Hello Everyone,
We are reaching an important milestone and we need input from the community at large.
A brief history first.
This site has been started in 2009 via purchasing hosting service from the StackExchange company. In the meantime the company has changed its focus and started offering the service (the software that runs the site) for free but in return it retains important rights: for example how the site works, what features it offers (and also possibly many other rights that I am not aware of).
In the past we have had discussions on this subject and alternatives were proposed:
- moving the site to a different software platform provider
- developing our own codebase
- and of course moving to the new StackExchange platform.
1 and 2 are similar in that it would require a dedicated team to run the site. I myself have worked on developing a clone of biostar (codebase is here) - these approaches could work but would also require ongoing efforts toward development, system administration and hosting.
I have been recently contacted by a member of the StackEchange team offering to migrate the entire BioStar site directly into the StackExchange Network retaining all the content and user history. If we go this route then the rules governing BioStar would be identical to the rules of the StackExchange sites - importantly this includes an open source licensing of all content. We agreed that I would post this issue here to collect feedback and opinions.
I am looking for feedback and opinions. What do you think?
