
Hacker News ranking formula license - geckoquaint
Can Hacker News ranking formula be used in commercial project? https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=1781013
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dangrossman
A published mathematical formula is not protected by any form of IP. You can't
copyright the math, it's not a patented invention, and it's not a secret. So
long as you implement it in code yourself, you do not need permission or a
license to use the same score calculation.

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seiji
Maybe math from a larger site is more insightful too. Just because the HN
algorithm is wrapped in parens doesn't make it overly special.

[https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/db/_s...](https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/db/_sorts.pyx)

