One way to network is to go to job interviews. Be open about the fact that you're mostly interested in contracting and maybe you'll consider joining after a time (which is true in my case - there's a lot of overhead in contracting).
People forget that doing backward breaking changes take a while.
Python 3 was released at the end of 2008, 2 years after Java 6. How many systems you know still run on Java 5?
Two things:
1. IMO sup (http://supmua.org/) is more mature and does about the same. However it's interface is a curses based one which is a plus and a minus.
2. Why not use an existing search products (like xapian)?