back to article Stack Overflow acquired for $1.8bn by Prosus (no, me neither)

Prosus NV, a Netherlands-based consumer internet conglomerate, on Wednesday said it plans to acquire online Q&A community Stack Overflow for $1.8bn. The deal, scheduled to close by the third quarter of 2021, regulatory approval permitting, is being cast not as a consumer-focused acquisition but as a way for Prosus to expand …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So...

    Expert Sex Change part 2?

    Buy it, charge for access and (maybe) profit?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Devil

      Re: So...

      > Buy it, charge for access and (maybe) profit?

      To-be-followed-by: All code posted on Stack Overflow is henceforth Copyright © 2021 Prosus NV and Subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved.

      Millennials, beware. Copying-and-Pasting Python code from Stack Overflow might get very expensive very soon.

      1. anka-213

        Re: So...

        Good thing that all the content is CC BY-SA licensed, so it would be legal to create a fork as long as the original authors are attributed. There are also downloadable full archives available directly from SO, so that simplifies the process.

        I hope that everyone would migrate elsewhere if something like that were to happen. But I also think it would be immensely harmful for the stockholders, so I doubt they will kill SO on purpose like that.

      2. fajensen
        Trollface

        Re: So...

        Most of it does not work anyway. I believe Russian and Chinese bots are voting for the wrong answers because I often see the correct answer, often ripped right out of the relevant documentation, languishing far below the "accepted answer", with maybe 5-6 upvotes in total.

        But, good for Joel Spolsky. Money is nice to have.

        1. cdrcat

          Only the questioner can select the accepted answer

          Often the person asking the question marks an answer as the accepted answer, and never goes back to correct it.

          Well, that was how it worked last time I looked, although I admit that I too find it frustrating.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So once everyone leaves Stack Overflow...

    The stack will be empty and Stack Underflow will emerge from the ether to take its place.

    1. steelpillow Silver badge
      Coat

      Shirley Shome Mishtake...

      "The stack will be empty and Stack Underflow will emerge from the ether to take its place."

      I think you mean Stack Undertow?

    2. Muppet Boss
      Pint

      Re: So once everyone leaves Stack Overflow...

      >The stack will be empty and ...

      That's after everyone moved to the Heap and there is Heap Overflow...

  3. Howard Sway Silver badge

    terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::out_of_sense'

    what(): the::f***

    Aborted (core dumped)

  4. JassMan

    Hopefully they learnt from Freenode

    ... but it is unlikely.

    Rather worryingly, anyone spending that much moolah on a site is not doing it as a philanthropic exercise. This usually ends up with the new ownets trying to recover their costs plus an even larger RoI. Luckily stackoverflow is all about freedom so presumably everyone is just going to move somewhere else. Shame though if that wealth of information is lost behind a paywall or some other means of monetisation.

    1. quxinot

      Re: Hopefully they learnt from Freenode

      In brief:

      They are going to try to recoup their investment and make money off their new property.

      This will not work.

      The depressing part is that there's all these companies willing to buy things that either make no money or minimal money, then completely fail to convert them into actual useful moneymakers.

      I make minimal to no money. Why haven't these companies thrown huge sums of cash at me yet?!

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Hopefully they learnt from Freenode

        >I make minimal to no money. Why haven't these companies thrown huge sums of cash at me yet?!

        That's your problem. Can you lose money on a We-Work scale ?

      2. FIA Silver badge

        Re: Hopefully they learnt from Freenode

        I make minimal to no money. Why haven't these companies thrown huge sums of cash at me yet?!

        Are you open source? Although you'd probably still get forked. :(

    2. mevets

      Re: Hopefully they learnt from Freenode

      StackOverflow (and presumably Exchange) content is Creative Commons; and may be downloaded from here: https://archive.org/details/stackexchange.

      How long the archive will be maintained is anybodies guess, however the existing content cannot be restricted.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Re: Hopefully they learnt from Freenode

      anyone spending that much moolah on a site is not doing it as a philanthropic exercise

      and (from the article)

      Prosus already is involved in education-focused businesses Brainly, Codecademy and Udemy.

      Currently the site often says "Your question may be a duplicate of...".

      In future it will say "Your question is within the scope of course reference 123ABC. Your access to the answer is withheld until you have completed that course. Have a nice day."

      1. katrinab Silver badge
        Unhappy

        Re: Hopefully they learnt from Freenode

        I think you selected the wrong icon. This will very likely happen.

    4. fajensen

      Re: Hopefully they learnt from Freenode

      It is a Corporate Zombie Thing, once bitten the victim is Zombiefied and is soon left without any talents!

      When I worked for dumb-ass Ericsson, they were buying at least one truly innovative tech business every six month, infest it with dumb-ass Ericsson management thinking, then wonder and whine why the thing they bought can't actually do shit - which it could do before because it was not bogged down by the same dysfunction that makes companies like Ericsson resign to buying up "innovation" instead of doing it.

      IBM is the same, only worse.

    5. Cynic_999

      Re: Hopefully they learnt from Freenode

      The real money to be made here may be going to the people selling Stack Overflow who managed to persuade Prosus that it would be a good investment. Would be interesting to know whether those people and the board of directors of Prosus have any common elements.

  5. Mike 137 Silver badge

    Acquired?

    "The deal, scheduled to close by the third quarter of 2021, regulatory approval permitting,"

    Doesn't sound like a fait accompli yet to me.

  6. ortunk

    there is an upside

    Without SO developer numbers will dwindle while quality of code may go very high

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Pirate

      Re: there is an upside

      I rarely see anything useful in Stack Overflow unless it involves:

      * Python

      * Javascript

      * CSS

      And even then, it's because I'm too lazy to actually read "all that documentation" first.

      1. Ben Tasker
        Joke

        Re: there is an upside

        Why do you need CSS when you can just do it on the fly with jQuery?

      2. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

        Re: there is an upside

        Don't forget:

        * How to fix host validation errors in secure protocols by disabling it

  7. mevets

    Slash Dot

    It is too bad Slash Dot didn't break this story. The Dice re-imagined "slashdot effect", now a vast nothingness, foreshadows Stack Overflows fate. Like Humpty Dumpty, nothing could bring it back.

  8. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge
    Meh

    Just StackOverflow?

    Or all of StackExchange?

    The hot discussions on SE Meta seem a bit confused as to whether it's one or all.

    1. Keith Langmead

      Re: Just StackOverflow?

      Yeah I was wondering the same thing. To my understanding Stack Exchange Inc is the company, Stack Overflow is just one of many sites they run on various topics.

      So for instance does the purchase include Server Fault, or Super User etc? If not then presumably if they do screw up Stack Overflow you'll just find another new forum appearing with Stack Exchange to replace it.

      1. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: Just StackOverflow?

        Indeed. If the arrangement essentially breaks off SO from SE, then for that amount of money you can expect some MBA to try for Experts Exchange 2.0.

  9. Rich 2 Silver badge

    Oh dear

    Fast forward 6 months….

    Another one bites the dust. Great :-(

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    "Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow"

    Now it's clear why StackOverflow is ending into a Black Hole.

    (Is Black Hole still allowed? Or should it be renamed to Block Hole?)

    1. wolfetone Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: "Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow"

      Could be an A Hole?

  11. werdsmith Silver badge

    Abuse of newbies overflow.

    “This is already asked and answered a thousand times, do a fucking search you moron.”

    The poor newbies don’t know what they need to search.

  12. FlamingDeath Silver badge

    Isnt stack-overflow essentially a forum?

    And the value comes not from the forum, but from the collection of many peoples input and answers?

    Excuse my ignorance if I got that misunderstood

    1. J27

      Yes, that's about it. It's a structured forum based around questions and answers. Mostly for software development problems but they have some off topic sections too.

  13. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    I'm missing the point

    So Prosus is active in fostering communities. Great. Never heard of them.

    Why does this need to be an acquisition ? Can't they just open a channel and throw So some money for maintenance ?

    I get that current SO owners are really happy to become millionnaires (btw, way to go guys to confirm that your selling out is going to make you rich), but I fail to see why Prosus needed to acquire SO in order to "reach 1000s more companies".

    No company throws a billion dollars around without a firm grasp of how it wants to monetize that. The penny will drop one day, and we'll all go "so that's why".

    Meanwhile, Chandrasekar, go on pretending that SO is going to stay independant. Yeah, sure. If you don't know it yet, you'll find out soon enough that your independence is subject to your new master's will, and he spent big money on you. He'll want something out of it.

  14. J27

    Why does this make me want to start my own Stack Overflow with blackjack and hookers?

    1. mevets

      Hooker Overflow...

      Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers.

      Update the question so it focuses on one problem only. This will help others answer the question. You can edit the question.

      1. Blofeld's Cat
        Coffee/keyboard

        Re: Hooker Overflow...

        So true (+1) ...

        Let's forget about the Stack Overflow bit and just concentrate on Hookers that play Blackjack

  15. Elledan
    Meh

    Adding insult to injury

    After the whole mess with the Code of Conduct thrash fire a while back and senseless firing of a long-time moderator during that period, many figured that StackOverflow/StackExchange had already changed in an irreversible way, and not for the better. This purchase, if it goes through, would basically cement that it's perhaps time to move on.

    Not sure it's as easy to move on from SO/SE as with e.g. moving away from Freenode, though. Anyone got a good programming forums they'd want to recommend?

  16. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    I'd like to see more Stack Overflow in companies

    While there is a lot of crap on the sites, there is an awful lot of useful information and the barrier to entry is very low. Companies have for years been chasing knowledge management systems and SO is one of the best I've seen compared with all the chat-based shit out there.

    As for Prosus, it's doing a little bit better than Softbank.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Guess I have to check with the folks at the Internet Archive and see about those backups

    Because the user interface of Wayback can't handle large file downloads...

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is like watching the tide go out before a tsunami

    While many of you have focused on the familiar trope of the Stack Exchange community, like ctl-c coding and moderator hell, I'll take a moment and say what a tremendous resource these communities have been. The late nights I have spent, eyeballs deep in problems at work, googling obscure technical errata on Server Fault or Super User. Slightly different communities from SO, ones where a single deep link and short explanation can save hours, and pain(What is the Reg standard unit of Pain? Probalbly shouldn't go straight for bullet and or pepsis wasp pain. Maybe stubbed my pinky toe on the bedframe, or stepped on a four sided die?). I have been saved from the horrible pitfalls of otherwise undocumented Apple wireless compatibility bugs, referenced an obscure cisco command I use once a decade, and (for the 5th time) relearned that a one liner bash command that uses both awk and sed.

    I'm afraid that the loss of this site could actually shave a couple of points off of global GDP in the short term. The fact that this was in the works before Freenode makes me even more uneasy, as well as the boilerplate announcement of "No current changes". I'd be more at ease if they cam in with a roadmap of what their planning. Not telling me upfront makes me thing that either they don't have a solid plan(unlikely, but would mean SE gets ruined my idiots) or that they know I won't like it(SE is ruined by asshats).

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: This is like watching the tide go out before a tsunami

      Don't forget the newbie hours that get wasted when they are running Buster and they search out a Wheezy or Jessie solution to a problem.

  19. Mark 65

    Yeah right

    There are currently no plans to change how <company name> operates

    Every acquisition starts off with those initial soothing words

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Censorship

    As a contributor with lots of brownie points I get to post and edit questions on "Meta Stack Overflow".

    I noticed there were no questions about how the proposed sell off would affect the site.

    So I posted my own question. Admittedly the title "Are we being sold down the river" did break a number of rules, but the post never appeared and was never officially closed.

    You are usually told your question is closed and given specific reasons by the moderators but the question just disappeared without trace.

    While I congratulate Joel et al on grabbing more loot than they could ever dream of its a pity that this useful and well run site will go the way of MySpace, AOL, Slashdot etc. if the history of tech takeovers repeats itself.

    There is no way I can see that the suckers/investors can monitize the site enough to recoup their Billion dollars.

    While I will freely give my time helping some poor Indian youth struggle with the sort of COBOL I churned out in my long ago youth. (If nothing else it may reduce the number of banking outages!). I am not going to do it so some South African money men can benefit from my generosity.

    All the rules and guidelines on SO refer to the "community". Such a thing cannot exist in a blatantly

    capitalist money making machine.

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