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Use Code From Stack Overflow? You Must Provide Attribution (stackexchange.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Have you ever used Stack Overflow to answer a question about some code you're working on? Most people who write code on a regular basis have done so, and this sometimes involves copying code snippets. Well, starting on March 1, copying code from Stack Overflow will require you to attribute that code. Code published by contributors to SO will be covered by the MIT license. Users copying that code don't have to include the full license in their code, as it usually requires, but they do have to provide a URL as a comment in their code, or some similar level of attribution. This change applies to other sites in the Stack Exchange network, as well.

The SO community is widely criticizing the change, citing problems with the decision-making process that led to it and complications that may arise from mandating attribution. Why did SO make the change in the first place? They say "it's always been a little ambiguous how CC-BY-SA covers code. This has led to uncertainty among conscientious developers as they've struggled to understand what (if anything) the license requires of them when grabbing a few lines of code from a post on Stack Exchange. Uncertainty is a drag on productivity, for you and for us, and we feel obligated to make code use more clear."

1 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No. by vel-ex-tech · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    We know what the fuck it means, dipshit. Still, though, what the flying fuck? What the actual fuck does Stack Overflow have to do with the recently popular "two wrongs make a right" warrior movement?

    The only possible connection I can make is to that article a while back, don't remember if it was this site or the red one or both, where some CEO posted about her l33t sk1llz because she figured out that all one needs to do to become a programmer is copy and paste from Stack Overflow.

    If that's the case, isn't this anti-SJW?

    Requiring attribution is still unfeasible and completely moronic, granted.

    Yes, everybody loves to knee jerk about that term whether it's the homosexual SJWs who want to make Christmas illegal or the anti-SJWs who want women back in the kitchen. All knee jerkers can shut the fuck up until they've been told in an official capacity many, many times that official policy was to consider them rapists and sexual harassers and then they can continue keeping shut the fuck up until they get called a sexist and treated like one to their fucking face WHILE MENTORING CISFEMALE PROGRAMMERS AND BEING DENIED HEALTHCARE BECAUSE YOU WERE INVOLUNTARILY "VOLUNTEERED" FOR A WOMEN'S HEALTH PROJECT THAT GOT CANCELED BY OBAMACARE BUT IT'S APPARENTLY YOUR FUCKING FAULT BECAUSE OF YOUR ASSIGNED GENDER AT BIRTH! Then you can bitch about SJWs.

    TYVM. HAND.