"He really felt that search should be more open and people should be able to tinker with things like ranking," says Mattmann.

Mattmann has used Nutch in his work at NASA, which he describes as "organising the information for scientists." At JPL he leads teams who build large scale data systems that manage hundreds of terabytes of information.

"Part of the stuff that I help to do is organise the information for scientists," he says.

"Organisation can range from the way that files are specifically named and the information that's captured in file names, to their organisation on discs, to the way the information is disseminated to the public."

Using Nutch within NASA, contributing code and helping people on the mailing lists has led to Mattmann becoming an Apache 'committer'. According to the Apache website that means he has access to the source code repository, and can help make strategic decisions around bug fixes and new software releases.