Wow I am impressed that a commercial social networking software company open sources their entire codebase.
This is not new, reddit has been open sourced since 2008 http://www.redditblog.com/2008/06/reddit-goes-open-source.ht...
Reddit source code
21–30 of 58 posts
Re: Reddit source code
#22What causes people to need to sprinkle license boilerplate everywhere, including in files which are otherwise completely empty (like r2/r2/config/__init__.py), and then to have to update them every year? See this commit: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/90cfcaaecc56cf35e758... It just seems to defy reason that we must make humans increment a number every year in every file in our projects, nevermind the fact t…
If you think that's bad, you should see the many people who tried to copyright an empty file: http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/humor/ATT_Copyright_true.html
I hold second place :)
https://github.com/ambrop72/aprinter/blob/master/aprinter/En...
Re: Reddit source code
#23What causes people to need to sprinkle license boilerplate everywhere, including in files which are otherwise completely empty (like r2/r2/config/__init__.py), and then to have to update them every year? See this commit: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/90cfcaaecc56cf35e758... It just seems to defy reason that we must make humans increment a number every year in every file in our projects, nevermind the fact t…
It is an eye sore for me as well.
The CakePHP project has done away with yearly update by replacing the year(s) with '(c)'.
https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp/commit/7b860debe4731a9cbc...
I remember watching a Stephen Fry interview who mentioned that placing the Copyright symbol once on your piece of work is sufficient to claim Copyright. But is placing the symbol once on a book, the same as placing a Copyright/License block once in a project directory?
Re: Reddit source code
#24I once was an intern in a company that wanted to rewrite the whole Reddit code in .net. The founder was a charming person and managed to raise a huge pile of money. "We can redo this with current technology and elegant design! We will run circles around Reddit!". We had a great time. Free snacks, lot's of parties, luxurious office furniture, skateboarding in the hall... In the end, the company ran out of money before…
That’s odd. As if the programming language itself is what makes Reddit what it is :)
Unfortunately from my experience, people thinking that background technology choices can give them a consumer advantage is not that uncommon.
Re: Reddit source code
#25Dear lord that JavaScript is painful to read. I want to submit a pull request and fix all their semicolons.
Re: Reddit source code
#26What causes people to need to sprinkle license boilerplate everywhere, including in files which are otherwise completely empty (like r2/r2/config/__init__.py), and then to have to update them every year? See this commit: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/90cfcaaecc56cf35e758... It just seems to defy reason that we must make humans increment a number every year in every file in our projects, nevermind the fact t…
I do this too and so why do I do it? In essence it's because there is a very large number of lazy programmers who live by cut and paste. We're not just talking the "I've found a solution on Stack Overflow and will use that", but more "I've searched Github for keyword + language and this file does what I need". The files are copied into their projects in its entirety, sometimes whole libraries are, and those programme…
> In essence it's because there is a very large number of lazy programmers who live by cut and paste.
I've had programmers copy and paste GPL'd code into proprietary projects I'm responsible for. It's not laziness it's ignorance. "What's a GPL?"
Re: Reddit source code
#27Re: Reddit source code
#28What causes people to need to sprinkle license boilerplate everywhere, including in files which are otherwise completely empty (like r2/r2/config/__init__.py), and then to have to update them every year? See this commit: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/90cfcaaecc56cf35e758... It just seems to defy reason that we must make humans increment a number every year in every file in our projects, nevermind the fact t…
It is an eye sore for me as well. The CakePHP project has done away with yearly update by replacing the year(s) with '(c)'. https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp/commit/7b860debe4731a9cbc... I remember watching a Stephen Fry interview who mentioned that placing the Copyright symbol once on your piece of work is sufficient to claim Copyright. But is placing the symbol once on a book, the same as placing a Copyright/Licen…
As a matter of fact, you do not need to even declare copyright anywhere in the text to claim copyright (at least in the US). Copyright exists from the moment of the work's creation. [1] And placing a copyright notice does not afford you any other benefits without registration anyway. Once you've registered with the US Copyright Office, you may place a copyright notice if you want, but your work is still protected even if you don't. [2]
[1] http://copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register [2] http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html#401
Re: Reddit source code
#29What causes people to need to sprinkle license boilerplate everywhere, including in files which are otherwise completely empty (like r2/r2/config/__init__.py), and then to have to update them every year? See this commit: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/90cfcaaecc56cf35e758... It just seems to defy reason that we must make humans increment a number every year in every file in our projects, nevermind the fact t…
It just seems to defy reason that we must make humans increment a number
Ah, but why do you assume a human did that? Writing a script to update the year in all files doesn't take more than a few minutes to write. Chances are he simply ran "update_license_year" and committed.
Likewise for having a license on every single file: it may simply be a git hook that preprends it to every file with a certain extension.
Re: Reddit source code
#30What causes people to need to sprinkle license boilerplate everywhere, including in files which are otherwise completely empty (like r2/r2/config/__init__.py), and then to have to update them every year? See this commit: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/90cfcaaecc56cf35e758... It just seems to defy reason that we must make humans increment a number every year in every file in our projects, nevermind the fact t…
The legal department, not the programmer, probably dictates that the copyright headers must be in each and every file.
I know this ruins any potential value of the intellectual property but…
…why not just put a mention in the top-level license that all empty (0 byte long) __init__.py files are in the public domain?
(Yes, yes, it's less confusing to license the entire thing under one license. But attempting to assert copyright on an empty file is humorous.)