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so this is directed @ anyone who has a opinion.

Yesterday my friend pointed me to a open source knock-off of SO, SE. They really did not hesitate to really copy the entire model. He actually thought I would be happy, but was not. Even though I did not write the code for SO, SE, I felt strange, mad, violated. I love open-source, but hate copiers.

I talked to a few hard core programmers, and they said "that's the web" yes it is, but is there intellectually property rights? I'm not a pro with the laws regarding software.. but it just seems wrong.

Unless SE principles did something so unethical, I will never leave this paid option, for that knock off, just my opinion. Sometimes choices are not just about money, seriously.

What does this mean for SE? not much

My take: I'm some what of a loyal person, and this software along the the UI is close-to-perfect option for me. I hope the principles understand that they are some here, that really understand the opportunity offered, and will not just run for the free/jank option. Vote this up if feel the same, or comment - so you stand out

What do you think? Do you just let it go? I need some helping grasping my head around this, with regards to open-source, and what is acceptable.

Is the way I feel wrong? Should i not be mad, but happy?

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 I've been arguing with one of their devs on a separate question and I've been pissed all night. Standing on the backs of real developers and claiming they're for "openness" and "freedom' for the user. Why should people have to pay for anything? They seriously make me want to puke. – Jack Marchetti Apr 8 at 7:28
@debug and @Jack - you should consider editing your posts in light of Stack Exchange 2.0. – ripper234 Apr 16 at 14:16
@ripper: I will be sticking with SE for as long as possible or even move to 2.0 with my sites. Only if Im forced to leave SE 1.0, will i consider OSQA, etc..Though, I may help with development, and some other really cool plans that I will keep under radar for a bit. Those are still my opinions on that day, regardless if SO decides to take charge on new SE sites. I used SE 1.0 for how far developed they are, if another platform was superior I would have chose it. Also ripper, know one cares about my opinion now or if I have changed my views. I love great software regardless who makes it – debug Apr 16 at 17:16
Being ok with the existence of that other site is in the very spirit of this stack paradigm. It's very much survival of the fittest. There is a lot more to a stack than the interface. – SelfGov.us Apr 16 at 19:41

7 Answers

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We see it as pretty much inevitable, and probably a good thing. Right now that site you linked to is just trying to do a 1:1 clone of StackExchange/Overflow, so I'm doubtful that they'll actually be able to keep up with a full-time development team at Fog Creek. But if they do come up with a really cool new feature, we'll probably steal it right back and everybody will win :)

I hope that people won't stay with us out of loyalty, but because we provide a better service both in hosting and in ongoing feature development.

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 +1 I am impressed by your answer. – tucson Feb 17 at 20:03
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 David.. good points. you do provide a better service, hopefully speed will increase ;) again metastackexchange is awesome! – debug Feb 17 at 20:11
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 Joel needs to give you a raise for that answer. Rock on!!! – Tomasz P. Szynalski Feb 17 at 20:50
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 Your are going to have to be extremely good to justify the price you're planning to charge the smaller sites. Given the fiasco with the roll out of Beta 6 I don’t see you achieving it yet. – Martin Brown Feb 18 at 10:32
Cool feature they have: Getting an email notification immediately when someone answers your question, without having to check any checkboxes or wait for a daily "digest". I'm not sure whether to open a new feature request (for the non-digest email), because right now you're not working on this existing feature since September! meta.stackexchange.com/questions/252/… – ripper234 Apr 7 at 19:42
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Hi,

Shapado dev here. I’m sorry you took it that way @debug (thanks for you private feedback btw ;)). We’re just 3 guys who started something for fun as a hobby, we’re flattered though if you think we’ve accomplished something as good as the fogcreek employees.

As you know though, it can all be used by anyone for free and we’re not being paid for it, so that seems like a pretty good gift to the community.

Some companies can’t or don’t want to use hosted services for privacy reasons (eg. a DMCA request would force Fogcreek to give all the data to the government and make it public) or others reasons (AT&T uses Shapado internally as they like Rails).

Also some organizations (non profit for example) just don’t have the money to pay for the licenses.

For all these reasons and because having a free/open source alternative is always a good thing, we think it has a pretty good reason to exist.

About the copying thing, that’s how science and art work. Nothing gets created, everything gets copied and evolves from that. Especially in the software world, eg. linux (used by google and other) is a “knock off” of unix. StackOverFlow is a mixed “knock off” of Digg, Ask Slashdot and Yahoo Answers, and that’s fine. As for us adding new features, we’re doing this as a pet project so we concentrate on the basics for now.

For the record though we do have a couple of extra features: latex formulas in our editor, i18n, widgets, themes, code highlighting, a RESTful API, using your own domain and more that I’m forgetting.

Cheers,

Pat

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That's ok @debug, but just so you know. Have you ever heard of status.net (aka laconica)? It's an open source "knock off" of twitter that you can install on your own server, eg: identi.ca and guess who makes uses of status.net? Fogcreek: itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/… So you see, everbody's doing it and free/open source is good for everyone. – patcito Feb 18 at 22:49
There used to be comment from @debug here but he deleted it. – patcito Feb 18 at 22:59
thanks pat for responding. I was being honest about how i felt, and needed some advice, opinions. -u should not be flattered ;) – debug Feb 18 at 23:11
It's one thing to copy the idea, it's another to copy the implementation of the idea. I mean, a little originality on your part. At least change the CSS of the tags man. – Jack Marchetti Apr 7 at 19:07
@Jack - One reason to keep much of the underlyin CSS and HTML similar is to enable third party scripts and tools to work with both sites, rather than forcing third party developers to choose one, the other, or support both. – Adam Davis Apr 9 at 5:21
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I kind of see this as the different between building your own car, or leasing. Sure, you could find all the parts you want in a junk yard and assemble it in your garage, but if you have something better to do with your life, and you can afford it, go with the hosted option (SE).

Your job running the site shouldn't be developing, debugging, and testing software, it should be community building. SE lets you focus on that.

But still, I would like to see a price point under $129, maybe at the $50/month level for a really "lite" site. I think an individual can afford that long term, but $129 is too much.

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 I agree with you on the price. love the analogy – debug Feb 18 at 6:14
Of course, there is nobody stopping anyone from leasing out an open source SE clone exactly like Fog Creek does. Exactly like thousands of hosting providers offer Apache and PHP. – unknown (yahoo) Feb 18 at 11:37
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 I think you missed that shapado.com will do all the hosting for you in the same way as stack exchange, except they don't charge. I suspect they will be forcing you to take their adverts though. shapado.com/groups/new – Martin Brown Feb 18 at 13:39
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 @Martin: ring me when they're binary compatible with the database I can download from my SE site. Then it'll be interesting. Still, there's a lot behind the scenes of SE, like spam safeguards, etc. – Scott W. Feb 18 at 17:29
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 @Scott, they are binary compatible. They have an import script. I am still going for SE, but it feels good to have another option. – unknown (yahoo) Feb 19 at 18:30
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Might of heard this before, but "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery".

I think it doesn't matter as much if they are using the same logical constructs and methods of sorting/ordering data, they key to whoever is going to have the best software is all in execution. Having a paid service from SE/Fogcreek will provide support as well as continuous development (Hopefully) giving all of our sites an edge over the open source knock-offs.

I mean there were search engines before google, but google took it to the next level. I think it'd be pretty hard to top the guys behind SO right now. I wouldn't let it bug ya though, just know in having an SE site, your sites probably a lot cooler than theirs :)

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I have never heard that expression, but its a good one.. Thanks aaron – debug Feb 17 at 18:09
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IANAL, but my understanding is that the design of a website is not copyrightable (I find this to be a very informed discussion of this topic.) I see that didn't copy images, and so provided that they didn't copy code, I don't think there's any wrong-doing here.

In our industry, there's a long history of re-implementating something in a different license/language (ReactOS, NAnt, glibc, just to name a few.) I know some people dislike it, but I personally don't see anything unethical about it.

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 IANAL = i am not a lawyer. For those who dont know.. as I had to look it up – debug Feb 17 at 21:34
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 No, but there might be trademark law involved. So if you are going to create a knock-off, it is safest to make it look a little different. – unknown (yahoo) Feb 18 at 11:35
that's my biggest issue, they didn't even try to make it look different. They're basically saying "hey look, we copied your shit, and we're giving it away for free. Do something bout it!" – Jack Marchetti Apr 8 at 7:32
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It's been proven over and over again that just by copying of the website technicalities is impossible to steal the business, even if it looks so easy. It's the same as if somebody rents an office building and puts a big sign on the top - Bank Of America.

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we haven't seen them all yet http://www.quicksprout.com/2010/02/16/introducing-quick-sprout-answers/

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