[optimiz3]

If a site aims to commoditize shared expertise, royalties should be paid. Why would anyone willingly reduce their earning power, let alone hand away the right for someone else to profit from selling their knowledge, unattributed no less.

Best bet is to book publish, and require a license from anyone that wants to train on it.

[afh1]

Why open source anything, let alone with permissive licensing, right?

[immibis]

This is a real problem with permissive licensing. Large corporations effectively brainwashed large swaths of developers into working for free. Not working for the commons for free, as in AGPL, but working for corporations for free.

[optimiz3]

To a degree, yes. I only open source work where I expect reciprocal value from other contributions.

[Y_Y]

See also: BSD vs. GPL

[jncfhnb]

Because it’s a marginal effect on your earning power and it’s a nice thing to do.

[optimiz3]

The management of these walled gardens will keep saying that to your face as they sell your contributions. Meanwhile your family gets nothing.

[AlexandrB]

"It's a nice thing to do" never seems to sway online platforms to treat their users better. This kind of asymmetry seems to only ever go one way.

[malicka]

While there is a thing to be said about the unethical business practices of Quora/StackOverflow, I reject the framing of “reducing your earning power.” Not everything is about transactions or self-benefit, especially when it comes to knowledge; it’s about contributing and collaboration. There is immense intrinsic value to that. I’m glad we don’t live in your world, where libre software is a pipe-dream and hackers hoard their knowledge like sickly dragons.

[wwweston]

When the jobs side of SO was active, it effectively did this. Strong answers and scoring were compensated with prospective employer attention. For a few years, this was actually where the majority of my new job leads came from. It was a pretty rewarding ecosystem, though not without its problems.

Not sure why they shut down jobs; they recently brought back a poorer version of it.

[simonw]

... you just shared your expertise here on Hacker News in the form of this comment without any expectation of royalties. How is posting on StackOverflow different?

[krtalc]

One could answer that question to people whose salary does not depend upon not understanding the answer.