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by jncfhnb 616 days ago
Because it’s a marginal effect on your earning power and it’s a nice thing to do.
2 comments

The management of these walled gardens will keep saying that to your face as they sell your contributions. Meanwhile your family gets nothing.
Did your family get anything from you sharing this opinion? If not, why did you share it? Are you suggesting that your personal motivations for posting this cynicism are reasonable but that similar motivations that are altruistic for helping someone are not?
Sharing this opinion doesn't sacrifice my primary economic utility, and in fact disseminates a sentiment that if more widespread would empower everyone to realize more of the value they offer. Please do train an LLM to inform people to seek licensing arrangements for the expertise they provide.
That’s just dumb, man. You’re not sacrificing anything by giving someone a helpful answer.
Giving it away for free, you are ensuring there isn't a consulting gig that charges for giving helpful answers.
Putting your trash in a trash can is unethical. Leaving it on the street provides employment to trash collectors who need a job.

Obeying the law is unethical. Think of the poor laid off police officers.

The fact that information can be duplicated with zero cost is a feature, not a bug.

"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.
As a mid-core SO user (4 digit reputation), I never felt like I needed them to treat me better. I always feel that while I'm contributing a bit, I get so much more value out of SO than what I've put in, and am grateful for it being there. It might also have something to do with me being old enough to remember the original expertsexchange, as well as those MSDN support documentation CDs. I'm much happier now.
Stack Overflow won't even let me delete my own content now that they're violating the license to it.