

Reddit Makes Their Code Open Source - moses1400
http://www.centernetworks.com/reddit-open-source

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

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MoeDrippins
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?

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mileszs
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.

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j2d2
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.

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deathbyzen
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-...](http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080618-reddit-social-news-
site-goes-transparent-open-source.html)

~~~
jonknee
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>

~~~
deathbyzen
Ah ok, I misunderstood what they meant.

