Uh, you knew that going in, right? Aren't all answers CC0?

I believe the answers are CC-SA.

But the parent to your response has a point - knowing that the answers are CC licensed and knowing that the owners might have a ten-figure exit are different things. If the community were more aware of the latter, they might have been more canny about donating their efforts.

The whole idea was that if they become evil, or sell the site to someone evil, all the content was CC-SA, so it was possible to anyone to make a clone and continue from there.

I guess most of the posters understand that they may sell the site, but the content was safe because of the license.

Yep, simply start something like https://nullptr.com and continue on.

That's rather callous

I think they use CC BY-SA 4.0. There was some criticism when they moved from CC BY-SA 3.0 even when it was considered an improvement since it wasn't clear if stackoverflow needed additional consent to change the license for already existing content.

Of course, I never expected anything in return, but when you see that a small number of people get 1.8 Billion by essentially selling contributions from users, you start to wonder how much each accepted answer is worth :)

The way I see it as a user is that while I may invest time in a community like Stackoverflow, my actual responsibilities are practically non-existent and my direct monetary investment is literally zero.

Whereas the company maintaining the site as a whole has to invest a whole lot of time and money into keeping the site running, and have a huge responsibility in continuing to do so if they want to site to even stay in existence, let alone grow and succeed.

But your answers clearly had value, otherwise they couldn't have sold the site as it would have nothing on it.

IMO, That is a bit of an odd position to take. The terms of the deal were very clear going in.

I don't owe Donald Knuth anything more than the $100 (placeholder) for his books, even if they helped me get a 6 figure job right out of college.

Yes, his books had a lot more "value" than $100, but those were the terms of the deal.

I don't expect any monetary recuperation, you're right in that the deal was clear to begin with. Just like I don't expect a cut of ad-revenue from a forum or what-have-you.

I just don't feel it's correct to say that the contributions actually had no monetary value, they definitely did, it's just that we handed it to Stack Overflow for free in exchange for participating in the platform.

I don't think it's unreasonable to feel a little bit jaded about it either. I'm not, I didn't contribute nearly enough to feel entitled to squat. But I get it.

I think we would largely agree on the meat and potatoes - we just have a small disagreement of opinion, no biggie :)

>I just don't feel it's correct to say that the contributions actually had no monetary value, they definitely did, it's just that we handed it to Stack Overflow for free in exchange for participating in the platform.

How did you know the answer had value when you typed it up? The value is not solely determined by you or me - It's by the large number of visitors/viewers actually benefiting from the answer. And you need both, the platform attracting tons of readers, and the high-quality answer.

Certainly, there is lots that can be said here to expand on that and add more nuance, but not in a comment box.

Stack Overflow the company does more than you think. Aside from building and running the software, there's a lot going on behind the scenes to stop abuse and the like.

Stack Overflow wouldn't be a success without its users, but its users also wouldn't be a success without Stack Overflow.

I guess it's the same as if a busy pub was sold. The customers making it busy (and profitable) don't get anything.

Your analogy only holds if the customers to that pub were also supplying the drinks, the food, and handling the orders.

This is exactly what I was trying to say.

Imagine, in some distant future, where users who contributed were also rewarded for their contributions when their community "gets sold". One of the comments above mentioned that their investment into the site is 0, that may be true for them, but I most definitely invested dozens of hours of my time in order to write a well informed and solid answers (as was demanded by their community guidelines, mind you).

I am not the best example either, I know people who have written thousands of high quality answers and god knows how many hours of their time into writing these.

My gut tells me that it would be fair, and make the world a better place, if such users were rewarded as well.

They're certainly providing the ambiance and the conversation.

Also stickers and writing on the walls

They are selling the community, not the content. Similarly, when Instagram got bought by Facebook the users didn't get cash and stock

You already have your Internet-points, what more do you want?

As really, SO really was all about gamification, at least I think I remember them talking about it...