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  • 1
    Does somebody know the different URLs of the ToS over the years? I would like to compare them. Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 20:41
  • 16
    It looks like on May 22, 2018 (the first Wayback Machine snapshot of the TOS page), the TOS linked to Creative Commons 4.0 in the second-last paragraph of section 6. However, the footer stated all content was licensed under CC 3.0. The footer was only updated on September 5th 2019, coinciding with Tim's meta post at thee time. Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 21:47
  • 2
    You can find the older TOS by exploring Wayback Machine snapshots. On April 30 the TOS was still at stackexchange.com/legal (which I found by looking at a snapshot for the Stack Overflow homepage); here's a snapshot: web.archive.org/web/20180430233828/https://stackexchange.com/…. Wayback Machine has snapshots of this page dating back as far as early 2011. The TOS at that location never mentioned a specific version at that time either (in 2011 or 2018), but still linked to a version of the license just like the current one does. Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 21:50
  • 1
    The confusing over the license versions was raised for the 2 May 2018 TOS change, but there was no official response for some time. Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 21:52
  • @doppelgreener Thanks. Does anyone know where the ToS were before 2011? Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 21:54
  • 1
    @Trilarion I believe there simply was not a TOS prior to 2011, e.g. someone talks here about not being able to find one in 2009: meta.stackexchange.com/q/13976/152515 (and someone else confirms it doesn't exist) Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 22:02
  • 1
    I can't really believe there wasn't a ToS prior to 2011. There must have been some kind of license agreement even then?? Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 23:02
  • 11
    The 2018-5-2 ToS linked to v4 of the CC license instead of v3. As to the change from 2.5 to 3, we are looking into the possibility of adding these changes to post timelines as well (to show v2.5 for posts predating this change), but cannot commit to it yet. Commented Mar 4, 2020 at 11:30
  • 3
    As far as the license for edits to v3 posts after v4 is in effect — as Tim wrote above — we are still investigating what the classification for these should be, and in the meantime are not going to be indicating a separate license for these edits. As far as "why can the company decide…" and "did the company give proper attribution…", I can't comment on those at this time, as we cannot give anything that can be construed as legal advice in this matter. Commented Mar 4, 2020 at 11:34
  • 18
    @Trilarion as I said, and as Tim wrote above, we know that we have more things to decide here (some of which can only be done through our counsel and some of which require more research). But we did not want to wait on everything to have an answer before releasing the update above, and proceeding with the actions that we know we can make now. So yes, we see the urgency. We are continuing to work on this internally. But I cannot commit to a date at this point to provide an answer on the outstanding questions. Commented Mar 4, 2020 at 12:17
  • 9
    @YaakovEllis I find the claim that the change happened in May 2018 to be disingenuous (and a bit of a slap in the face, TBH). Ultimately, the truth of the claim would have to be decided in court by a judge deciding that a user reading the >2018-05 ToS could reasonably have been expected to notice the change in the direction of a link, and that this change takes precedence over the version number noted in the footer. Do you, and your counsel, really think that that would hold up? Commented Mar 6, 2020 at 15:20
  • 8
    Note also that the 3.0 license is mentioned in the very footer of the ToS that's being used to argue for the 2018 dateline. This could quite conceivably make a court decide that the document is ambiguous and cannot be used for this purpose. Commented Mar 6, 2020 at 15:22
  • 5
    So, with that in mind: why, why oh why, insist on stretching the 4.0 line back to 2018 instead of the 2019 announcement? You already have mixed-license content, the only thing that changes is what date is used to separate what licenses. If the idea is to put the legal foundation of the agreement with the content-owner community on a solid footing, why rely on this type of shaky interpretation, and what is the gain from doing so? Commented Mar 6, 2020 at 15:25
  • 7
    @E.P. I don't know why the company decided the way they did, but one could easily argue that the other interpretation (CC BY-SA 3.0 until September 2019) is equally shaky. By not updating the footer in line with the ToS text they made a mistake and are in trouble either way. Now they have to decide for the most legal way out. I guess their lawyer advised them for this solution. A court decision might be much more solid, but also much more expensive, at least for us. Commented Mar 6, 2020 at 16:27
  • 1
    @Trilarion I find the site going for years without a formal ToS unsurprising in the least. Making websites for other people it's a boring thing that customers (who aren't big enough to have a legal team) at best don't want to be bothered with stopping whatever important stuff they're doing to create one. Commented Mar 6, 2020 at 22:12