11

Stack Exchange has great features, but does not empower groups of people to set up and host their own Q&A site, quickly or privately.

What other web-based Q&A software options exist that might compete with Stack Exchange, specifically by being free and open source?

|improve this question
  • 1
    Do you want self-hosted alternatives? – Undo Apr 1 '15 at 15:22
  • 1
    Yes, self-hosted is what I'm most interested in. – Sean Colsen Apr 1 '15 at 15:24
  • 9
    Although most of us know Stack Exchange ;), you should still list which features you need (you likely don’t need a 100% clone, do you?). See How to ask for an alternative to some software. There are many "clones", see Stack Exchange clones. – unor Apr 1 '15 at 17:30
  • 1
    Note that I got initial quotes for SE implementation at my work (I run large internal systems group) and I was quoted in the deep 6 figures. Basically we could pay that much but it would take a complete buy-in from several sectors and tons of CHANGE. It is too bad they don't off a more tiered rollout to get companies going. I know at my company we can't get people to quit making docs, let alone post everything in Q&A... so I can see the need for opensource. SE really doesn't have a good internal business model. – blankip Sep 22 '15 at 23:02
  • // , There are other reasons than the expense to consider alternatives to SE, too. For example, SE entails some serious implicit risks. – Nathan Basanese May 4 at 1:52
2

Here are some free/open-source self hosted alternatives to Stack Exchange,

LampCMS

LampCMS is an full-featured Open Source Question and Answers web program written in PHP with deep integration with Facebook, Twitter, Google, Linked-IN, Tumblr and Blogger APIs. It uses MongoDB as a database to achieve speed and scalability.

LampCMS User Interface

|improve this answer
2

Talkyard is new (year 2018) open source Q&A software, inspired by StackOverflow, and forum software like Discourse.

In addition to Q&A topics and categories, you can have open-ended discussions, and Slack like chat channels. So people can go to your place, not just for Q&A, but also for talking and being social. You can have private staff categories & chat.

Here's an example discussion — copied from StackExchange/StackOverflow: (cc-by-sa license) https://insightful.demo.talkyard.io/-7/how-do-i-get-myself-out-of-bed-in-the-morning

Talkyard is beta software currently (May 2018) and I'm developing it. GitHub repo here, and SaaS hosting here. Screenshot:

Answers to how-to-wake-up-on-time

(The posts are from this StackExchange question, license: cc-by-sa-3.0)

|improve this answer
1

You can try Wordpress together with the DW Question & Answer plugin.

The plugin builds a complete Q&A system for your WordPress site, like Quora or Stackoverflow. It supports multi-languages, shortcodes, reCAPTCHA, email notification system and so on.

User interface screen shot:

DW Question & Answer User Interface

|improve this answer
0

OSQA

OSQA is a free, entry-level Q&A system from the makers of AnswerHub, the market-leading professional Q&A platform. OSQA is a great solution for smaller sites with limited needs.

OSQA User Interface

|improve this answer
0

One alternative is Askbot, built on Django (Python). The source is located here:

https://github.com/ASKBOT/askbot-devel

From the Readme:

Commercial hosting of Askbot and support are available at https://askbot.com

And the license section:

Askbot software is licensed under GPL, version 3.

|improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.