[billme]

Not sure that’s always been true, or at least for sure PG was open about subsets if the code. Generally, there’s reason to open source code, and open sourcing it would likely result in more overhead not less; generally HN goal is to very, very slowly change the code, interface, etc.

Honestly, cloning HN really would not be that hard, cloning dang, that’s another story.

EDIT: Here’s a recent comment from dang on open source HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22791221

[krapp]

There is an open source fork but it runs on Racket[0], so the Arc documentation isn't always correct, and of course that forum and this one differ in terms of features.

[0]https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki

[gus_massa]

HN is written in Arc that is written in Racket.

I think HN use a slightly modified version of Racket with a few tweaks to be more friendly with the high amount of memory used in HN.

[traes]

> cloning HN really would not be that hard

Isn't that basically what lobste.rs did?

[billme]

Related link:

https://lobste.rs/about

And history:

https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker...