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Ask PG: Why don’t you open source HN?

114 points muellerwolfram | 1 comments | 04 Jan 13 02:58 UTC | HN request time: 3.312s | source

I hope it didn’t get asked before, I couldn’t find anything.

There was a question recently, about why you don’t improve the HTML of HN, where you said "When the HTML is the most important thing to work on."(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4927231)

I agree that the markup is relatively unimportant compared to features that I think could really improve the functionality and quality of the site, and I bet you have a long wishlist of features yourself.

But between the lines I interpreted that that list might be way longer, than the time that is available to you, allows you to work on it.

So why don’t you open source HN? I get that with a project that is important to someone, it’s hard to give away control. But you can still be the project lead, you could still have the last call and I feel to open up the project will lead to great feature discussions and ultimately a better hn.

Have you ever considered open sourcing it? And what’s the thought process on your decision?

1. codex ◴[04 Jan 13 18:51 UTC] No.5009081[source]▶
Open source gives away value (in effect, destroying it for the previous owner), sometimes for very little benefit. Why would pg open source the site and open HN up to a myriad of competitors? HN needs a large user base so that YC companies can promote themselves here. HN is not like the Linux kernel. The code is not complex. It doesn't need thousands of contributors nor would the benefits of extra features be worth the business cost.