Aren't the secrets of the algorithm what prevent people from gaming the results? While I love the idea of search becoming fully open source I'm skeptical it could be done. I hope I'm wrong and I'd love to dedicate time to an open source project with this goal if anyone presents a convincing plan.
The algorithms, code and configuration can be public, if the ranking isn't done just by those, but instead by many participants in the project all over the world and also by personal preferences of each client. That would be hard to game.
