[HN Gopher] Clone-Wars: 100 open-source clones of popular sites
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       Clone-Wars: 100 open-source clones of popular sites
        
       Author : ulrischa
       Score  : 60 points
       Date   : 2025-10-15 18:06 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | jayd16 wrote:
       | Possibly unintentional but the pun works even better if you
       | remember WAR files.
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAR_(file_format)
        
       | Aachen wrote:
       | WhatsApp clone storing messages plaintext on the server if I'm
       | skimming the repository right?
       | 
       | Or a Spotify clone I clicked at random, idk, the screenshots look
       | nearly 1:1 but then the "features" list doesn't mention that it
       | can play music or, more importantly for Spotify (since playing
       | music, I can do with any old mp3 player) generate useful
       | recommendations if you could somehow feed it listener data
       | 
       | What's the point of these then, are they meant to be
       | superficially functional UI clones (like screenshots except you
       | can click things) or am I missing something?
       | 
       | Edit: Mastodon is also in the list as a Twitter clone. Some of
       | these are not like the others :s
        
         | fishpen0 wrote:
         | Yeah this is mostly the "build twitter in a day" projects that
         | conveniently ignore the reason these companies have 10,000+
         | developers is the 99.9% of the software that is not the
         | frontend that actually makes the company things happen at the
         | company. The much bigger customers of many of these companies
         | being the advertisers and the artists/creators who have their
         | own interfaces and analytics and billing and payment tooling.
         | The business rules engines and feature flags with tens of
         | thousands of rules that allow any of these companies to operate
         | in subtly different ways for customers in different states,
         | countries, and regions with different laws for accessibility,
         | fair use, and using and storing data. The auth and security
         | layers that often have multiple interfaces for employees,
         | customer classes, partners supporting native-auth, oidc, totp,
         | developer tokens, etc... Apps for a dozen or more different app
         | ecosystems on hundreds of device types from the obvious web and
         | phone-based ios/android to the less obvious carplay, watch,
         | roku, firestick, etc...
        
       | TheSkyHasEyes wrote:
       | I'm finding many links unavailable or not working. Still,
       | appreciate the list. :)
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | A followup that explains some more of the thinking behind the
       | project:
       | 
       |  _My simple Github project went Viral (2021)_
       | 
       | https://gourav.io/blog/my-simple-github-project-went-viral
        
         | friedtofu wrote:
         | As someone whose already seen the original repository in the
         | past, this is way more interesting(to me) than the repo,
         | Thanks!
         | 
         | Would be interested to see an updated list, because as echoed
         | by another comment...the current repository has a lot of
         | dead/stale links.
        
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       (page generated 2025-10-15 23:02 UTC)