diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 53d0a914afb..1fcce817f12 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -93,6 +93,13 @@ Changes in backwards compatibility policy
     help in alleviating future back compat pain, Spans has been changed from
     an interface to an abstract class.
     (Hugh Cayless, Mark Miller)
+    
+ 7. LUCENE-1808: Query.createWeight has been changed from protected to
+    public. This will be a back compat break if you have overridden this
+    method - but you are likely already affected by the LUCENE-1693 (make Weight 
+    abstract rather than an interface) back compat break if you have overridden 
+    Query.creatWeight, so we have taken the opportunity to make this change.
+    (Tim Smith, Shai Erera via Mark Miller)
  
 Changes in runtime behavior
 
@@ -383,6 +390,9 @@ API Changes
     help in alleviating future back compat pain, Spans has been changed from
     an interface to an abstract class.
     (Hugh Cayless, Mark Miller)
+    
+36. LUCENE-1808: Query.createWeight has been changed from protected to
+    public. (Tim Smith, Shai Erera via Mark Miller)
 
 Bug fixes
 
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/Query.java b/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/Query.java
index 2d92fa5693f..1edd79ff5d7 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/Query.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/Query.java
@@ -87,7 +87,7 @@ public abstract class Query implements java.io.Serializable, Cloneable {
    * <p>
    * Only implemented by primitive queries, which re-write to themselves.
    */
-  protected Weight createWeight(Searcher searcher) throws IOException {
+  public Weight createWeight(Searcher searcher) throws IOException {
     throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
   }