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Meta Stack OverflowStack Overflow clones
[+488] [29] Andrija Cacanovic
[2009-07-03 21:23:20]
[ discussion stackexchange clone ]
[ http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2267/stack-overflow-clones ] [DELETED]

Listed here are clones of the Stack Exchange sites model.

(7) See also blog.bitquabit.com/2009/07/01/one-which-i-call-out-hacker-news - Jakub Narębski
(1) Some Drupal project, "SupportDO": drupal.org/sandbox/HedgeMage/1088372 - Victor Sergienko
(6) related: Is the Stack Overflow source code available? - David Cary
(22) What's the actual purpose for this question? - Lipis
(9) @Lipis some companies want to implement their own branded version of this software on their own sites to supplement their support and/or knowledge base and provide a place where their customers can interact with them in a way similar to this network. All the alternatives I've investigated pretty much suck in comparison. - Aaron Bertrand
(7) 13 revisions to a 10 word non-question in 3 years on Meta. Makes sense. - user226059
(3) Everyone wants their Editor and Excavator badges. :o) - Johnny Bones
(1) @user226059 well, since you went through all of the trouble of counting how many revisions there were, surely you noticed that the original question had it stated as a question which has only recently been revised into a statement. - Stop forgetting my accounts...
The question site for the Unix window manager i3: faq.i3wm.org/questions - handuel
Is there any white paper that explains how to build a Q&A site like SO? - morpheus
[+405] [2010-02-02 15:50:44] Mat

Most active that look like the best bets

Ones that look sort of finished

  • shapado [24]: Ruby, mongomapper and mongodb. Live site [25], also provide hosted sites for a fee. AGPLv3. Seems to be under active development.

  • OSQA [26]: Django. Live site [27]. GPLv3. More actively developed fork of CNPROG. OSQA is in maintenance mode, with security and Django platform updates, but few new features. AnswerHub [28] has replaced OSQA as DZone's primary Q&A solution.

  • openoverflow [29]: Ruby, PostgreSQL, Haml. MIT license. No example site, and I can't find anyone using this one. Not a lot of recent activity; last code commit, May 2009.

  • phpancake [30]: PHP, Zend framework, MySQL. Live site [31]. MIT license. Last activity Jan 2010. Renders very poorly in some browsers.

  • cahoots [32]: PHP, MySQL. GPL, MIT license. Officially inactive; demo site offline; last update Aug 2010.

  • Coordino [33]: PHP, MySQL. MIT license. feature tour [34];

  • Qwench [35]: PHP. Example site [36] (no pages except question list). No activity since Dec 2009 [37].

  • soclone [38]: Django framework. MIT license. Seems to have gone stale in Nov 2008 [39] (and only started on Google Code at the end of Oct 2008).

  • Plurk Solace [40]: Python. BSD license. No example site, and I can't find anyone using this one. Last commit was Dec 2009 [41].

  • stacked [42]: ASP.NET, Ra-Ajax, ActiveRecord ORM. GPLv3.

  • Arrayshift [43]

Others that seem to be work in progress

  • FortyTwo [44]: Python, Django, CouchDB. Example site [45]link leads to a 404. Unknown license. Little info. [Last commit in January 2011]

  • kerjakelompok [46]: No example site. Unknown license. Little info.

  • SmartR [47]: No example site. MIT License. Little info.

  • Stack Underflow [48]: C#. No example site. License is "do whatever you want with it" (I haven't defined a formal license yet). Written as a learning project.

  • T002_rails-overflow [49]: Rails. No example site. Unknown license. Little info. Apache license.

  • CNPROG [50]: Python/Django. Project officially closed. Was used as base by OSQA & Askbot.

  • Kunjika [51]: Python, Flask, and Couchbase. GNU GPLv3 or later. Documentation is here [52].

Sorted by language

PHP

Python

Ruby

Java

ASP.NET

Did I miss any? Disagree? Please add a comment or update this answer.

And I don't really want to get into listing clones, but I have just come across Answer Bag [74] which seems to be an all-encompassing clone covering everything from aviation [75] through programming [76] to religion [77]. Or maybe that was there first? And Just Answer [78] is another...

[1] http://answerhub.com/
[2] http://answerhub.com/qa/index.html
[3] http://www.osqa.net/
[4] http://askbot.org/en/questions/
[5] http://askbot.com
[6] http://github.com/ASKBOT/askbot-devel
[7] http://askbot.org/doc/index.html
[8] http://askbot.org/doc/import-data.html
[9] http://sabaidiscuss.com/
[10] https://www.atlassian.com/questions
[11] http://www.atlassian.com/
[12] http://www.lampcms.com
[13] http://support.lampcms.com/
[14] http://www.question2answer.org/
[15] http://www.question2answer.org/qa/
[16] https://github.com/q2a/question2answer
[17] http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/qa-wordpress-questions-and-answers-plugin/
[18] http://wpmu.org/questions/
[19] https://www.rootbuzz.com/
[20] http://pligg.com
[21] http://demo.pligg.com/
[22] http://www.quandora.com
[23] http://haydle.com/
[24] http://gitorious.org/shapado
[25] http://shapado.com/questions
[26] http://www.osqa.net/
[27] http://meta.osqa.net/
[28] http://answerhub.com/
[29] https://github.com/nsanta/openoverflow
[30] http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpancake/
[31] http://phpancake.sourceforge.net/
[32] http://cahoots.sourceforge.net/
[33] http://coordino.com/
[34] http://coordino.com/tour
[35] https://github.com/anantgarg/Qwench
[36] http://anantgarg.com/qwench
[37] https://github.com/anantgarg/Qwench/commits/master
[38] https://code.google.com/p/soclone/
[39] https://code.google.com/p/soclone/source/list
[40] http://opensource.plurk.com/Solace/
[41] https://bitbucket.org/plurk/solace/changesets
[42] https://code.google.com/p/stacked/
[43] http://drupal.org/project/arrayshift
[44] https://github.com/mcaprari/fortytwo/
[45] http://couch.caprazzi.net/fortytwo/_design/fortytwo/index.html
[46] https://github.com/fuadmuhammad/kerjakelompok/
[47] https://github.com/dkd/smartr/
[48] https://github.com/ripper234/Stack-Underflow/
[49] https://github.com/membrain/T002_rails-overflow/
[50] https://github.com/cnprog/CNPROG
[51] http://kunjika.libreprogramming.org
[52] http://libreprogramming.org/docs/kunjika/
[53] http://www.question2answer.org/
[54] http://cahoots.sourceforge.net/
[55] http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpancake/
[56] http://www.lampcms.com
[57] http://coordino.com/
[58] http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/qa-wordpress-questions-and-answers-plugin/
[59] http://askbot.org/en/questions/
[60] https://github.com/OSQA/osqa/
[61] https://code.google.com/p/soclone/
[62] http://opensource.plurk.com/Solace/
[63] https://github.com/mcaprari/fortytwo/
[64] https://www.rootbuzz.com/
[65] http://kunjika.libreprogramming.org
[66] http://gitorious.org/shapado
[67] https://github.com/nsanta/openoverflow
[68] https://github.com/membrain/T002_rails-overflow/
[69] https://github.com/dkd/smartr/
[70] http://answerhub.com/
[71] https://www.atlassian.com/questions
[72] https://code.google.com/p/stacked/
[73] https://github.com/ripper234/Stack-Underflow/
[74] http://www.answerbag.com/
[75] http://www.answerbag.com/category/aviation_508
[76] http://www.answerbag.com/category/programming_178
[77] http://www.answerbag.com/category/religion_114
[78] http://justanswer.com/

(8) Not sure where this comment belongs, but I recently deployed and customized Question2Answer in 15 minutes, whereas OSQA took hours and still isn't working right. FWIW! - goodytx
(14) Do all these look like StackExchange sites on purpose?! - Marco Demaio
(2) I noticed how Java was the only language without an entry. According to meta.stackoverflow.com/a/109004/160875 Qato is written in Java. (The original question asked for web apps inspired by the StackExchange system, but didn't specify open source. Some of the other answers mention non-open source implementations of SE, but I had my eye on that None known spot under "Java"!) - Feral Oink
(3) After getting tired of OSQA and its django dependencies, I installed question2answer and worked great so far: pretty complete, lots of plugins. - Deigote
I may be building a stackoverflow clone in the near future - anyone know pros and cons of building it myself from scratch vs. using something like Q&A (the WordPress plugin)? - jbyrd
@ObsessiveFOSS You need just 1 rep to post answers (it's a fundamental right)??? - YatharthROCK
@YatharthROCK I don't know how that text came to be, but the project is abandoned anyway. - hexafraction
(1) Do any of these clone SE's excellent chat? For my Q&A needs, I'm OK with using the SE family, but that chat is fantastic and I'd love to see it (or something like it) start replacing IRC. - KRyan
@Evgeny Thanks a lot for the list. Any idea which Q&A system has most features? - Osiris Xu
formally or formerly Qato? - Junuxx
(2) Shouldn't Discourse be on here? - Ian Carroll
askoverflow.com is also a clone, I suppose. - Abubakkar Rangara
@Evgeny: There is one but not exactly a Stackoverflow type instead it's a Forum type with lots of Stackoverflow Features like badges and vote up and down and etc. mvcforum.com - Jalali Shakib
RootBuzz is giving me an SSL error, and their Twitter account seems to be linking to a bunch of spammy junk. Maybe they're dead? - rescdsk
@Evgeny Add nukson.com meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/199314/… - VarunAgw
(1) shapado only receives translation updates for over a year now, gitorious.org/shapado/shapado/activities. Likewise, OSQA also isn't very active with a mere 5 commits this year (github.com/dzone/osqa/commits/master). - Nico
Atlassian now offers a Q&A add-on for Confluence - Confluence Questions. Check it out: atlassian.com/software/confluence/questions - jpw314
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[+15] [2010-08-30 05:07:05] casperOne

I might as well throw my two cents in. I've developed a site from scratch which uses the Stack Overflow model, but it is based on a completely different subject matter ( Super Street Fighter 4 [1]):

http://sf4answers.com

Some differences/extensions:

  • There is an events section [2] which allows for users to search on events related to the game (as well as vote up/down)
  • There is a podcasts section [3] (again, podcasts and episodes can be voted up/down)
  • There is a notes section [4]. Notes differ from questions in that they are one-way projections, there are no replies. Almost like blog entries, but on a specific topic that's indexed all the same.

And there are plans around other forms of data around the game as well.

I've asked a number of questions about (and on, not directly related to) Stack Overflow to help shape functionality:

All of these were used to help shape the development of the site.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Street_Fighter_IV
[2] http://sf4answers.com/events
[3] http://sf4answers.com/podcasts
[4] http://sf4answers.com/notes
[5] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/735168/how-to-implement-a-reputation-system-like-stack-overflow
[6] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2297794/how-would-one-use-lucene-to-help-implement-search-on-a-site-like-stackoverflow
[7] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1996125/how-to-use-jquery-validation-plugin-with-metadata-and-the-jquery-forms-plugin-wi
[8] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/710805/maintaining-message-integrity

your site looks spot-on, I wish that it was an open source project..... Is it? - RJB
(1) @rjb It is not. The new site, One Frame Link is in development, but will probably do Q&A last (I'm focusing on other tools, and as you can see, I need to do design work). Also, I'd probably do the engine much differently than I did it the first time around. However, I might make the original open source, as I don't have much use for it anymore. - casperOne
@casperOne; Did you ever make the original open source? : D - a25bedc5-3d09-41b8-82fb-ea6c353d75ae
@a25bedc5-3d09-41b8-82fb-ea6c353d75ae Nope. We might be integrating it into the new venture so open source isn't an option at this point. Sorry. - casperOne
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[+14] [2009-11-09 20:25:16] Trey Jackson

The beta O'Reilly Answers [1] site.

[1] http://answers.oreilly.com/

Finally the first side which seems to have a more distinct look. - mark
(16) I think the folks at O'Reilly were just doing their thing. i don't think they were trying to clone SO. - Ben
This site is quite dead. For example, Javascript is a "trending topic", but only two questions were asked in September - Casebash
Not a clone...... - staticx
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[+12] [2009-08-20 11:38:43] Michal

codekicker.de [1]

[1] http://www.codekicker.de

it looks great! - Andrija Cacanovic
codekicker was a closed community at first. But now they added openid, cool. - tobsen
Is it open source? - Nilay Parikh
@NilayParikh No, their license indicates it's closed source: All rights to design, code and content of codekicker.de reserved (except where specified otherwise). Source: codekicker.de/impressum - Randy Burden
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[+9] [2011-09-02 12:03:38] Idolon

HashCode [1] (Russian: ХэшКод) - Russian clone of SO.

Also there are RootCode [2] (РутКод) and BitCode [3] (БитКод) related projects, which clone SF and SU respectively.

[1] http://hashcode.ru/
[2] http://admin.hashcode.ru/
[3] http://user.hashcode.ru/

Are these Open Source? - Mob
Nope - don't look so. - Idolon
(1) It's based on OSQA confirmation here. - niki-timofe
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[+8] [2009-09-01 21:44:44] waffles

I wouldn't call my communitytracker [1] an SO clone, but it is inspired by it. I got tired of the noise that is phpBB. I am starting to feel the pain now, I need a meta site.

[1] http://community.mediabrowser.tv

mediabrowser rocks! - TheEmirOfGroofunkistan
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[+7] [2009-08-13 14:53:25] user76720

Doctype launched recently, they a have a similar concept to Stack Overflow.

http://doctype.com/

But the visual design focuses too much on the person and not enough on how good an answer is…

DocType closed on 2013-02-14 [1], and they didn't bother to release their codebase.

[1] http://blog.doctype.com/doctype_is_closing_on_the_14th_1

(3) DocType whats that??? blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/08/stack-overflow-and-doctype - jjnguy
(5) Pretty surprising that a site for web designers would chose a text size/weight that makes it look like everything is in bold for emphasis... almost as bad as everything being in caps IMO. - U62
There's a lot of web designers out there who appear to think that's a Good Thing. Heck, I remember the last time I looked at a web design company's website. That thing was horrible! - David Thornley
(1) uh-oh no OpenId ... - user132619
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[+6] [2010-01-10 08:56:55] Jeff Atwood

Stack Overflow clone in PHP -- "Qwench"


It appears to be broken. :\ - Ian Carroll
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[+5] [2010-09-14 23:33:23] icco

Inspired by SO: http://www.iFixit.com/Answers

Jeff mentioned them in one of the SO blogs, http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/02/our-sidekick-ifixit-com/, although he got it wrong, http://ifixit.com has been around for a while (2003 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFixit), while Answers had recently been released.


Actually it's a commercial product, available here dozuki.com/Sales/Answers - jmd
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[+5] [2011-05-18 07:39:43] picxelplay

WordPress [1] version:

http://templatic.com/demos/answers

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress

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[+5] [2013-05-15 02:37:07] Linuxios

Here's another, called Verious.

Original Q: Getting 503 Service Unavailable when trying to generate discovery document [1]

Clone: http://www.verious.com/qa/getting-503-service-unavailable-when-trying-to-generate-discovery-document/

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14912267/getting-503-service-unavailable-when-trying-to-generate-discovery-document

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[+4] [2009-11-24 10:00:53] Marek Grzenkowicz

Quick Answers at Code Project: http://www.codeproject.com/script/Answers/List.aspx


(3) In fact, SO is a clone of Quick Answers :-) Quick Answers is launched in 2005, but Stack Overflow is launched in 2008. - ProgramFOX
@ProgramFOX You're right! I found questions posted in 2006 (example) but it seems the site wasn't widely used until second half of 2008. - Marek Grzenkowicz
12
[+3] [2011-05-11 08:45:38] Piskvor

qato.com [1] - not open-source, apparently clones the SE 1.0 model as well (hosting SaaS Q&A sites). It took me a while to notice why the DynDNS community support pages [2] felt familiar.

[1] http://qato.com/answers/index.html
[2] http://www.dyndnscommunity.com/spaces/11/index.html

(2) Why did you not add to the main Answer? - Tshepang
(1) @Tshepang: if you mean this, it specifically says "open source"; I'm unable to get at qato's source anywhere, leading me to the conclusion that it is closed-source, and thus doesn't really fit there. - Piskvor
Oh, I missed that. - Tshepang
Apparently this was merged into answerhub. - DIMension10
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[+3] [2013-06-20 18:48:54] WooCaSh

http://devpytania.pl/

Polish version of StackOverflow. It's look like SO year or 2 years ago. The site looks like author don't update anything on page. Even years on foot are out date.


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[+2] [2012-08-31 02:52:06] j08691

http://answers.bitnami.org/ ...


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[+2] [2012-12-14 12:00:26] onokazu

I have created one as a WordPress plugin, if you are interested. Demo here: http://demo.sabaidiscuss.com/


I've added your plugin to the original post as after doing some searcher I think that it is probably one of the best solutions out there in the affordable price range for a small non-commercial project. - Marek Andreánsky
16
[+2] [2014-03-20 14:15:47] aug

Squarespace has a QA site that looks very similar to SO's model

http://answers.squarespace.com/


(2) Worth reading this. osqa.net is already discussed here, e.g. here. - Shadow Wizard
Ahh thanks for pointing that out @ShadowWizard. I should have checked that. I can delete my answer if necessary. - aug
As you wish, no harm in keeping it. :) - Shadow Wizard
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[+1] [2010-02-16 20:56:19] ripper234

Like many others, I build a Stack Overflow clone [1] as well, mostly as a learning exercise. This one might be the only open-source clone written in C# / ASP.NET MVC [2].

[1] http://ripper234.com/p/open-source-stackoverflow-clone-by-a-n00b-webdev/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASP.NET_MVC_Framework

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[+1] [2011-06-16 04:21:55] Magic

My open source project of a Stack Overflow clone is hosted on GitHub [1].

It's under heavy development. And will add more functions compared to Stack Overflow.

[1] https://github.com/gmagic10/ComCat

This one's been abandoned. It may (not) work. - Ian Carroll
19
[+1] [2013-03-02 07:04:22] Nathan Goings

The Unity Answers [1] uses AnswerHub [2]

[1] http://answers.unity3d.com/index.html
[2] http://answerhub.com/

20
[+1] [2013-05-15 10:06:47] Cybermaxs - Betclic

Also the Splunk Answer [1] section.

and blurtit [2] (Social Q&A Community)

[1] http://splunk-base.splunk.com/answers/
[2] http://www.blurtit.com/

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[+1] [2013-06-11 06:52:50] Robotnik

http://wiki.jammer-store.com/

Seems fairly similar, I don't know if it infringes directly. See the question [1] I posted on this site.

[1] http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/183921/what-to-do-with-sites-that-rip-off-stack-exchange

22
[0] [2010-08-17 10:50:23] sundar_srd

I managed to get Qwench [1] (a PHP Stack Overflow clone) from inscripts / anantgarg working under IIS 5.1 - with IIRF [2]. Extending to provide search and additional adminstration functions to manage Q&A should make the application more useful.

[1] http://github.com/anantgarg/Qwench
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewrite_engine#IIS_.28Microsoft_Internet_Information_Services.29

23
[0] [2010-11-19 17:30:44] Adam

Arrayshift [1] is a Drupal project that replicates a lot of the SO functionality. It's currently in Alpha.

[1] http://drupal.org/project/arrayshift

24
[0] [2012-05-10 04:10:12] Eran Medan

codingstack.com [1] seems like a new attempt, no risk for SO though...

[1] http://codingstack.com

Any idea what platform they are using (one of the open source clones, or something they wrote?) - Tim Post
@TimPost - Looks like something they wrote (Ruby on Rails based) not sure if it's used by anyone but them, but I doubt it as it has 2 watchers and 1 fork (github.com/usmanasif/CodingStack) - Eran Medan
25
[0] [2012-06-18 20:14:22] Seva Alekseyev

http://ask.badadev.com/

It's in production, but anemic, and prone to spam questions and answers. There's probably a better chance to get bada answers at SO proper.


26
[0] [2012-06-24 21:27:52] CodaFi

s41.codeinspot.com [1] Complete with question title, original formatting, images, and profile pics... For [2] || Comparison [3]

[1] http://s41.codeinspot.com/
[2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2959299/gray-uisearchbar-w-matching-scope-bar-programmatically
[3] http://s41.codeinspot.com/q/1015456

27
[0] [2014-01-24 11:44:34] linuxatico

Quora [1] .

[1] http://www.quora.com/

28
[0] [2014-02-09 16:09:29] gung

There is also MetaOptimize [1]'s community QA site [2]. It is clearly based on the SE model in its design, style, functionality, etc. It's content is a mix of Stack Overflow programming questions and Cross Validated machine learning & data visualization questions, with perhaps bits of other SE sites thrown in. Their self description is:

Where scientists ask and answer questions on machine learning, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, text analysis, information retrieval, search, data mining, statistical modeling, and data visualization!

[1] http://metaoptimize.com/
[2] http://metaoptimize.com/qa/

29