Do the SO admins have any plans to release the underlying code for SO at all? I appreciate that the code may be part of their competitive advantage, but it strikes me that the underlying system would work for any topic, not just programming.
I am not advocating this, just curious really, but figured it might be under consideration as most of the value in SO is in the questions and answers, which have been released under a relatively open CC license.
After having given much thought to it during the last 2 years I decided that yes, I will release the stack overflow source code.
Here it is:
static void a() { a(); }
int main()
{
a();
}
int main() {main();} is too buggy, keep it like this version. It's really cool.
Leave it closed source.. for a selfish reason of mine :) Personally I don't want clones popping up and then we have a lot of Q &A sites which I might have to follow. I would rather concentrate on one really good site than on multiple so-so sites.
It's better to have the experts gather in one place than have them scattered between the clone sites.
Maybe open source it after a year from now. I want SO to have the EBay effect. No one can outdo eBay as an auction site.
multiple so-so sites. an intended pun? or a happy accident :)
Commented
Jun 11, 2013 at 17:41
I think they've been pretty noncommittal.
Spolsky: These questions all sort of come back on one another. So what do you think? StackOverflow, open source?
Atwood: I'm torn, because again StackOverflow is very much a commercial venture. Which I guess you could say about ScrewTurn Wiki as well. ScrewTurn Wiki is also commercial. I mean ultimately he wants to get paid for the work he's doing. And I guess I just don't know enough about the repercussions of it to make that decision. I'm not against it by any means. I mean I'm very much pro - as the caller said, Martin said, I'm very much pro open source. And I think I'm just a little nervous, having taken on this project.
Spolsky: But what if somebody cooler than us took that code, and even took, you know, I think we already talked about Creative Commons-ing some of the contributions. So they take the code that we developed, at great expense I'd like to point out - at least six to eight weeks, if not five to seven - and then took all that code and stuff like that, and made another site somewhere that was a better than Stackoverflow. Or it could be called StackDoubleOverflow. It would all be written in English as a second language. And, uh, it would be extremely popular with, say Eastern Europe for example.
Atwood: Right. So that's forking, right? And I have a blog entry about that as well. So the risk was forking is that--
https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W4331
So it might happen, or it might not. It doesn't look like they're dead set either way yet.
Edit: Jeremy found a more recent quote than me. Looks like they're still not committing to anything.
I think they said in one of the podcasts (#15 or #16) that they might "open source it" eventually.
Edit: Found it in the Transcript Wiki of Podcast 15:
Atwood: And to their credit these guys are doing this largely out of - I don't want to say the goodness of their heart - but because they know me and they believe in the project so they are sort of contributing some sort of basic sweat equity to the project so it's not like we have this giant pool of venture capital. I mean, this is basically self-funded to this point by: me [laughs]. Um, so, it's sort of a minimalistic endeavour, I mean what I think what we're going to end up with is going to be pretty cool. And it's going to be kind of community effort too where I've been posting on the blog about what we're doing and trying to solicit input and things like that. Eventually we might open source the code as well. But it's not like we have this giant pool of venture capital money like some companies, it's very much a small endeavour that we're taking on. But that said, people will start trickling into the beta before, before the end of the month now so that's where we are because people keep asking and I just wanted to address that.
That probably makes good sense to wait for a while to establish a significant user base and get a head start on competitors before open sourcing the code. At that point, it won't matter if someone creates a stackdoubleoverflow.com if this site gains critical mass.
Just look at all the ways that Twitter screws up yet everyone is still there. If Twitter open sourced their code, it wouldn't hurt them a bit. After all, there are already twitter clones out there, but people want to be where their friends are.
So get everyone and their friends here, and then open source it. :)
Aside from releasing source the alternative would be to license stackoverflow. I would push for a purchase in my org.
It is a great way to organically build a knowledge base over time, and I think that piece is missing in a lot of places - especially stovepipe orgs. Given the competitive nature of the badge system it would encourage average employees to contribute their knowledge for recognition - which would help break down information barriers.
As a programmer I could go to a LAN instance of SO for my org about... say accounting, ask an accounting question, and get answers from people in 4 divisions, that would be awesome.
From the Area 51 faq page:
Do you offer "white-label" or subscription hosting for Stack Exchange sites?
Unfortunately, we no longer offer a subscription service or license the software to host Stack Exchange sites. Stack Exchange sites can only be created via the democratic, community-driven process at Area 51. We offer neither “white-label” services, nor the ability to bypass Area 51 to create sites through partnerships.
