It's a tough position other companies are placing on SO. On one hand you can't alienate a portion of your community by closing all API/programming questions which are of a more proprietary nature just because they're of a proprietary nature. On the other hand, the general trend these companies are starting, to not build out a real support channel, is indicative of developers who don't really understand sales channels which should not be SO's problem. I wish more start ups would get better guidance about support if their products are aimed at developers. Really, they're missing another channel of communication and new business discovery.
I'm in favour of this for developer-focussed issues. One of the libraries I maintain (http://simplepie.org/) directs support to Stack Overflow, since the majority of questions are basic programming questions (along the lines of "how do I use substr"). I'm usually there to answer SimplePie-specific questions, but those are pretty relevant anyway.
No need to bother. SO is pretty notorious for shutting down threads at the merest hint that the discussion isn't in line with their remit, which is that of collaboratively solving specific programming problems. I'm guessing most of what comes across Nitrous.io's support desk doesn't qualify.
When most of Nitrous' paying customers get annoyed that their support queries on the 'official channel' are being nuked by some third party outwith both their and Nitrous' control, Nitrous will get the message.
[+] [-] wheaties|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmccue|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kozhevnikov|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://apiblog.youtube.com/2012/09/the-youtube-api-on-stack-...
[+] [-] hartror|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AimHere|12 years ago|reply
When most of Nitrous' paying customers get annoyed that their support queries on the 'official channel' are being nuked by some third party outwith both their and Nitrous' control, Nitrous will get the message.