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Couple of years ago I was at this event where Stackoverflow had their stand, so I asked them the ultimate question - what stack does Stackoverflow run on? When

Couple of years ago I was at this event where Stackoverflow had their stand, so I asked them the ultimate question - what stack does Stackoverflow run on? When they answered ".NET" I couldn't believe it, thought it was a joke. Stackoverflow, one of the most prominent sites in the world of free and open software is actually running on a stack that is neither free nor very open.

johannes1234321 9y ago
In what sense is SO associated with free and open source? They run a commercial project on proprietary software and I assume most questions are by students and people working on non-open, commercial projects. True, some questions build around open source, but that's since many development stacks use openSource these days.
- exikyut 9y ago
  Indeed, the SO codebase itself is not open. And with good reason; there are already a thousand garbage UI clones of the site. It's clear that if the code was actually open that there would be a thousand garbage clones chock-full of terrible ads, but the UI would be so good people would actually use them. That would dilute the quality of SO itself, and render it all less significant.
  - johannes1234321 9y ago
    SO's quality only for a small part is in the software. It's in the amount of users and Google ranking. Maybe clones would work for narrow interest groups, but have a hard time to complete full scale ...
darklajid 9y ago
While that might've been true (if we discount projects like Mono), today asp.net is open and actually _developed_ in the open (aka 'better than Android') and dotnet core just reached version 2.0. So .. I don't think what you're saying applies in today's world. The biggest (proprietary) dependency they have in this stack as far as I can tell? I'd guess it's Microsoft SQL Server.
- BrentOzar 9y ago
  > The biggest (proprietary) dependency they have in this stack as far as I can tell? I'd guess it's Microsoft SQL Server. They've tested running the code atop PostgreSQL as well, plus running SQL Server on Linux. They're pretty flexible folks. Microsoft makes it attractive to stay on their stack, though.
nimchimpsky 9y ago
> one of the most prominent sites in the world of free and open software Eh ? Its a Q and A site, a great one. I've never associated it with open source.
romanovcode 9y ago
> neither free nor very open. .NET is released under MIT license[0]. What the hell are you talking about. [0] https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  I'm guessing he's referring to the web server that it's running on as well as the operating system that the web server is running on.

johannes1234321 9y ago

In what sense is SO associated with free and open source? They run a commercial project on proprietary software and I assume most questions are by students and people working on non-open, commercial projects. True, some questions build around open source, but that's since many development stacks use openSource these days.

exikyut 9y ago
Indeed, the SO codebase itself is not open. And with good reason; there are already a thousand garbage UI clones of the site. It's clear that if the code was actually open that there would be a thousand garbage clones chock-full of terrible ads, but the UI would be so good people would actually use them. That would dilute the quality of SO itself, and render it all less significant.
- johannes1234321 9y ago
  SO's quality only for a small part is in the software. It's in the amount of users and Google ranking. Maybe clones would work for narrow interest groups, but have a hard time to complete full scale ...

darklajid 9y ago

While that might've been true (if we discount projects like Mono), today asp.net is open and actually _developed_ in the open (aka 'better than Android') and dotnet core just reached version 2.0. So .. I don't think what you're saying applies in today's world. The biggest (proprietary) dependency they have in this stack as far as I can tell? I'd guess it's Microsoft SQL Server.

BrentOzar 9y ago
> The biggest (proprietary) dependency they have in this stack as far as I can tell? I'd guess it's Microsoft SQL Server. They've tested running the code atop PostgreSQL as well, plus running SQL Server on Linux. They're pretty flexible folks. Microsoft makes it attractive to stay on their stack, though.

nimchimpsky 9y ago

> one of the most prominent sites in the world of free and open software Eh ? Its a Q and A site, a great one. I've never associated it with open source.

romanovcode 9y ago

> neither free nor very open. .NET is released under MIT license[0]. What the hell are you talking about. [0] https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT

jlgaddis 9y ago
I'm guessing he's referring to the web server that it's running on as well as the operating system that the web server is running on.