Reddit has decided to open source their entire code base, allowing developers to see how exactly the social news site works. With the move, Reddit is encouraging developers to submit their own code and extensions for improving the site. Of course, they are also potentially opening up the site to serious gaming, since developers will be able to dissect precisely how Reddit's algorithms determine what is popular and makes it to the homepage.

Steve Huffman, co-founder of Reddit, thinks this transparency is something users deserve, and is a strong competitive move against leading social news site Digg. "Digg has struggled to stay transparent with their users," he said. "Social news in general has hid behind algorithms, which has caused some consternation amongst users. Users don't get why things aren't showing up on the front page." Of course, he is referring to the fact that Digg's algorithms are completely secretive, often creating frustration amongst users when stories with a lot of Diggs and comments are left off of the homepage, but seemingly less important stories find their way to the front.

Much like Facebook's fbOpen, the idea of going open source isn't so much as to encourage developers to build their own Reddit clones. In fact, Reddit is using the same licensing structure as Facebook - CPAL (Common Public Attribution License) – which stipulates that anyone who uses the Reddit code needs to make their changes available to everyone, as well as acknowledge they are using it.

Reddit's new site for developers – code.reddit.com – should be live at 6am PT. At that point, the race is on to see who can figure out the algorithm first, and it will be interesting to watch and see how heavily people try to game the site once it becomes public knowledge. It should be noted that when the company launched its new re-design a couple weeks ago, within minutes the most popular story on the site was one about how badly it sucked, urging Reddit to bring back the old version.