Skip to main content
Meta Stack Exchange

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

Required fields*

11
  • 4
    We normally do like to have more discussion when implementing decent-sized changes, but in the case of licensing, Sam and the rest of the team (both within and outside SO) have put an enormous amount of work over literally years into investigating alternatives. It would be unreasonable for us to ask the community to do that kind of work to have an exhaustive discussion of all possibilities, so we did most of the heavy lifting and are coming to you with the best solution that doesn't make SO hard to use, protects user contributions, and that we as a company believe fits our philosophy. Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 18:53
  • 5
    @Laura Does that mean that it's a fait accompli? Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 18:54
  • 19
    No. If there's something truly awful about this proposal that we somehow overlooked, we'll reconsider. But saying "here's what we'd like to move forward with; what do you think?" is a far better option than "out of all the possible licenses out there, which one's your favorite?" (in my opinion). Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 18:55
  • 19
    @Laura: I fail to see how removing all requirement of attribution "protects user contributions". Do you mean that it protects user contributions from the users contributing? Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 19:02
  • Maybe add drop-down list to your questions and answers to clarify which license the code in the question/answer uses? Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 21:22
  • @Morwenn It's not that simple. We remix code as encouraged by Creative Commons. Answers inspire new questions (see the rags-to-riches tag on Code Review). Answers often contain excerpts from the question, plus some original contribution. Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 21:26
  • 7
    Are you genuinely positing the premise that code posted to Code Review is "for educational purposes only, not intended to be used in production code," and that there is any practical manner whatsoever that could ever enforce such a principle? Commented Dec 17, 2015 at 2:25
  • 2
    @RobertHarvey If I post a question to CR, I have no expectation that it should become virtually public domain. (Whether I'd actually follow through and sue someone for stealing the code without attribution, I don't know, but enforcement is a separate issue.) If I post an answer on CR, my motivation is to help the asker learn, and if it also educates other Internet users, that's great. If the answer happens to contain a substantial amount of original code, the intention is to have them study the code, not to feed them the code. Commented Dec 17, 2015 at 2:41
  • It doesn't seem to me like you can just brush-off the issue of enforceability. I understand what you're saying as a matter of principle, but without enforcement, that's all it is: a principle, one without teeth. Commented Dec 17, 2015 at 2:45
  • 22
    @RobertHarvey If you believe that it's all unenforceable anyway, then we might as well stick with the simplest solution that works: CC-BY-SA for everything, the status quo. Commented Dec 17, 2015 at 3:52
  • 1
    Why should it be less enforceable than code in open source repositories? There are questions about whether it would be worth enforcing and that might differ. But it is no less enforceable. Commented Dec 20, 2015 at 3:33