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If you copy-paste solutions from SO then please at least cite your sources and their license (CC-BY-SA).



You might not want to hear this but no one does this. Should they? probably. But most people don't use Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V in the first place for SO answers.


Just a single data point, but when I copy & paste a snippet from Stack Overflow, I always add a comment "// source: https://stack overflow.com/questions/xxx#yyy".

I both find it respectful of who wrote the answer in the first place and useful for future users of the code: the Stack Overflow answer often provides context and explanation for what would otherwise be an obscure piece of code.

Pretty darn useful if you ask me: those who want to have more information can follow the link, casual readers can skip it, and the whole process if fair to the author.


I don't think I've ever copied enough from Stackoverflow for copyright to become relevant. Rarely more than one line verbatim.

It embarrasses me to think that somebody should feel obliged to cite me when they use one of my answers. I don't know how to take the partnership with Openai though. They bill me when I use their service, it's not collaborative like Stackoverflow.


No one should copy paste any solutions from anywhere. FWIW, 99% of the content in SO is hardly "original", mostly copy-pasted themselves from previous solutions or original user guide/manuals.


In general I'd agree that it's best to use answers just as a guide. That said, I wasn't trying to pass judgement, just ask attribution which is a best practice and often required by the license itself.




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