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Is it possible to publish a book made entirely out of SO questions and answers?

The idea is to publish the book freely online, and to sell kindle and printed copies on Amazon.com. Proper attribution will be given.

Will the license allow that?

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    See a lawyer. But, more importantly email the SO team and ask their permission first.
    – devinb
    Commented Jul 22, 2009 at 12:19
  • I will do so if the idea rolls on seriously. But for now, I just want to be certain that I am not misreading the license.
    – Adam Matan
    Commented Jul 22, 2009 at 12:50
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    A book best written by Jon Skeet.
    – Ladybug Killer
    Commented Aug 5, 2009 at 8:48

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I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. The Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic CC license has two requirements: that you attribute the work, and that derived works also be licensed under Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic or a similar license. You have described fulfilling one of these requirements.

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David Pogue, of the NYTimes did this with a book called "The World According to Twitter," in which he would ask his bajillion twitter followers to answer simple questions in 140 characters or less, or re-author classic sayings. He used the ones he liked, and made the book. He gave full credit to each author in the book, and even sent them a free book if any one of their submissions was used.

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  • The difference with your example is, I think, that it's used creatively, and could be categorized as an artwork or something akin to it.
    – Joachim
    Commented May 4 at 16:37

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