
Hacker News India - Veera
http://hackernews.in/
======
david927
There's a lot of nay-saying here. I think the idea is great and the name is
fine. (By the way, I would just ignore the advice here. Paul may love the
name/idea or even simply not care. Until you hear otherwise, don't assume
either way.)

HN has been hobbled by small restaurant syndrome. Paul has been loathe to add
basic features, let alone extend it, for the same reason a restaurateur will
maintain a small number of tables: because he or she likes the client base and
extending it will jeopardize that. That's a completely valid reason.

But there's a huge opportunity here to extend this to really assist in driving
innovation. Add to your site the missing basic features such as search, then
extend it with free startup job listings, co-founder matching, etc. (All those
HN spreadsheets? Implement them.) You would be doing a huge service to the
Indian startup community, and that means a huge service to innovation in
general.

~~~
srean
Given that Prateek has mentioned that he is unfamiliar with lisp/arc I do not
think he intends to extend the code. But that would be great, particularly if
such extensions are communicated upstream or released in the open.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1913505>

~~~
srean
@Prateekdayal It seems I cannot reply 3 levels deep. But if thats the intent
all powers to you.

~~~
pmjordan
There's a cool-off time for replying to nested comments, the more deeply
nested the longer. You just need to wait a few minutes.

------
srean
Is it only me who finds "Ask Prateek" tad conceited ? I am none too
comfortable with the idea of helping oneself to someone else's work/brand
unless it was expressly opened for that purpose. But then imitation may be the
sincerest form of flattery.

It doesnt help much that the Indian software scene has a stronger reputation
for copying than for innovating. And I am Indian. I have similar minor peeves
about OSQA helping themselves to SO. But I take back my comments if the
news.ycombinator src as well as the brand were indeed opened up for that
purpose.

Edit: "Ask Prateek" is "Ask HNI" now, so I take back that part of my
criticism.

~~~
prateekdayal
The reason we are using the HN codebase is because it has been proven to work
(socially and not just technically). Since this is a not a for profit
initiative (no ads/links), there is no sense investing time in reinventing it
when this just works.

~~~
srean
By that logic one can justify any form of plagiarism cant one ? I am more
concerned about helping yourself to the brand without permission than about
using the code as its on git.

It just reinforces the stereotype that Indian software scene is all about
unauthorized copying of other people's ideas. I dont necessarily agree with
the stereotype but things like this does not really help dispell it.

------
intdev
Let me start by saying that I am an Indian hacker. Forget the name. Even if
you ignore the name, I personally do not like the idea of an "Indian HN
clone". HN stands for something. It is a global close-knit community. It is as
if you are forming your own group and sitting at a different table for lunch
at school. What if every country sat on their own table? It is just going to
result in unnecessary fragmentation.

Now, I understand that you are not moving away from HN and have created the
site to discuss Indian specific issues, but I don't see what is stopping you
from discussing those issues on HN itself. The site being an exact HN clone
doesn't sit well with your good intentions. Add to that the fact that you are
using the same name.

Sorry for generalizing, but IMHO, the global image of Indian hackers is not
particularly good, and this sort of thing doesn't help. Personally I would
suggest looking at some different means to solve the problems for which the
clone was created. You have my respect for trying to take some initiative
though.

~~~
MrMan
I would also much rather that the existing HN community became more global, by
including all Indian hackers/entrepreneurs. It doesn't do anyone much good to
have people in the US and India isolated on their own websites does it? One of
the things I have about US tech news discussions is how they ignore the rest
of the world so often.

------
aberkowitz
I have mixed feelings about this secession from HN. It's great that there's a
separate place for Indians to meet and talk, but I fear it may leach from the
diverse culture here.

~~~
plinkplonk
I don't think you need to worry. Many Indian HN folks have no plan to join "HN
India" (note the quotes).

I personally think this is a distasteful effort (specifically the use of the
HN name for an independent site without permission vs just using the open
source code), or at best a naive one, which will sputter along for a while and
then die.The discussion so far on "HN India" is extremely sub par as compared
to HN, and certainly not worth switching or even joining.

Imo, there isn't enough of a critical mass of India specific issues related to
hacking/startups/programming etc sufficient to support a whole new community.
Sure there are a _few_ India specific issues but they'll be discussed to death
in a few weeks and then the forum will stagnate. Discussion about
programming/hacking/startups/other matters of intellectual interest are _in
general_ best done in a global context.

This is an unpopular view point amongst certain folks here in India(and I
fully expect to be downvoted ;-)), but if they pull it off and create an ultra
vibrant community, more power to them. I just don't see it happening. And as
long as they are ripping off the HN Name (and brand) I won't even think of
joining.

~~~
sandGorgon
I concur with your distaste for the domain name (@prateek - no use garnering
such animosity. Just drop the name and pick something else - desihacker.in is
available. you might even get some good press.)

But having a local technology discussion group might not be all that useless -
let me explain.

There are other hi-tech communities in India, similar to HotHardware or
Extremetech which are hugely popular in the community (e.g.
[http://www.erodov.com/forums/gigabyte-ga-x58a-ud9-review-
ln2...](http://www.erodov.com/forums/gigabyte-ga-x58a-ud9-review-
ln2-overclocking-results/33458-page5.html)). So this is not something that is
of unproven relevance.

India has a chicken and egg problem in terms of programming intellectual
prowess. The community is driven primarily by that which can lay down your
daily supper - Java/JSP/VB/ASP . By virtue of the existing _tech leadership
pool_ , most innovation is driven from the west. And it takes a long time
before the community takes root in India.

<begin rant> I blame the community for it. For instance, it would make far
greater sense for the Linux community to try and hold their top level
conferences in India - which could very well be their biggest customer base
(the west is lost to the fruit seller already). Did you know Dell, HP, Lenovo,
etc. sell laptops with Ubuntu/Freedos preinstalled in India (off the shelf) ?
</end rant>

Point being, I think India does need a sunrise period for its technology
community to be shepherded in. Hacker News is definitely too advanced in its
expectation of the community for... say a fresh-behind-the-ears college
student in India.

This community might also be too Yank in its vernacular. Yes, there are a lot
of Indians around, but we are all comfortable with the vernacular, prefer it
even. That is definitely, definitely not true for most Indians who might feel
completely alienated (especially the younger ones)

For all the other Indians, torn between feelings of loyalty and betrayal, I
encourage to search out and mentor the fledgling community back home - they
need your help so that eventually they can come here and start flaming!

~~~
gnufied
I am on the fence with this one.

While I do agree that, Indian startup community has its own challenges and
latest gossip from Angel world of Silicon Valley is of little interest to us
(None of the Angels operating out of valley invest here, including YC) but if
you leave technical and design problems those issues can be counted on
fingers.

Then there is problem of getting traction and yes perhaps Indian entrepreneurs
need separate forum for that. "Show HN: Blacklist/review autorickshaws using
SMS", might be of little interest to global audience.

My point being, while technical or design discussions at HN will be always
superior and there will be little benefit in repeating them on HNI, so clearly
there is no need of separate forum as such for such things. What is left is,
problems of startup community, there have been numerous efforts to solve that,
if HNI succeeds in that; awesome. But at the end of day, HNI won't be a forum
in the same spirit as HN (Just startup stuff, no need to call hackernews,
which means a lot of different things).

------
nileshtrivedi
Pick a different name. Also, to maintain high S/N ratio, ensure that only
items specific to India are discussed there.

There are many issues that hackers/entrepreneurs would like to discuss which
never get enough traction on global HN. This could be a good place for those
items.

~~~
bluesnowmonkey
"Global HN" isn't really global. It heavily emphasizes news from Silicon
Valley.

------
cj
"Hacker News" as the name of this project seems rather disrespectful toward
YC/pg.

For the sake of respect, I would consider renaming your project.

~~~
prateekdayal
Sure. Is there a way to reach PG? I can email and check with him.

Also, I picked this name as we decided to put up HN India in a HN meetup and
also because HN conveys our objective well. We are not running this for
profit.

~~~
prateekdayal
I found his email address in this thread
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1716244>

I have written to him and will wait for his reply. Thanks for all the
feedback.

~~~
gsk
You should do things in this order: Change the site name. Wait for PG's
response.

------
M1573RMU74710N
I think it's an interesting idea, but imho it's in rather poor taste to use
the "Hacker News" branding without knowing if PG approves.

Whether or not the site is for profit is entirely irrelevant; it comes off as
you trying to cash in on the work that PG et al have put into building up the
HN brand. It's tantamount to stealing.

Not only that, but it might cause confusion.

I wish you good luck, but I hope you'll change the name or at least put up a
disclaimer in an obvious place noting that you are not affiliated with Hacker
News.

------
vankap
I got really excited when I saw this on the front page only to realize that
this is not an official sub-HN once I read the comments.

This is a good initiative but please call it something else.

~~~
yourbuddyrohan
same here, some excitement vanished after finding out that this is not
official HN. It will be good to call it something else to avoid any confusion.

------
luckystrike
Just been on it for a day. The best thing so far has been that it gives me a
chance to connect with hackers in India and discuss specific issues with them.
Mailing lists just don't cut it when it comes to interacting with like minded
folks on a number of subjects.

It cannot be a replacement for HN, but I hope it does become a useful (add-on)
forum in its own right.

P.S. Yes, the site's name should ideally be something else.

------
mayankaga
This site is the by-product of the "hacker news meetup" we had this last
Sunday in Bangalore. It all started with this thread -
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1885605> Hope this helps Indian audience
discover/ask issues faced by Indian startups in cities like Bangalore, Bombay,
NCR..

------
prateekdayal
This post talks about why we started this

<http://hackernews.in/item?id=1>

Thanks to PG and HN for the code and inspiration. Now only if I could get the
latest code base :)

~~~
dschobel
Even with the noblest of intentions, I don't know how proper it is to take the
hackernews brandname for your own site. At the least I think you ought to
consider putting a disclaimer on an 'about' page somewhere stating that you
are not affiliated to HN and YC.

On a positive note, nice job! It looks like you're getting a bit of traction
already.

~~~
prateekdayal
Good point. I want to put the disclaimer but sadly I am not able to figure it
out (since I don't know any lisp).

I am using this codebase - <https://github.com/nex3/arc>

If someone can tell me how to put a disclaimer in the footer, I will put it
rightaway.

~~~
plinkplonk
"If someone can tell me how to put a disclaimer in the footer"

The right way is to change the name. If I start a site called Google India, or
even Digg India, it isn't enough (legally or ethically) to have a disclaimer
in the footer, even if I am running a non profit. You keep repeating the "this
is not for profit" sentence. That isn't a valid defense against brand name
abuse.

At the very least get permission from the owners on the original site before
starting a new site by adding an "India" to its name.

The last thing "Indian hackers" need is a reputation for ripping off other
peoples work/brands (As if the outsourcing horror stories aren't enough). Use
the open source code, by all means. But don't copy the name.

I am an Indian developer and I think such unabashed copying of a popular brand
is shameful. YMMV.

~~~
srean
Fully agreed +1

------
frou_dh
Have some class and don't copy the name without permission.

(channelling the sentiment of the recent Zed Shaw ruckus)

------
thebootstrapper
Kudos to the efforts. But sorry to say, this is really unnecessary. There are
hell a lot of hackers in Europe and there is no HN Europe.

Real Hackers in India I know few (over social networks) they don't talk.(You
can't see them in foss.in )They just code.!

We are not there yet. so just code! <back to maintain the spaghetti code>

(Disclaimer: I'm a Indian. I'm not a hacker myself yet,I still work in a body
shopping "Megacorp")

[Deleted] Few points as its reported as offending.My point is Programming /
Hacking has to align with global context.

And in my personal experience I never found any good hackers in the local
community, I have always founded them outside of it and I don't expect HNI
will have them. If it does Im happy as well.

~~~
thebootstrapper
Huh down voted! I told my view "Real Hackers i know, I admire in India, just
code". they don't or won't spend in such community not even high profiled
foss.in. That's the truth."

Any way its just a number on site, keep 'em coming ;-)

~~~
mkramlich
I agreed with the substance of what you said, as it appears that many others
in this thread do as well. Though I did not down vote you, I'm guessing that
the quality of your English may have contributed to some down votes.

~~~
kranner
You don't think generalizing about 'the one who work for body shoppers and
maintain a big pile of spaghetti code' had anything to do with it?

Personally I was more offended by the unfalsifiable definition of the
mysterious 'real hackers in India'.

~~~
thebootstrapper
I'm sorry I have deleted it now. Im really tired of the local community here,
found very few interesting and admiring ex dev_camp.I have found many smart
people outside this community who code alot.I honestly feel those are real.
The one who code alot and then speak. YMMV.

------
plinkplonk
Already seen. Discussion at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1908893>

------
indiejade
Nice job guys. As Obama's trip to India demonstrated, India is (or rather will
be) an emerging tech center, so it makes sense that it is ripe for its own
version of Silicon Valley. Any online community that can facilitate the growth
of its local physical economy is a good one.

Not sure I agree with all the negative comments here about the IP issues.
After all, NewMogul.com was (is?) pretty much a clone of YC News here, but
open to submission and discussion about more broad topics besides startups.

------
Lorin
Since it's the same name, My personal concerned about possible separation of
people whom would normally contribute good content and comments to HN proper.

Perhaps I'm off base because I don't know the way the site is set up, but are
comments and articles shared between the sites in any way?

Also, more importantly, has there ever been a survey or statistics collection
as to where contributers are geographically located?

------
kang
Hacking in India is a total different context. The west hacks because it's
cool.(To increase the happiness.) The east hacks to solve a problem. (To
reduce the sadness.)

Something like this is totally necessary, but this approach is very wrong. Its
sad Pratik keeps mentioning 'profit' in terms of money. Glory to the name is
enough a profit imo.

------
eiji
1\. It's a good sign, when people "try" to copy you.

2\. It could increase the quality of the original.

------
mkramlich
you really should pick a different name. even if you're legally allowed to use
a snapshot of the HN codebase. Calling yourself HN India makes it sound like
you're the official India branch of HN. There are already enough stereotypes
about Asian folks making cheap clones/ripoffs of Western services or products
that it's also not good to open yourself to that criticism as well, even if
not necessarily warranted.

~~~
prateekdayal
I'll comment here since this is the top comment. As I said below, I have
emailed PG asking for his thoughts. Thanks for the feedback.

A point that I would like to make is that HN is non profit and so is HNI. So
the analogy you give may not apply here.

~~~
vladd
You're using PG's code in a trademarked/copyrighted environment (the domain is
called exactly HackerNews). That's blatant copyright infringement, you should
have gotten YC's permission before, not after the site went live. What you
have done is illegal in both US and India.

You should respect the law and change the name or take the site offline until
you receive appropriate permissions.

Please note that even licenses as GPL or MPL (that govern the Firefox code for
example) give you permission to use the code, not the trademarks of the
project. Ubuntu had to make a Linux package called "abrowser" (
<https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/+package/abrowser> ) simply because
Mozilla didn't agree with branding their modifications as "Firefox".

~~~
alextgordon
I may be wrong, but "Hacker News" does not appear to be trademarked in the US.
And the code is open source. So which particular laws are being broken here?

~~~
dogofthunder
the existence or non-existence of a trademark registration filed with the
USPTO doesn't necessarily mean that the name is trademarked or not.
registration helps when you're suing, but trademark rights can attach without
registration.

~~~
alextgordon
But there's other sites using the HN name, presumably without permission (e.g.
hackernewsers.com). Surely if PG did sue, his case would be quite weak.

It also occurred to me that hackernews.in is clearly a website aimed at
Indians, so I don't know to what extent US law applies.

Anyway, it seems that the name is going to be changed, so this whole trademark
point becomes moot. <http://hackernews.in/item?id=375>

------
ld50
what about your HN experience has made you feel that the community here would
not welcome india-related discussions?

i would love to hear about the issues, projects, and things in general that
startup founders, hackers, techies, and tinkerers around the world have to
deal with.

why slice by region?

as i see it you're segmenting across the wrong vertical. look at the
stackexchange model: are they spinning off "stack exchange: china"/"stack
exchange: india"? -no, its stack exchange: physics, stack exchange: math, etc.
they're differentiating based on general subject matter. is that model
something that could be replicated in the context of "all things hacker"? sure
(hardware, software, gadgets, networking, cracking, blackhat/whitehat,
security, etc). would it succeed? who knows.

~~~
prateekdayal
Stuff like maths, programming and physics are pretty universal. A problem in
maths is a problem everywhere.

However things like payment gateways, local events, feedback on startups
focused on Indian markets are not very global and may not interest a large
majority of hackers here.

I never implied HN will not welcome such discussions or disapprove of it. I
just feel (as others do too) that its hard for these discussions to get enough
visibility here (for the reasons mentioned above).

~~~
inovica
I don't think anyone here has any issues with you creating a site for the
Indian community, I think most people disagree with your use of "Hacker News".
Why don't you just create a site, call it something else and link to it from
here? That's probably the better approach

------
rick_2047
Its been a day and the site is thriving, I am personally very enthusiastic. I
do not know arc but that will change just so I can add some features to this
site.

I urge anyone who is not considering joining to just go and at least see whats
happening. You would be pleasantly surprised. And after that I am sure you
would agree that many of those discussions would have sunk here to oblivion.

This is a great forum to meet indian hacker, especially if you are in
banglore.

~~~
srean
Comments and sentiments like "Let them come in India and claim a trademark if
it comes to that", doesn't quite encourage people to do what you are asking
for.

A community, with a well entrenched reputation for cheap knock-offs, helps
oneself to a brand without permission (that would be stealing) and then shows
attitude about it.

There used to be an old joke about different countries coming together to show
off their engineering prowess by improving a parent product originally from US
(or Japan I do not remember). No one can figure out India's contribution. It
turns out that they have stamped "made in India" to it.

HackerNewsIndia reinforces that very stereotype.

<http://hackernews.in/item?id=555>

~~~
rick_2047
its a boot strapping community, what do you expect? I bet even HN had there
shares of headaches.

