[javawizard]

That's addressed in the article. There absolutely is:

> Much of the HN codebase consists of anti-abuse measures that would stop working if people knew about them. Unfortunately. separating out the secret parts would by now be a lot of work. The time to do it will be if and when we eventually release the alternative Arc implementations we’ve been working on.

[dang]

I think the (anonymous? I can't find a name) author of the OP slipped slightly at the end of that otherwise-impeccable sequence of quotes. That last comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546438) was responding to a question about open-sourcing the entire HN codebase, not just the Arc implementation.

Open-sourcing HN wouldn't work because of the anti-abuse stuff, etc. But open-sourcing the Arc implementation (i.e. Clarc) would be much easier. The way to do it would be to port the original Arc release (http://arclanguage.org/) to Clarc. It includes a sample application which is an early version of HN, scrubbed of anything HN- or YC-specific.

[sctb]

> The way to do it would be to port the original Arc release (http://arclanguage.org/) to Clarc.

If you're looking for volunteers... :)

[vindarel]

I edited the post to add this clarification, thank you.

Vincent (my full name appears in linked projects ;) )

[dang]

Ah thanks! I was impressed with how you reconstructed the history there.

[dhqgekt]

I am asking about the core language implementation. No need to publish the whole source code of HN, just the part of source code of clarc.. You do not have "anti-abuse measures" in the language implementation and runtime, do you? Is it that hard to seperate a language implementation and code written in the language?

[dang]

You're right. The Clarc code and the rest of the HN codebase are separate. (Well, mostly. Almost entirely.)

More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44099560.