Early Digg Competitor Reddit goes Open Source

Reddit, a YCombinator funded startup that was acquired by Conde Nast, has opened up its source code under the Common Public Attribution License, which is a slight modification of the Mozilla software license. The basic element here is that in case you are running the Reddit source on a public sight, any changes to the source code should be made available to the general public.

From its onset Reddit was built using open source tools and technologies. This is one reason that they have been able to open source the entire code base now. According to Steve:

Since reddit’s beginning, we have stood on the shoulders of giants in the open source world. Every library, tool and platform we depend on is open. Until now, the only portion of reddit that wasn’t freely available is reddit itself. We are proud and excited that we’re finally giving back to the community that has given us so much.

The code could be downloaded from code.reddit.com. They have made available all the pieces except for some chunks that help reddit take care of spam and cheating.

Reddit in general has stayed true to its roots of openness and have not tried to modify or moderate its users unless and until its absolutely essential, which was unlike Digg. Digg also earned a lot of bad PR by not showing the names of the people who bury a story and is notorious for its bury brigade. It is yet to be seen what effect this move will have on social news sharing, and in what ways companies would benefit from Reddit’s codebase. See explanatory movie from Reddit below.

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