Who Owns Biostar?

Question

[Bio_X2Y]

StackExchange doesn't list this site on their site directory (http://stackexchange.com/sites), so presumably it's one of the StackExchange 1.0 sites that is owned by a third party rather than Stack Overflow Internet Services?

I'm asking because I'd like to know if it's owned by some person/company who could "turn it off" without notice, or who perhaps owns copyright on the questions and can somehow commercialize them by moving them off to an external site?

I get the impression that the StackExchange 2.0 sites (which are created by the company) might be more stable, since they are owned directly by Stack Overflow.

Answer 1

[Istvan Albert]

I have originally started BioStar but I don't think any given entity/individual actually owns it. It is a bit like asking who owns the Wikipedia.

The new StackExchange platform that is to be released mid next year worries me greatly. In the announcements they are very fuzzy about the way the new sites would be supported. For StackExchange 1.0 there was clear model - monthly subscriptions. For 2.0 they will probably want to run ads. These will likely to be implemented in a way that we'll have little or no say in it.

Therefore currently I am exploring the ways to move away from the commercial platform to an open source version for the codebase as well as content.

[Hanif Khalak]

If you can host your own app, try OSQA - http://www.osqa.net/

[David D]

Regarding the future of this project: it is worth looking at http://answers.onstartups.com/, which was a SE1.0 site that (as it seems to me) was incorporated AS IS into StackExchange2 platform. Yes, you will lose the control over the site, but you will gain many features this integration will provide

[Istvan Albert]

For a commercial company if everyone started to block ads on a site then it would not make money and would be shut down. While the general population as a whole will probably never adopt ad blocking I think bioinformaticians are a subset of the population that may be more eager to adopt this. So that is something to consider.

[Istvan Albert]

Yes, I know of this software and an option that I am considering is to modify OSQA. Another Django based app server, Pinax also includes most of the functionality that we would need.

[Michi]

So what is the main concern about stackexchange2? Is it the ads or the ownership? in my point of view, ads can be blocked by a decent browser plugin. About the ownership I am not very well informed, at least on the wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_Exchange_Network) they say that content is publicly owned.

Answer 2

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

See the FAQ and the Biostar Central mailing list.