You'll never capture all of the value you create.

But in the case of StackOverflow it really must be a large schism. SO really did help the world. Count me++.

Why must it be a tragedy? The owners were well-compensated. Shouldn't we celebrate instead the amazing result/effort ratio one can achieve these days with a basic website...? SO was notoriously and pragmatically simple.

Why should they capture all of that value, most of which was generated by the community itself? They should get paid for the generated efficiency but should not be paid for the gross value passing through the network.

Stack overflow's users, please.

> Stack overflow is probably responsible for increasing global developer productivity by maybe ~1000x the acquisition price.

And almost every single bit of it is due to community work, not the people inside company. (That is not to say the company is irrelevant - but seeing how consequently stackexchange dropped bricks on everybody's feet two years ago and the community still carried on gives you some perspective on what is keeping the site alive).