Reddit Makes Their Code Open Source | Hacker News Reader

Reddit Makes Their Code Open Source

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30 pointsmoses140010 comments

See also the official blog post ( http://blog.reddit.com/2008/06/reddit-goes-open-source.html ) and code repository ( http://code.reddit.com/ )

It's probably just me, but does anyone else see this as a bit of overhype? I haven't heard too much chatter about reddit's /codebase/. I guess it's fine that it's going Open Source, but it's not something I have heard anyone really clamoring for, nor even really caring much about.

Am I being too shortsighted? What wonderful new things can be spawned from this?

I think this is a valid point and what strikes me as most interesting about it is that we are indeed entering into a time where technology is increasingly becoming a commodity. Perhaps this is the wrong place to be making such a claim (given that this is "Hacker News"), but I believe that the connections that emerge from such enabling technology as reddit's is more important than the underlying implementations that create such connections.

It's also useful to mention that the user experience that is embodied in reddit's code is pretty specific to reddit the site. While others might want to create their own reddits, they are merely distributing reddit's user experience to the rest of the internet. What would be interesting to me is if the specific user experience is morphed into a new user experience, instead of merely repackaging it into something that looks different.

A few things that strike me:

It's Pylons. I'm no Pythonista, but I think the code for such a highly trafficked site built using Pylons is interesting.

Isn't it unprecedented that such a highly trafficked site, owned by a large, decidedly Corporate company (Conde Naste), would become open source? Open sourcing web _sites_ is rare (applications, such as WP, Drupal, etc, not so much). Now Reddit is a web app (sort of due to it now being 'sold' -- although for free), but you could argue before that it was a web site.

Now it is trivial to start a new community, just like the old community. Eventually every community hits a critical mass of popularity and articles and discussions factor to the lowest common denominator. When it hits the limit (as Reddit did a while a go, in my opinion) someone can start a new one without much work.

Or, maybe I'm just an open source geek with a soft spot for Reddit.

Slashdot is the first one I remember doing this. The audience sizes are arguable, but I'm inclined to think slashdot's audience was higher.

I am interested to read this code because I haven't read much on how they rank stories. Now I can read the implementation itself.

Actually, the coverage on Ars Technica has an interview with co-founder Stever Huffman and he says that the ranking algorithm is one of the things they are not making open source.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080618-reddit-social-...

You read wrong my friend:

> Not all of reddit's code will be released, however. Huffman told me that while about 95 percent of reddit's code base is getting released at code.reddit.com under the CPAL license (the same one Facebook used to open source its own platform), including the rating algorithm that chooses which stories float to the front page

http://code.reddit.com/browser/r2/r2/lib/db/sorts.py http://code.reddit.com/browser/r2/r2/lib/normalized_hot.py

Ah ok, I misunderstood what they meant.

Well, if they have an open mind and allow submissions from the community, it could get new features added to Reddit. A closed site like Digg wouldn't get the benefit.

That being said, Slashcode being open doesn't feel like it made Slashdot overflowing with cool innovations.

Maybe given the current climate developers will like Python more than Perl for tweaking a website?

This strikes me as a clever anti-competitive measure. You flood the web with cheap clones who have small user bases and low quality, and no one can gain enough traction to overtake your site.

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