[keysersosa]

Thanks.

We really hope this will help us more than hurt us in the end. Part of the problem with releasing something like reddit as open source is that it isn't designed around installation. For the most part, the pieces have been built in place organically as needed. This means that even though the source is out there, it's been really hard to get developer contributions as many get stuck before they get reddit up and running locally.

This should effectively lower the barrier to entry there and let devs actually think about the code and adding features rather than about whether or not rabbit-mq or cassandra are properly configured.

[jacquesm]

I would have exactly that problem if I released code to any of my sites (not that they're worth looking at :) ), and for much the same reason.

You build stuff because you have to when it hits, especially if you experience 'unexpected growth', and things like installation documentation and so on will suffer, if they exist at all.

So releasing a working VM is a great way to do this, it's about as user-friendly as you can get.

I think you'll be setting an example here that will be followed many times.