[spease]

Making a copy of an example someone has publicly posted to help people and modifying that copy to properly integrate it isn’t “stealing”. It was offered freely and the original author isn’t deprived of the benefits of their original work.

This article just wants to sound edgy.

[philipov]

It's not trying to be edgy, it's riffing on a famous aphorism that is often attributed to Pablo Picasso.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/

[jdc]

TLDR; it's probably T.S. Elliot and Stravinsky that deserve the credit.

[dang]

That's one case where QI was weirdly noncommittal. It's obviously Eliot's line ("Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal"), with a couple words replaced. The Stravinsky reference came decades later and was second-hand anyhow.

[birdyrooster]

It was Steve Jobs

/s

[rhn_mk1]

The article explicitly addresses it close to the end:

> To steal, however, is to make that idea your own. Taking credit for someone else’s idea is borrowing; understanding an idea and weaving it into your own work, that’s what he meant by theft.

[kube-system]

Content on Stack Overflow isn’t technically offered freely. It’s offered under a specific license with specific conditions.

[rch]

If you're working with more than a couple of people it can be worth running an audit on your code, including the libraries you're using. Even if the libraries themselves have permissive licenses, they may inadvertently include bits of SO code.

[kube-system]

know of any good tools to help identify those instances?

[rch]

Sorry no, only that it was done by a third party prior to a funding round.

[bryanrasmussen]

https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing

[thebean11]

Wow..that seems much more restrictive than it should be.

They're seriously saying closed source software companies can't use content on Stackoverflow? What if I write a piece of closed source software while consulting SO, is that my own work or a transformed version of the work on SO?

[bryanrasmussen]

I don't know if that license would really stand up in court, I think a good attorney would have some interesting attack possibilities given the origin of some code you see on Stackoverflow anyway. Not to mention that license is not readily apparent to people, on a social site where you are sharing answers between people does every person in the conversation know what license they are entering in to? How is stackoverflow marketed to people, is that marketing at odds with the assumed license?