It was back in 2008 when "the front page of the internet" Reddit made its website source code available as open-source.
At that time, the future of the company was 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."
But as the company and the community grow larger, Reddit is changing its mind. As it matures and become popular, older and more influential, it has announced that it is turning off the public's access to its website's and mobile apps' source code.
Instead, Reddit is offering "many" smaller code bases in return.
Partly, this is because Reddit has kept its code up-to-date and also centralized. Furthermore, it's also because of competitive reasons.
And according to Reddit, it's difficult to develop features like video uploading in open source code without telegraphing its plans to competitors.
"Much of the core of Reddit is based on open source technologies (Postgres, python, memcached, Cassanda to name a few!) and we will continue to contribute to projects we use and modify..."
"Those who have been paying attention will realize that this isn't really a change to how we're doing anything but rather making explicit what's already been going on."
Reddit argues that this won't necessarily change its behavior, However, it still have effects.
For example, people can only access bits and pieces of Reddit, not anymore having the ability to get everything at once. Some people in its community also had said that Reddit could theoretically develop features on its own, and release the source code when it's officially ready.
This change is a strategy to make Reddit ahead of what would be its rivals. By having its source code broken down to pieces, the community-driven approach will still be the same. Only the balance and the scale that would differ.
