34

I've been putting off asking this question for a while, but it came up in the comments for the question about Stack Exchange Q&A access in Russia and is worth addressing.

While I consider public Q&A a common good - Stack does rely on various products - advertising spaces (which is intrinsically tied with public Q&A) and commercial Q&A products such as teams and Stack Overflow Enterprise are sources of revenue. While the specific organizations are something that I understand SE wouldn't share - What is SE's policy on current clients who are in Russia as well as future sign ups for teams, enterprise, advertising and other products?

How would support be for current customers in these situations - and I guess practically what would be the impact of the war on the commercial aspects of SE?

3
  • 5
    Oh, I really hope the comment section does not turn into another Reddit-like discussion... Good question, though. AFAIK, Teams have been unavailable for Russians for a while, even before the war
    – 0Valt
    Commented Mar 23, 2022 at 8:57
  • 5
    Phew, found the post about Teams: meta.stackoverflow.com/a/411099/11407695
    – 0Valt
    Commented Mar 23, 2022 at 9:19
  • 6
    This post was kinda thought out since... literally the war started, and I sat on it 2 days before I posted it. Yeah, as a moderator here, I am entirely aware of what kinda mess I could be stepping in
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Mar 23, 2022 at 9:19

1 Answer 1

41

Russia (Russian corporations) is not on the internally-approved list of countries that we do business with across any of our paid products, including the free self-serve version of Stack Overflow for Teams, which is not available to be licensed in the region.

5
  • 4
    Just curious, has this always been the case or is it a change as a result of recent events?
    – Cerbrus
    Commented Mar 23, 2022 at 23:09
  • 6
    @Cerbrus As per meta.stackoverflow.com/a/411099 , it was already in effect in August 2021 (possibly much earlier). Commented Mar 24, 2022 at 7:30
  • 8
    This approach preceded the war in Ukraine.
    – Teresa Dietrich StaffMod
    Commented Mar 24, 2022 at 20:00
  • 3
    What is the reason for not including Russia in this internally-approved list of countries? Can we know which countries are in this list? Commented Mar 27, 2022 at 11:06
  • 3
    What factors are used to place or remove a country from your "internally-approved list"? Is it based on a defined rubric of political and economic freedom factors that produce a score, and a country must score above a threshold to be included? Is it based the inclusion of a country on specific sanctions lists (i.e. all countries are approved except ones that appear on one of the lists)? Do all managers get together and vote (e.g. "The motion to add Tonga to the list of approved countries passes 8-2.")? Commented Mar 27, 2022 at 14:52

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .