3 ms·

But I think that incorporating SO answers into proprietary software is already legal, right? And if it is illegal, then the copyright is owned by the person who

But I think that incorporating SO answers into proprietary software is already legal, right? And if it is illegal, then the copyright is owned by the person who posted the answer, not by SO itself.

snazz 7y ago
The answers have always been CC-BY-SA 2.5 licensed.
- shagie 7y ago
  That is a... complicated statement. If you look at https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing - the license that it points to is http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ A 2010 wayback http://web.archive.org/web/20100701152609/http://stackoverflow.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100701152609/http://stackoverfl... links to 2.5 While a 2011 wayback links to 3.0 http://web.archive.org/web/20110703111023/http://stackoverflow.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20110703111023/http://stackoverfl... A blog post from 2011 on attribution required : http://web.archive.org/web/20110717145827/http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/ http://web.archive.org/web/20110717145827/http://blog.stacko... - that links to 2.5 The current blog post - https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/06/25/attribution-required/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/06/25/attribution-required/ links to 3.0 The 2.5 license : http://web.archive.org/web/20100630092909/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100630092909/http://creativecom... > A new version of this license is available. You should use it for new works, and you may want to relicense existing works under it. No works are automatically put under the new license, however. IANAL reading of this suggests that posts from 2010 should be under 2.5 and post from whenever the 2.5 to 3.0 change was made would be under 3.0. Unfortunately, this isn't made clear on the posts themselves (or the site).
ForHackernews 7y ago
Sure it's already legal. That doesn't mean that corporate lawyers wouldn't be thrilled to make extra-certain they have a signed contract that explains it's legal.
paulryanrogers 7y ago
IIRC all answers on SO are under a Ceative Commons attribution license. Changing that might be near impossible for all the existing questions, unless the TOS granted then a right to relicense. (Since answer authors retain the copyright to their answers and edits.)

But I think that incorporating SO answers into proprietary software is already legal, right? And if it is illegal, then the copyright is owned by the person who posted the answer, not by SO itself.

snazz 7y ago

The answers have always been CC-BY-SA 2.5 licensed.

shagie 7y ago
That is a... complicated statement. If you look at https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing - the license that it points to is http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ A 2010 wayback http://web.archive.org/web/20100701152609/http://stackoverflow.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100701152609/http://stackoverfl... links to 2.5 While a 2011 wayback links to 3.0 http://web.archive.org/web/20110703111023/http://stackoverflow.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20110703111023/http://stackoverfl... A blog post from 2011 on attribution required : http://web.archive.org/web/20110717145827/http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/ http://web.archive.org/web/20110717145827/http://blog.stacko... - that links to 2.5 The current blog post - https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/06/25/attribution-required/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/06/25/attribution-required/ links to 3.0 The 2.5 license : http://web.archive.org/web/20100630092909/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100630092909/http://creativecom... > A new version of this license is available. You should use it for new works, and you may want to relicense existing works under it. No works are automatically put under the new license, however. IANAL reading of this suggests that posts from 2010 should be under 2.5 and post from whenever the 2.5 to 3.0 change was made would be under 3.0. Unfortunately, this isn't made clear on the posts themselves (or the site).

ForHackernews 7y ago

Sure it's already legal. That doesn't mean that corporate lawyers wouldn't be thrilled to make extra-certain they have a signed contract that explains it's legal.

paulryanrogers 7y ago

IIRC all answers on SO are under a Ceative Commons attribution license. Changing that might be near impossible for all the existing questions, unless the TOS granted then a right to relicense. (Since answer authors retain the copyright to their answers and edits.)