See previous discussions of this issue, which are easily revealed by Google if the fitting keywords are used in the search:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=494421

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=711613

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4285617/how-do-i-install-...

Unrelated, but there are good open source clones like https://github.com/antirez/lamernews

Ask OP: Why SHOULD it be open source?

1. Asking "Why isn't it this" without a "this is why it should be this" is such an easy argument it must always be ignored

2. Hacker News is a Y Combinator entity. If it were to be open source, it would be open source to YC people only I can only assume.

1) because we could then help make it better (or make a couple HNs)

I believe there is an old version available.

2) open source for some people but not for others is an interesting concept.

Open source for some people but not others? Thats not open source...

I know we're considering a new model for open source. I'd say that's a semantic argument but it's more of a semantic observation

Sorry. Forgot the <sarcasm> tag.

also, if e.g. the algos for the rank of the articles would be known exactly, it would make it substentially easier to game them...