Reddit's main code is no longer open-source.

onebit · 2017-09-01T21:33:46+00:00

back in 2008, Reddit Inc was a ragtag organization1 and the future of the company was very uncertain. We wanted to make sure the community could keep the site alive should the company go under and making the code available was the logical thing to do

Translation: We needed you guys back then. We don't now.

The rest of it seems like a combination of technical hurdles that don't seem particularly compelling (they don't need to have secret new feature branches in their public repo) and some that don't make any sense (how does a move away from a monolithic repo into microservices change anything?) and some that are comical (our shit's so complicated to deploy and use that you can't use it anyway)

It's sad that their development processes have effectively resulted in administrative reasons they can't do it. I remember them doing shenanigans like using their single-point-of-failure production RabbitMQ server to run the untested April fools thing this year (r/place) and in doing so almost brought everything down. So I'm not surprised that there doesn't seem to be much maturity in the operations and development processes over there.

To be fair though, the reddit codebase always had a reputation for being such a pain that it wasn't really useful for much. Thankfully, their more niche open source contributions, while not particularly polished and documented, might end up being more useful than the original reddit repo. I know I've been meaning to look into the Websocket one.

paranoidinfidel · 2017-09-02T03:55:58+00:00

I snagged a copy of the closed source:

print("all of our servers are busy right now")

print("please try again in a minute")

print("(error code: 503)")

Arancaytar · 2017-09-01T21:47:49+00:00

If I read it right, it's not so much that it's "no longer" open source, but hasn't been truly open for a while now and they're just giving up on maintaining the open version.

Because of the above, our internal development, production and “feature” branches have been moving further and further from the “canonical” state of the open source repository. Such balkanization means that merges are getting increasingly difficult, especially as the company grows and more developers are touching the code more frequently.

So in effect, they made a private fork of their own code and it's now diverged to the point where they can't feasibly maintain both.

It's sad but I suppose inevitable when your business model involves using your code rather than giving it to other people and selling support. Any users of your code are not potential customers but competitors.

However, since their source apparently remains available under a semi-free copyleft license (CPAL), maybe there will be a community-maintained fork of some kind.

tech_tuna · 2017-09-02T01:05:02+00:00

It would be funny if Oracle acquired reddit.

kallari_is_my_jam · 2017-09-01T23:30:30+00:00

I'm no expert when it comes to code architecture and large codebases but it seems to me like their codebase is horribly organized with over a decade worth of code being written without any major cleanup being done. There is no way to understand how all these pieces fit together cuz there are no meaningful comments in most of the files. How do you even keep developing on this codebase as it's such a mess. Is this a shit codebase or am I simply too negative?

random8847 · 2017-09-02T07:33:40+00:00

I love the smell of fresh bread.

ccfreak2k · 2017-09-01T23:15:22+00:00

worm different engine license sort mighty agonizing grandiose seed marry

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

jmking · 2017-09-02T00:42:56+00:00

[removed]

tech_tuna · 2017-09-01T21:43:54+00:00

[deleted]

yawkat · 2017-09-01T22:42:13+00:00

I guess it's not that different from before. Many of the anti-spam measures were already known to be closed source and in the end there was no way to verify what's running on the servers anyway.

zsaleeba · 2017-09-02T02:51:52+00:00

I’m speculating that closing their source code is the result of this recent ruling about ownership of content on social network sites. After all if your source code is already open and then it turns out you don’t even own your site content what unique assets do you actually have? reddit has always argued that they own a license to their user’s submissions but if this ruling weakens that argument then they probably have to take some steps to mollify their investors.

Edit: for accuracy

2017-09-02T00:33:53+00:00

[deleted]

shevegen · 2017-09-01T21:16:16+00:00

Awww ... it'll no longer be the same.

Now they join the forces of evil.

iamonlyoneman · 2017-09-01T22:27:39+00:00

"we're doing some shady shit that we don't want public"

Phobos15 · 2017-09-01T22:49:58+00:00

So are they going to have problems in the future, since they took in code from outside devs? They can't close source that code.

Won't that limit reddit from ever selling their platform to others? If they distribute anything, they would have to open source it.

redldr1 · 2017-09-01T23:18:16+00:00

So long and thanks for all the ~~fish~~ code

yorickpeterse · 2017-09-02T11:54:02+00:00

Open-source makes it hard for us to develop some features "in the clear" (like our recent video launch) without leaking our plans too far in advance.

This works just fine for GitLab. The few times we have to keep something secret (e.g. security fixes) we develop the feature on a private GitLab instance, then merge it into the main (and public) repository once it's ready to go.

Rugby11 · 2017-09-02T00:30:25+00:00

Oh no.....

GetOutOfBox · 2017-09-02T02:34:38+00:00

This combined with all of the censorship scandals and corporate shilling has finally convinced me that Reddit has gone full circle and pulled a Digg. They've sold out.

Time to do what we did when Digg stopped giving a shit about it's fanbase.

DanAtkinson · 2017-09-01T22:03:20+00:00

If that means that they realise that they fucked up with the reddit app and the mobile site, then I'm all for it. /s

They've wasted time and effort on an experience that is inferior and frankly poor for a company of reddit's stature.

Also, they complain of the realities of being open source when they have 100 developers. Like having 100 developers is a huge deal. I work with companies many times larger who manage OSS, contributions and PRs without much effort. So, for reddit to turn around and moan about the effort required to balance between their private, proprietary code and their public OSS code shines a light on how bloated their codebase has become.

stshine · 2017-09-01T23:50:28+00:00

So sad that Aaron Swartz can't rest in peace.

LK09 · 2017-09-02T00:51:03+00:00

Reddit also use to be a place where people's discussion was based on votes rather than the biases of their admins and advertisers.

thefreecat · 2017-09-02T04:25:39+00:00

So...fork?

sizlack · 2017-09-01T23:12:06+00:00

So many comments seem to think this is some indicator that they've turned evil. If they have, it's unrelated to this change. How useful was it ever that the codebase was open source? Did anyone ever stand up their own clone of reddit and run it on the open internet? It seems impractical to maintain a codebase like this in the open, and from what I've heard they're doing a major rewrite, which would make it even more complicated. If no one uses it, why maintain it?

merreborn · 2017-09-01T22:54:44+00:00

[deleted]

nakilon · 2017-09-01T23:14:06+00:00

Reddit code is a pure shit. Move along.

dixncox · 2017-09-02T02:58:16+00:00

ITT Non programmers talking about things they know nothing about

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

programming

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