Stack Overflow has stopped publishing data dumps to the Internet Archive

I see where they’re coming from but they need to sort out the license confusion.

Stack Exhange data really is the worlds best open Q&A dataset. Far cleaner and more reliable than anything else.

But LLM trainers are going to use it no matter what. It’s not like they care about copyright or licenses.

You may remember a carbon copy of this event from a year ago. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/389922/june-2023-da...

Discussion from then https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36257523

The rationale obviously points to stack exchange blocking AI from training off their content on archive.org. They go on to demand adherence to “socially responsible” AI training which requires cash-flow between AI companies and the data sources they train from.

First, and most obviously, stack exchange does NOT own the forum content. It has been provided for FREE by the larger developer community, and that same community regularly makes use of the AI tools which will be inhibited by this policy change. Second, stack exchange is questioning the integrity of archive.org by hiding the data.

Developers are the real victims here, and the audacity of Stack Exchange to demand money for work they DIDN’T do, but continuing to NOT pay their forum contributors is peak irony.

Well, SO is now (possibly was?) owned[1] by the same group of companies[2] that failed to secure their own TLDs[3] for purely technical reasons, so, before nefarious intent, please also consider plain incompetence....

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/02/stack-overflow-acquired-by... [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=prosus+multichoice [3] e.g. https://www.icann.org/en/registry-agreements/terminated/mult...

Actually no, we agree to provide it under two licenses, one of which is CC-BY-SA. We don't give them ownership, we give them irrevocable usage rights.

> 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 4.0), 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):