Hacker News India

There's a lot of nay-saying here. I think the idea is great and the name is fine. (By the way, I would just ignore the advice here. Paul may love the name/idea or even simply not care. Until you hear otherwise, don't assume either way.)<p>HN has been hobbled by small restaurant syndrome. Paul has been loathe to add basic features, let alone extend it, for the same reason a restaurateur will maintain a small number of tables: because he or she likes the client base and extending it will jeopardize that. That's a completely valid reason.<p>But there's a huge opportunity here to extend this to really assist in driving innovation. Add to your site the missing basic features such as search, then extend it with free startup job listings, co-founder matching, etc. (All those HN spreadsheets? Implement them.) You would be doing a huge service to the Indian startup community, and that means a huge service to innovation in general.

Is it only me who finds "Ask Prateek" tad conceited ? I am none too comfortable with the idea of helping oneself to someone else's work/brand unless it was expressly opened for that purpose. But then imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery.<p>It doesnt help much that the Indian software scene has a stronger reputation for copying than for innovating. And I am Indian. I have similar minor peeves about OSQA helping themselves to SO. But I take back my comments if the news.ycombinator src as well as the brand were indeed opened up for that purpose.<p>Edit: "Ask Prateek" is "Ask HNI" now, so I take back that part of my criticism.

Let me start by saying that I am an Indian hacker. Forget the name. Even if you ignore the name, I personally do not like the idea of an "Indian HN clone". HN stands for something. It is a global close-knit community. It is as if you are forming your own group and sitting at a different table for lunch at school. What if every country sat on their own table? It is just going to result in unnecessary fragmentation.<p>Now, I understand that you are not moving away from HN and have created the site to discuss Indian specific issues, but I don't see what is stopping you from discussing those issues on HN itself. The site being an exact HN clone doesn't sit well with your good intentions. Add to that the fact that you are using the same name.<p>Sorry for generalizing, but IMHO, the global image of Indian hackers is not particularly good, and this sort of thing doesn't help. Personally I would suggest looking at some different means to solve the problems for which the clone was created. You have my respect for trying to take some initiative though.

I have mixed feelings about this secession from HN. It's great that there's a separate place for Indians to meet and talk, but I fear it may leach from the diverse culture here.

Pick a different name. Also, to maintain high S/N ratio, ensure that only items specific to India are discussed there.<p>There are many issues that hackers/entrepreneurs would like to discuss which never get enough traction on global HN. This could be a good place for those items.

"Hacker News" as the name of this project seems rather disrespectful toward YC/pg.<p>For the sake of respect, I would consider renaming your project.

I think it's an interesting idea, but imho it's in rather poor taste to use the "Hacker News" branding without knowing if PG approves.<p>Whether or not the site is for profit is entirely irrelevant; it comes off as you trying to cash in on the work that PG et al have put into building up the HN brand. It's tantamount to stealing.<p>Not only that, but it might cause confusion.<p>I wish you good luck, but I hope you'll change the name or at least put up a disclaimer in an obvious place noting that you are not affiliated with Hacker News.

I got really excited when I saw this on the front page only to realize that this is not an official sub-HN once I read the comments.<p>This is a good initiative but please call it something else.

Just been on it for a day. The best thing so far has been that it gives me a chance to connect with hackers in India and discuss specific issues with them. Mailing lists just don't cut it when it comes to interacting with like minded folks on a number of subjects.<p>It cannot be a replacement for HN, but I hope it does become a useful (add-on) forum in its own right.<p>P.S. Yes, the site's name should ideally be something else.

This site is the by-product of the "hacker news meetup" we had this last Sunday in Bangalore. It all started with this thread - <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1885605" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1885605</a> Hope this helps Indian audience discover/ask issues faced by Indian startups in cities like Bangalore, Bombay, NCR..

This post talks about why we started this<p><a href="http://hackernews.in/item?id=1" rel="nofollow">http://hackernews.in/item?id=1</a><p>Thanks to PG and HN for the code and inspiration. Now only if I could get the latest code base :)

Have some class and don't copy the name without permission.<p>(channelling the sentiment of the recent Zed Shaw ruckus)

Kudos to the efforts. But sorry to say, this is really unnecessary. There are hell a lot of hackers in Europe and there is no HN Europe.<p>Real Hackers in India I know few (over social networks) they don't talk.(You can't see them in foss.in )They just code.!<p>We are not there yet. so just code! &#60;back to maintain the spaghetti code&#62;<p>(Disclaimer: I'm a Indian. I'm not a hacker myself yet,I still work in a body shopping "Megacorp")<p>[Deleted] Few points as its reported as offending.My point is Programming / Hacking has to align with global context.<p>And in my personal experience I never found any good hackers in the local community, I have always founded them outside of it and I don't expect HNI will have them. If it does Im happy as well.

Already seen. Discussion at <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1908893" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1908893</a>

Nice job guys. As Obama's trip to India demonstrated, India is (or rather will be) an emerging tech center, so it makes sense that it is ripe for its own version of Silicon Valley. Any online community that can facilitate the growth of its local physical economy is a good one.<p>Not sure I agree with all the negative comments here about the IP issues. After all, NewMogul.com was (is?) pretty much a clone of YC News here, but open to submission and discussion about more broad topics besides startups.

Since it's the same name, My personal concerned about possible separation of people whom would normally contribute good content and comments to HN proper.<p>Perhaps I'm off base because I don't know the way the site is set up, but are comments and articles shared between the sites in any way?<p>Also, more importantly, has there ever been a survey or statistics collection as to where contributers are geographically located?

Hacking in India is a total different context. The west hacks because it's cool.(To increase the happiness.) The east hacks to solve a problem. (To reduce the sadness.)<p>Something like this is totally necessary, but this approach is very wrong. Its sad Pratik keeps mentioning 'profit' in terms of money. Glory to the name is enough a profit imo.

1. It's a good sign, when people "try" to copy you.<p>2. It could increase the quality of the original.

you really should pick a different name. even if you're legally allowed to use a snapshot of the HN codebase. Calling yourself HN India makes it sound like you're the official India branch of HN. There are already enough stereotypes about Asian folks making cheap clones/ripoffs of Western services or products that it's also not good to open yourself to that criticism as well, even if not necessarily warranted.

what about your HN experience has made you feel that the community here would not welcome india-related discussions?<p>i would love to hear about the issues, projects, and things in general that startup founders, hackers, techies, and tinkerers around the world have to deal with.<p>why slice by region?<p>as i see it you're segmenting across the wrong vertical. look at the stackexchange model: are they spinning off "stack exchange: china"/"stack exchange: india"? -no, its stack exchange: physics, stack exchange: math, etc. they're differentiating based on general subject matter. is that model something that could be replicated in the context of "all things hacker"? sure (hardware, software, gadgets, networking, cracking, blackhat/whitehat, security, etc). would it succeed? who knows.

Its been a day and the site is thriving, I am personally very enthusiastic. I do not know arc but that will change just so I can add some features to this site.<p>I urge anyone who is not considering joining to just go and at least see whats happening. You would be pleasantly surprised. And after that I am sure you would agree that many of those discussions would have sunk here to oblivion.<p>This is a great forum to meet indian hacker, especially if you are in banglore.