Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow have moved to CC BY-SA 4.0

Question

Effective today, all Subscriber Content on Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange network will be available under the terms of version 4.0 of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license.

This change follows our last Terms Of Service (ToS) update where we inadvertently introduced a point of confusion: the new ToS links to version 4.0 of the CC BY-SA license in support of defining the use of a Creative Commons license, where the previous terms linked to version 3.0 of the license. That’s not a problem itself, but the footer section of our websites continued to specify version 3.0 of the CC BY-SA license; this was an oversight.

It was our intention to update the footer information in a manner that was commensurate with the updated terms. We'd like to thank those from our communities that thoughtfully pointed out the issue and we have subsequently improved our review process.

Today's change will bring things into alignment by updating the information in the footer and we will continue forward under version 4.0 of the CC BY-SA license. This change encompasses all Subscriber Content as described in our ToS including data dumps as well as any content previously made available by Stack Exchange under the terms of version 3.0 of the CC BY-SA license.

If you have any questions about how licenses may or may not impact your business or personal projects, it's better to speak with your own attorney — we can't provide advice specific enough to be of much use in most cases.

4.0 has many advantages, and we encourage you to read the announcement letting the world know it was ready as a starting point if you're curious about the improvements.

We're happy to hear any thoughts about this, particularly from those in our international communities. If you've got questions pertaining to the change, we'll do our best to answer them, as long as we can answer without giving specific advice.

Update: Please read our update on Creative Commons Licensing for more follow up on issues that stemmed from the change in license described above.

Answer 1

I like CC BY-SA 4.0. IMO, it's better than 3.0. I'd prefer to use it. I've chosen to use 4.0, instead of 3.0, on projects of my own. However, my preference doesn't affect the current situation with respect to existing content on Stack Exchange.

Stack Exchange doesn't have the right to unilaterally change the license of previously submitted content.

Beyond what might exist in the CC BY-SA 3.0 license, I've seen nothing that indicates Stack Exchange has the right to change the license for previously submitted content. No version of the TOS which I've read grants the additional right to Stack Exchange to re-license prior existing content, or, in the future, to re-license content submitted under the current TOS.

If you believe such a right was granted outside of the CC BY-SA licenses, I would appreciate knowing what wording in which document you feel grants that right.

Migrating from CC BY-SA 3.0 to CC BY-SA 4.0

The primary issue is migrating from CC BY-SA 3.0 to CC BY-SA 4.0. Unfortunately, Stack Exchange unilaterally shifting the existing license on older subscriber content from 3.0 to 4.0 isn't permitted, or at least that's the opinion of the Creative Commons, who wrote the licenses.

Creative Commons has a 4.0 upgrade guidelines document, which says in part (emphasis mine):

Upgrading from prior versions to 4.0

Existing content:

• Who owns the rights?
  • ...
  • If the contributors, then need permission to relicense. Without permission (via terms of use or otherwise), then that content remains under prior version.

Adaptations of existing content:

• Who owns the rights to the original?
  • ...
  • If the contributor, then can license new contributions to an adaptation under 4.0 but original contributions remain under prior version unless express permission to upgrade is obtained.

You can change what happens with respect to old contributions moving forward by mutual agreement with the user that submitted the content (i.e. each question, answer, comment, tag excerpt/wiki, and edit). In other words, you can get permission from each author to re-license the content they submitted, but you can not do so unilaterally.¹ You could change the TOS such that new use of the site relicenses old contributions by that user, but that's something you should discuss with your lawyers.

However, as a practical matter, you will never be able to get permission from every contributor to switch to the new license for all previously submitted content (e.g. users who never return to the site), which means you must deal with mixed licenses in some manner.

Was this change planned and intentional?

This announcement says that you "inadvertently introduced a point of confusion". This can be read many different ways. One is "the person who was updating the TOS mistakenly typed a 4 instead of a 3 when linking to the CC BY-SA license." The wording you've used makes it sound like the change was a mistake that you just decided to go with. It doesn't sound like you put planning into making such a change.

The fact that the change from linking/saying CC BY-SA 3.0 to CC BY-SA 4.0 did not happen close to seamlessly in all places on the site (or at least most) argues that this was not a planned change. In particular, that CC BY-SA 4.0 has been linked in the TOS for more than a year and you are only getting to making an announcement and other on-site changes now, really makes it look like the change was, at least initially, just a mistake.

Please, run this by your lawyers.

If this was not planned and/or you have not yet run this by your lawyers, I strongly recommend that you inform your lawyers of the current situation and ask for their advice.

My belief is that by making this change you've created a quite complex situation, which is difficult to resolve. My understanding is that the resolution recommended by the Creative Commons requires changes to how you display subscriber content (i.e. indicating the applicable license individually for each question, answer, comment, tag excerpt/wiki, and edit).

You might be able to get away with just making it clear as to the date that the license changed, but doing that will require every user who copies content from Stack Exchange to individually determine which license is being used for each portion they copy.

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^{I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. This is just my interpretation from reading the license, the current TOS, my memory of the old TOS, etc. I strongly recommend that you seek the advice of your lawyers.}

1. _{You can change your TOS unilaterally, but that doesn't change what agreements are in place from the past. Changing those existing agreements (i.e. the existing licenses) requires action on the part of the other party (i.e. your users).}

Answer 2

I have some serious concerns with this, especially after the last round of licensing fiascos around the MIT license.

I want to be clear: I like the Creative Commons licenses for text. I think that CC-BY-SA is appropriate for content contributed to Stack Exchange. I think that CC-BY-SA 4.0 is a fantastic license and I use it myself.

However, you have not obtained my permission to change the license of the content that I have contributed. The Terms of Service did not require me to grant that permission as part of using the service (and even if you added it, you would need to handle the case where someone decides to stop using the service but does not grant permission for existing content) and I have not received a request for permission to update the license of my content.

My biggest concern here, like it was in the last rounds of licensing discussions, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the rules and laws around licensing. This does not give me confidence.

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I'd like to make my concerns more explicit.

Before September 5, the Stack Exchange Network Terms of Service was an agreement between the users (myself) and SE that I agreed to by using the service.

One of the agreements in the pre-September 5th TOS was an agreement that I license "and and all content" that I provide to the public Network be "perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Overflow on a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive basis pursuant to Creative Commons licensing terms". Per the TOS, this is a "perpetual and irrevocable right and license to access, use, process, copy, distribute, export, display and to commercially exploit such Subscriber Content".

I would point out that I do not grant anyone the right to change the license of my contributions without permission in the Terms of Service, so we must consult the Creative Commons licensing terms that I am granting.

The Creative Commons licensing terms linked to was CC-BY-SA 3.0. The original answer here makes it clear that at some date, CC-BY-SA 3.0 was linked to. During an update, the wrong version (4.0) was linked to. This appears to be unintentional and wasn't communicated in change notes to users to give adequate information to make an informed decision on accepting the new Terms of Service.

For the sake of argument, we can say that this change to the ToS is fine - SE can arbitrarily require new contributions to be licensed under whatever they ask. It is up to the users to understand that. The issue is with past contributions.

To be clear on definitions, an individual contribution to a site on the SE network is a Work (see 1.h). A set of questions, answers, and comments that is made available is a Collection (see 1.b). I'd point out that SE content is not an Adaptation (1.a).

When I submit a post to an SE site, I granted SE a perpetual and irrevocable right and license to that post under CC-BY-SA 3.0. They then use this license to make my post available to others but also to form a Collection with other posts also submitted under CC-BY-SA 3.0. Prior to September 5, both the individual Works by various people plus the Collection were CC-BY-SA 3.0.

4.a in CC-BY-SA 3.0 states that "You may Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work only under the terms of this License". In this case, "You" is someone who received the Work under the license. This is a prohibition on relicensing Works. This section also addresses Collections - "This Section 4(a) applies to the Work as incorporated in a Collection, but this does not require the Collection apart from the Work itself to be made subject to the terms of this License."

4.c in CC-BY-SA addresses distribution of the Work in a Collection. It requires that all copyright notices remain intact. Prior to September 5, the Collections were also distributed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

8.a makes this even more clear: "Each time You Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work or a Collection, the Licensor offers to the recipient a license to the Work on the same terms and conditions as the license granted to You under this License." Again, "You" refers to SE distributing individuals Works in a Collection.

The new Terms of Service require new contributions to be licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0. This is OK and acceptable - totally fine for SE to do at any point in time. However, due to the fact that permission to relicense was not granted, the license of existing works cannot be unilaterally changed.

CC provides upgrade guidelines for applying 4.0. For existing content, contributors own the rights and granted SE a license. The guidelines say that the publisher will need permission to relicense. Without permissions (which can be granted via terms of use), the content remains under the prior version and there are guidelines for dealing with mixed-version content. The guidelines for adaptations do not apply since SE is not an adaptation, but a collection.

Given that the ToS did not grant permission to relicense works and CC-BY-SA 3.0 explicitly prohibits relicensing works and the CC guidelines for migrating Works were not followed, I'd like an actual answer from SE identifying (with quotes) exactly what sections of the Terms of Service or CC-BY-SA 3.0 are believed to grant them the rights to relicense my contributions.

I'd note that I am not objecting to the collection of works being licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0. I'm also not objecting to new content being licensed to SE under 4.0.

I simply want SE to demonstrate a basic understanding of copyright and licensing - right now, I'm very quickly losing trust in SE to appropriately handle my contributions.

Answer 3

As animuson wanted this phrased as a question:

Are you sure you're legally allowed to relicense all content without asking the copyright holders (i.e. all contributors) individually for permission? If so, by what justification? As detailed in other answers it looks like CC-BY-SA 3.0 doesn't allow it.

The question has been asked before, but never answered definitively.

The previous relicensing plan explicitly did not apply retroactively.

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I just saw that in April 2011 you unilaterally changed all content from 2.5 to 3.0 without any legal explanation. I imagine back then almost nobody noticed. It seems this was after a similar accidental change to the terms.

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Also asked as a separate question.

Answer 4

Another subtle way in which the move to 4.0 is problematic is the following: CC-BY-SA 4.0 requires that any change made to the source material must be explicitly marked. And two changes that SE makes automatically to all published content are:

• Adding nofollow to links created by newer users, and
• rewriting all Amazon links to insert their affiliate code. Because, you know, money.

These changes must now be explicitly marked as modifications.

Answer 5

Right after this announcement here from Tim Post made on Sep 5th, I wrote to the legal department of the Network (legal at stackoverflow dot com) on Sep 7th in the hope of getting a clarification. I wrote a very polite message expressing my explicit disagreement with the re-licensing of existing content, doubting the legality of the re-licensing and asking for an explanation.

For a week, I did not receive a reply, so I wrote a nice reminder again on Sep 16th. I carefully checked my spam folders but until today, Sep 24th, I did not get any reply at all. That's why, against all hope, I just wrote another message, explicitly but politely asking them to please explain to me how they can legally issue a new license, not being the copyright owner of the subscriber content.

However, I don't really expect an answer anymore and I think from the legal department of the Network (or the community department judging by the lack of communication regarding the issue) there is no interest whatsoever to explain the legal reasoning behind the announced re-licensing of the existing content.

Because this might be a breach of the copyright and because a re-licensing might not only have positive repercussions, I also wrote to the Free Software Foundation (info at fsf dot org) just now and explained the situation, asking for their professional evaluation of the situation as well as publicity in case they agree with my depiction of the case.

Nothing more I can do to clarify the issue short of going to court and that is unfortunately very expensive and I could not afford that. Maybe a larger amount publicity (Twitter, Reddit, ...) would do some good there, not sure though.

If ever any late response arrives from the legal department, I will add it here, but I doubt it will happen.

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On Sep 25th, I also wrote to the EFF (info at eff org) with a message similar to the one I sent to the FSF.

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On Sep 27th, I received a reply from the EFF. They could not be an attorney in this matter, but can facilitate the contact to their cooperating attorneys. For information (I will not use the offer), I attach the essentials of the reply (I would rather attach a reply from the Network).

[..] While EFF cannot be your attorney for this matter, we can offer to try to facilitate a referral to one of our Cooperating Attorneys for you to find you someone who could dig into this with you a bit more. Our Cooperating Attorneys mailing list is composed of attorneys who have volunteered to offer help in cases the EFF cannot handle itself. Information about the list can be found at https://www.eff.org/pages/legal-assistance#coopattys.

If you would like a referral, please explicitly confirm in your reply that you would like me to post a referral to the Cooperating Attorneys list and include the following, even if you have already told me:

1. Where you are located.
2. Who the opposing party is and where the opposing party is located.
3. A brief description of the situation and the legal assistance you are seeking.
4. Whether you can pay for representation. We cannot guarantee pro bono help.
5. If any of the info you've given to me should not be sent to the list, please let me know since we cannot guarantee that someone related to the opposing party is not on the list. [..]

When we hear back from someone who's interested in working with you, we will forward you their contact information. We can't guarantee that we'll be able to refer you, but we're happy to try. Please also note that we do not and cannot screen the attorneys on our referral list. In most states you can check with the State Bar website for the current status and record of lawyers in that state, but you need to make your own judgment about which attorney is right for you. [..]

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On 22th of November I got a late response from the FSF (by Ineiev) where they apologized for the late reply (being a "nonprofit organization with very limited resources"), which is more than I ever received from the legal department of StackOverflow (nothing so far).

They stated:

Irrespectively of who the copyright holders of the work in question are, the CC-BY-SA-3.0 section 4b(ii) grants the permission to distribute the work under any later version of the license, so anyone may choose a newer license when distributing.

-- I am not a lawyer, this is not a legal advice.

This is identical to the answer by trickly here, who draw inspiration from Can I “upgrade” the version of CC BY-SA from 3.0 to 4.0 in my modification?, where however the highest voted answer by user amon says that CC are upwards compatible but do not easily migrate.

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On 20th January 2020, I replied to the FSF along the lines of explaining the reasoning of these answers here and why it would disagree with their advice and asking if this would any difference to their opinion.

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March 1st 2020: Until now, I did not receive anything from SE Inc. and I did not receive another reply from the FSF.

Answer 6

I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that Stack Exchange is running a serious risk of losing their rights to ALL content because of their failure to address this issue.

As is clearly stated in the Creative Commons FAQ:

How can I lose my rights under a Creative Commons license? If that happens, how do I get them back?

All of the CC licenses terminate if you fail to follow the license conditions. If this happens, you no longer have a license to use the material.

In the 4.0 licenses, your rights under the license are automatically reinstated if you correct this failure within 30 days of discovering the violation (either on your own or because the licensor or someone else has told you). Under the 3.0 and earlier licenses, there is no automatic reinstatement.

If you have lost your rights under a CC license and are not entitled to automatic reinstatement, you may regain your rights under the license if the licensor expressly grants you permission. You cannot simply re-download the material to get a new license.

Note that you may still be liable for damages for copyright infringement for the period where you were not in compliance with the license.

As others have pointed out, Stack Exchange does not have the right to unilaterally change the license of previously submitted content without our approval. In fact, your attempt to do so might revoke your rights to the content altogether.

Answer 7

While we are here ....

This is related enough to be mentioned here.
When images are copied to Imgur they are not only notionally assigned CC-by-whatever-the-current-flavour-is rights BUT also are subject to Imgur's TOS for unpaid Imgur posts. These are draconian. I raised this issue some years ago and was assured at the time that the Imgur conditions applied to paid Imgur contributions would be applied. However, in 'no time flat' the language used made it clear that committing an image to Imgur storage was (allegedly) waiving your rights to it.

But wait - it's worse ... If you LINK to an image because embedding it would result in SE CC-by-xxx ing it, and Imgur making off with it, and if somebody then converts the link to an Imgur stored image, as people'helpfully' do on an ongoing basis, then notionally the helpful editor has assigned CC-by-xxx to your image and given Imgur the right to have their irrevocable way with it without you knowing, let alone having been asked what you think.

No?

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Rene helpfully located my question and its "answer" from 7 years ago here

There Imgur is cited as saying
"Although we don't sell the images or grant usage for them at all, it is in the terms that we have the right to do so." That is what I was querying then.
Does this apply now?

'Back then', Jaydies, on behalf of SE said "We have a contract with Imgur LLC that explicitly states:

Imgur will make no claim of copyright to any images stored by SE on the Image Server (other than Imgur's own copyrighted images and other works, if any)."

But, the question is not whether they own copyright but whether they have or claim to have been granted the right to have their way with images in an unlimited manner. That they believed that they had the right then appears to have been the case, quite regardless of copyright.

"While we don't .... we have the right ..." is precisely what the current question is attempting to deal with.

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Also relevant:

imgur, copyrighted images from the web, and imgur accounts

Answer 8

I think it would be better to provide a choice (like YouTube, DeviantArt and some other websites do): CC BY-SA 4.0 as default value for new content, and 3.0 for old content. And of course MIT :)

Answer 9

I wonder if this means that compatibility of the content with Wikipedia content is broken now. I think Wikipedia still uses CC-BY-SA-3.0 and typically these licenses are not backward compatible.

Could I use newly generated content from here still in Wikipedia?

If this isn't the case, I don't like it.

Answer 10

Can you please at this time also remove the trademark violating demand that attribution be given in specific bespoke ways from the footer link and help centre, as I believe was your plan when the new TOS was adopted. (TL chat link).

Answer 11

bug area51

I see that the link at the bottom of Area 51 now goes to version 4.0 of the license, instead of version 2.5 as it did previously.

However, the footer continues to specify the name of the license as "CC-Wiki", which is an old, deprecated alias name of the CC BY-SA license that was discontinued back when the 3.0 licenses rolled out:

Can that please be changed to say "CC BY-SA 4.0" instead of "CC-Wiki"?

Answer 12

The Help Centre links to the CC BY-SA 3.0 license and also needs updating.

Answer 13

The Terms of service back in Nov 5 2017 were (bold emphasis mine)

You agree that all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. You grant Stack Exchange the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to use, copy, cache, publish, display, distribute, modify, create derivative works and store such Subscriber Content and, except as otherwise set forth herein, to allow others to do so in any medium now known or hereinafter developed (“Content License”) in order to provide the Services, even if such Subscriber Content has been contributed and subsequently removed by You.

So all subscribers are granting content to Stack Overflow under two licenses :

• Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike
• The previous quoted paragraph starting with "You grant Stack Exchange..."

The current text is different:

You agree that any and all content, including without limitation any and all text, graphics, logos, tools, photographs, images, illustrations, software or source code, audio and video, animations, and product feedback (collectively, “Content”) that you provide to the public Network (collectively, “Subscriber Content”), is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Overflow on a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive basis pursuant to Creative Commons licensing terms (CC-BY-SA), and you grant Stack Overflow the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to access, use, process, copy, distribute, export, display and to commercially exploit such Subscriber Content, even if such Subscriber Content has been contributed and subsequently removed by you as reasonably necessary to, for example (without limitation):

But it is still the same two licenses.

As a non-lawyer I get the impression that the second license pretty much lets Stack Overflow do anything they want with subscriber content including but not limited to publish it under CC-BY-SA-4.0 without agreement from original poster.

Though it can be argued that neither of those paragraphs include the term "relicense". We are granting only the right to "use, copy, cache, publish, display, distribute, modify, create derivative works, store and, [...], to allow others to do so [...]". So that and only that, nowhere are we granting the right to do any of those things under different conditions, which is what a change of license means.

Which interpretation is right about this 2nd license allowing the unilateral change to CC-BY-SA-4.0 can only really be discerned by a lawyer judge. But in both cases I consider the 2nd license to be excessive and granting way too many privileges to Stack Overflow while stripping contributors from the protections that CC-BY-SA aims to achieve.

Which is why I propose:

• Granting of 2nd license of the ToS should be removed from now onwards. Stack Overflow should not have a privileged license which other users don't have. As a user of SO I contribute content as a means to share knowledge equally with everyone. SO is a medium and I don't mind if they profit from providing such medium, we also profit from using it. But I most certainly dislike contributing while being stripped of CC-BY-SA protections by having to agree to this 2nd license. One of those CC-BY-SA protections being that license terms can't be changed by the licensee (this protection is stated in Section 4 of CC-BY-SA 3.0) .
• ToS should explicitly state that content is provided under CC-BY-SA versionX or later. So as to not encounter ourselves in the potential future situation of being stuck with a then old CC-BY-SA version with known problems.

Answer 14

Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow have moved to CC BY-SA 4.0

Wait… what?

Funny how one has to learn about this stuff months after it happened, just because one accidentally stumbles upon some link in the comment section of another meta post. That’s not OK. Also, I didn’t get any email telling me about this change and I wasn’t asked if I am OK with my content being re-licensed either. (Sending a typical system email notification to existing users isn't that hard — SE does that multiple times a week; eg when your posts get a comment.)

To react to this MetaSE post, I feel forced post my two cents here. Not only because this Q&A seems to be the appropriate place to do so, but also to clarify the legal parts that Stack Exchange Inc. obviously ignores.

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License Notice

On September 5, 2019, Stack Exchange, Inc. declared it re-licensed all content from CC BY-SA 3.0 to CC BY-SA 4.0, including all previous contributions. The network's terms of service allows Stack Exchange Inc to use the licensed material made available to them, as users provide a non-exclusive license to allow for commercial use among other purposes. However, it also makes clear that content is provided to other people viewing the site under the CC BY-SA license. Stack Exchange Inc's re-licensing announcement displayed at Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow have moved to CC BY-SA 4.0 states and confirms that content was previously licensed under version 3.0. Pursuant to that license.

Stack Exchange Inc does not have the right to unilaterally change the license of previously submitted content. Since I am the original copyright holder of my posts, Stack Exchange Inc. needs my permission to re-license the content I made available under the license in effect and mutually agreed upon at the time of posting. Without my permission to change the license, all my content remains licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

To be clear: I did not and do not intend to give Stack Exchange Inc. active or passive permission to re-license my content to any other license or license version; resulting in the fact that CC BY-SA 3.0 remains in effect for all my contributions.

As a reminder: Stack Exchange Inc is licensee of the content I posted here. It's not the other way around.

Under no applicable law — neither international laws, nor US laws, nor any EU laws (I, the licensor, am located in the EU) — are licensees permitted to bluntly re-license work which was provided to under a specific license and license version by the licensor — me .

Stack Exchange Inc. is generally welcome to express their objections and/or seek re-licensing allowance by contacting the copyright holder – me – in writing via email and/or postal mail. I would like to remind Stack Exchange Inc. about the fact that Stack Exchange Inc. has my email address on file. Any related contacting efforts via the Stack Exchange network itself (eg the internal website messaging system, website chat, MetaSE posts like this Q&A, etc), or any other means of communication (eg phone, telefax, Twitter messages, etc), can and will be ignored. Simpler stated: communication about legal issues or license changes will only be accepted in writing, using the usual communication means that businesses normally use when discussing such changes and potentially targettinf contract changes.

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Consequence

Based on the legal issues Stack Exchange Inc. introduced with their sneaky and unacceptable “re-licensing” attempt and the following related action(s), I am herewith halting all further contributions to the Stack Exchange network websites. This is not likely to change, unless Stack Exchange Inc. resolves the re-licensing issuey they introduced by not asking for my consent as the copyright holder and licensor.

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Reserved Rights

Being the copyright holder amd licensor of my posted content, it should be logic and clear that I generally reserve all rights to enforce and secure my rights now and at any given time in the future if I deem it to be necessary to do so to protect my intellectual property against misuse by Stack Exchange Inc. or any other licensee.

The licensee — in this case Stack Exchange Inc. — is meanwhile given time to revert the unacceptable re-licensing attempt, or to seek permission from me to use my content under another llicense on yet-to-be-discussed terms and conditions.

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Nota Bene

Last but not least, I herewith benevolently remind Stack Exhchange Inc that one-sided contract changes are against both national as well as international laws, and therefore generally void. Ignorance of that fact does not magically legalize unauthorized license change attempts.

Answer 15

For what it's worth, here's how we deal with this in the Fedora Project. We have a contributor agreement ­which provides for a default license for any contributions which do not already have one. For code, that's currently MIT; for content, it's CC-BY-SA 3.0 supplemented by Moral Rights Clause Waiver and GPL Relicensing Permission. But we also say:

The Fedora Council may, by public announcement, subsequently designate an additional or alternative default license for a given category of Contribution (a "Later Default License"). A Later Default License shall be chosen from the appropriate categorical sublist of Acceptable Licenses For Fedora.

Once a Later Default License has been designated, Your Unlicensed Contribution shall also be licensed to the Fedora Community under that Later Default License. Such designation shall not affect the continuing applicability of the Current Default License to Your Contribution.

You consent to having Fedora provide reasonable notice of Your licensing of Your Contribution under the Current Default License (and, if applicable, a Later Default License) in a manner determined by Fedora.

Answer 16

Sticks in my craw to ask questions in an answer, but...

What's the practical difference between 3.0 and 4.0?

What protections does it lend me as a content creator, and do I lose anything from the change?

Answer 17

If this is being done to bring the licensing footer, TOS, and everything else into agreement, well... that's a not awful reason, though it is problematic.

There is some suggestion that this is being done to have everything under a better and more consistent license and changing the license on past contributions... that gets problematic. If Stack Overflow corporate is claiming that they have the rights to relicense contributions under a different creative commons license, do they have permissions to relicense under a 5.0 version in the future (that may be objectionable) or under CC0 now?

This strongly echos the GPL and that there are people who agree with GPL2 but not GPL3.

If Stack Overflow claims the rights to relicense from CC 3.0 to CC 4.0, do they also have the rights to relicense to CC0? Or CC-BY-NC?

If there is permission to relicense to a specific set of licenses, where is this spelled out?

If there is permission to relicense to any license, where is this spelled out?

Saying "we're doing this, its good for you, trust us..." well, a lot of trust has been burnt in the past and this isn't likely helping.

Answer 18

They had a license-change case also with OpenZFS (after ZFS was made closed source), and the question has been raised why the OpenZFS develoeprs didn't take the chance to change the license to fit with Linux. The answer according to the OpenZFS website was that:

...changing the license would involve contacting anyone who contributed code to the current OpenZFS implementation (including the initial, common ZFS code till OpenSolaris) and get their permission to change the license. Since this job is near impossible (because some contributors may be dead or hard to find), they have decided to keep the license they have.

See also their Wiki FAQ: http://www.open-zfs.org/wiki/FAQ#Do_you_plan_to_release_OpenZFS_under_a_license_other_than_the_CDDL.3F

Answer 19

The post title is a bit confusing, can it be stated; All our network ... in example. (or just the network ...)

I ask as I'am contributor on serverfault.com (same could apply for superuser.com's users), and I seen the new as it's featured. I guess our sites will be on 4.0 version too as inside the post it's told "Stack Exchange Network...", but I had to read it to feel included in the change

I ask as some project are stated for StackOverflow only, and sometime for StackExchange's only, like in your title, but those projects are never done for any sub sites.

A major move like that I hardly imagine that it's not for all the networks.

Answer 20

(Since there's a potential point of confusion - I'm a community moderator here and my viewpoints are in no way official except when quoting an official source, neither do they represent the views of the moderation team or anyone other than myself. I know as much, or as little as any of you.)

Since this came up during a conversation on chat, and there's no official answer pointing this out...

We've actually had a license switch before. Amusingly, it was similarly messy with two or three different licence names. There was a lot less fuss then and Stack Exchange apparently survived this.

To quote Shog on chat:

Because, that's really what the CC license is about here: protecting y'all from us. Or from whoever buys us. If you look at the history that motivated licenses like this, that was generally the thing that happened: company solicits user contributions, then makes 'em private, then sues former users for trying to reuse their own content.

The main goal here is so Stack Overflow (the company) or their successors cannot take their ball and go home. They can't do a hyphen site, hide everything we've done so far behind a paywall then go full evil and try to sue users for posting their own content as was on SE.

So, let's talk about some practical considerations. I've been under the impression so far that we license our content to SE - under the understanding that it would be released under the CC BY-SA license and other additional conditions - as per this other answer.

First, it would be practically impossible to contact every single user who has ever contributed anywhere on the network to get an agreement.

If we're looking at extreme legalistic interpretations...let's start with:

Stack Overflow reserves the right, at its discretion, to modify these Public Network Terms at any time by posting revised Public Network Terms on the public Network and by providing notice via e-mail, where possible, or on the public Network.

And well, they provided notice on the public network that they were changing the version of the CC license in use. In theory, and in practice, I don't think anyone would fault anyone else for reproducing content as per the CC licence in use at the time when something was republished.

There's no major change in how we post things and how SE uses them - only how a third party is allowed to use them. This is pretty important. I doubt anyone would fault the use of the CC-Wiki or 2.5 before April 8, 2011, and 3.0 up until this change.

And practically, by insisting that SE gets explicit permission from every single contributor, well that's throwing a brick wall in front of updating the license version without any real way to get around it. There's literally no room to budge if you take that view.

And fundamentally, outside "they're changing a thing without asking us" I'm unclear as to what's the downside here. It's a newer license covering what you see on the page now if you need to use content you didn't generate.

It's also worth considering how and where these licenses are used - scrapers probably could be a group of people targeted, but otherwise knowledge on SE tends to be used pretty widely with no real barriers.

Answer 21

There is something in the ToS that I don't understand.

You agree that any and all content, including without limitation any and all text, graphics, logos, tools, photographs, images, illustrations, software or source code, audio and video, animations, and product feedback (collectively, “Content”) that you provide to the public Network (collectively, “Subscriber Content”), is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Overflow on a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive basis pursuant to Creative Commons licensing terms (CC-BY-SA), and you grant Stack Overflow the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to access, use, process, copy, distribute, export, display and to commercially exploit such Subscriber Content, even if such Subscriber Content has been contributed and subsequently removed by you as reasonably necessary to...

Does this mean that the content we, users add here belong to Stack Overflow and not to us?

Answer 22

I was trying to find out whether SO/SE break the license agreement when upgrading. I found this page about upgrading from 3.0 to 4.0. A quote:

Existing content:

• Who owns the rights?
  • If the publisher, then can relicense under 4.0 as specified above.
  • If the contributors, then need permission to relicense. Without permission (via terms of use or otherwise), then that content remains under prior version. [If this is the case, see the section below about dealing with mixed-version content.]
    • A couple of options for obtaining permission to relicense:
    • upon upload by contributors, have a prompt box to obtain agreement to relicense previous uploads;
    • general outreach to contributors seeking agreement to upgrade. [Note that this is easier to do with discrete artifacts (an article, a photo) as opposed to other contributions such as comments on wikis and similar, where one person's contribution is intermixed with others.]

Long story short, if the publisher (the network) holds the license, they can also do the upgrade. I think it is, and was, in the terms of use that the content users post is licensed to the SE network, so if I understand correctly, the upgrade is legit.

Answer 23

I'm gonna make this a top level answer, because it's been brought up in multiple previous answers.

I believe they are using the CC license itself to grant them the ability to unilaterally move all content from 3.0 to 4.0. I found this Answer when I looked up "how to migrate from CC 3.0 to 4.0". It quotes section 4(b) as saying the following:

You may Distribute or Publicly Perform an Adaptation only under the terms of:
(i) this License;
(ii) a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License;
(iii) a Creative Commons jurisdiction license (either this or a later license version) that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g., Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 US));
(iv) a Creative Commons Compatible License.

I am not a lawyer. However, subsections (ii), (iii), and (iv) all seem to indicate that the license for the content can be upgraded, and still be compatible with the original license.

Answer 24

Thanks to those who have waited patiently for us to provide clarity here. As this involves passing feedback to our legal counsel, answers can sometimes take time.

As mentioned in the announcement, we are unable to pursue dialogues that would put us (or our counsel) in the position of providing legal advice to you. However, we want to affirm: our counsel is and will continue to be involved and on-board with any steps we take to perform our role as stewards of our sites. Maintaining, updating, and enforcing our Terms Of Service is essential to fulfilling this role.

Another question that sticks out is, what prompted the change? Below is a list of bullets as to why we view this as an essential choice concerning the folks that will be responsible for the content for years to come:

• More explicit rights to be disassociated. We’ve always honored requests for having a contribution disassociated from your account, whether it was an adaptation or not. Version 4.0 of the license gives you explicit rights to be disassociated from any verbatim copy of your contribution, not just an adaptation. This gives you more footing to deal with scraper sites as an individual if you find it necessary.

• More rights + more global adaptation = better. There’s a lot of stuff that version 3.0 of the license almost did well, but due to ways certain wording could be interpreted, sometimes fell short. 4.0 is in no way a magic bullet to make the license 100% enforceable in every corner of the world, but it exceeds the efficacy of 3.0 substantially.

• Better and simpler cure for infringement. Dealing with scraper sites is a time-consuming process, especially when international sites are the ones being scraped. There are also more proxies popping up on temporary domains to get around government censorship. 4.0 gives us better tools to more aggressively pursue bad actors, and more flexibility to work with folks that are responsive and want to comply. Additionally, rights are automatically reinstated if a site falls into compliance within a month of receiving notice which fits our process much better.

• Clarity across the board. The license is much easier to read which also makes it much easier to translate (and, as necessary, transliterate). If that wasn’t enough, the license has already been ported to most major languages. Our international strategy is going to be an important theme in the years to come.

We feel well-positioned to meet the challenges of curating your contributions on a growing scale, and we’re learning as we go. We take the role very seriously and this was an important step we were very pleased to take.