentralized search engine technology can ensure free access to knowledge

The Internet and World Wide Web should provide for its original philosophy of an all-to-all infrastructure and build not only transmitter-receiver connections. Each consumer of content on the Web should have the same opportunity to produce content as to consume it.

Today search engines link decentralized services and content, but because of their centralized structure, they have become the "gatekeepers" of the Web. Our goal is to help producers and users of information on the Web operate independently of the centralized search technique:

YaCy can make all content available to all Internet users - without introducing another monopoly! It is not necessary that every user of the Web operate a YaCy peer, only one installation per 1000 users would probably be sufficient to completely replace centralized search portals.

The advantages of decentralized YaCy-search technique in brief

  • Civil rights and privacy
  • Ecologically
  • Sociologically
  • References

  • Manifestos on the subject of free access to knowledge
  • About our philosophy of open access to knowledge