> 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.
More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44099560.
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.
If you're looking for volunteers... :)
Vincent (my full name appears in linked projects ;) )