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Comment by xirium | Hacker News Reader

> The community experience is the driving force behind reddit/digg/HN/mixx/slashdot/etc successes, not the technology.

Slashdot only went open source after they gained a lead with their own instance of the code. Slashdot only went open source after increasing demand from its community. Since going open source, Slashdot has subsequently gained bug fixes and a much more scalable implementation at reduced cost. However, I cannot name any other instances or derivatives of the code which are active - not even Squishdot Zope clones.

So, if you've got a big archive of posts and a large number of active users then open sourcing your code only entrenches your position by reducing costs.

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>However, I cannot name any other instances or derivatives of the code which are active

In Spain we have http://barrapunto.com much smaller but also using slashcode. IIRC there are also two more instances, one of them in Portugal.

Barrapunto added its own features for a long time, but they weren't incorporated to main branch, and after serious scalability and trolling problems arose, they reverted to regular slashcode.

> after serious scalability and trolling problems arose, they reverted to regular slashcode.

That's very pertinent because reddit haven't released code to reduce spam:

From the article: There are a few portions of the code that we're keeping to ourselves, mostly related to anti-cheating/spam protection.

Anyone deploying their own instance of the reddit code will have to develop their own protection against spam, trolling and rigged voting.

I thought security by obscurity was wrong in all cases :(

open sourcing your code only entrenches your position by reducing costs.

A valuable observation, but seemingly only valid for frameworks and backends that are merely a glorified CMS.

> a glorified CMS

Much of the web is a glorified CMS, indexed by Google.

If your businesses produces value through human generated content[1], you should share your code to push down the cost of technology, undermining the market for people trying to sell similar but potentially innovative software to your competitors.

[1] as opposed to computer generated content, such as online catalogues or search indices.

hehehe yes...

and a computer is just a collection of coloured pixels flickering a bit.

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