[blihp]

Because despite claims to the contrary most of these sites/projects aren't created for altruistic reasons, they were created to make money (at some point). Cashing out is typically part of the long term plan.

In the case of Stack Overflow, I think the reason for the data dumps was two-fold: one of the original founders (who left long ago) came across as at least idealistic and wanting to do the right thing. The other was pragmatic and most likely always thinking about the money angle. However, the other founder likely also saw the value of the data dumps from a PR standpoint which was quite valuable as they were initially trying to replace expertsexchange.com that paywalled most of the content. IIRC, they discussed the data dumps in the early days of their podcast.

Now that there's big money to be made from machine learning (both the models and the data they are trained on), they've likely decided 'screw it' on the PR value of the data dumps and would rather get some of that sweet, sweet machine learning money.

[actuallyalys]

The thing is, I sympathize with them not wanting machine learning companies to make money off the site’s content without any benefit to the contributors, moderators, or the site itself. I worry that gating access won’t really change that and just mean that the site owners also benefit at the expense of the community.

[lotsoweiners]

Wow I read the text for that link you posted in a very different way than I intended.

[jraph]

It is a well known situation. The best thing is that I don't think it was intentional, contrary to other well-known "offenders".

Experts Exchange was well known for showing up in search results but not providing the answers without paying. Many people hated it and wanted search engines to implement some sort of deny list to filter it out automatically.

[blihp]

Heh... yes, that was a popular joke at the time and one of many cautionary tales in picking a multi-word domain name.