Wait, what does that even mean? Corporations can use Stack Overflow, for free, just like anyone else. Why hire a consultant or invest in training when you can just drop a question out into SO? I didn't realize SO's karma was that magic bill-paying kind. Attribution is a positive thing, okay, but let's not pretend that it somehow erases the 'sharecropping' aspect of the site.
Also, just for the record: comparing web 2.0 participation to sharecropping, complete with picture of black farmers, is completely idiotic and more than a bit offensive.
Just for the record, I'm black and I have used the sharecropping analogy for what happens when you decide to write applications for a proprietary platform like OS X, Windows, or iPhone.
Actually, I haven't made that direct comparison to iPhone, but anybody with a text editor can take my old, old article about Konfabulator and Panic and do a little search and replace for themselves.
I don't think the analogy to sharecropping itself is offensive, I think including the picture that makes it clear we're talking about the post-Civil-War, legalized slavery version of sharecropping is what crosses the line. Without that, I think it's merely stupid, because web 2.0 participation is completely voluntary and usually done for fun or reciprocity.
I also agree with your point, that the sharecropper analogy holds better for earning your living by developing on someone else's platform.
I think the post-Civil-War version of sharecropping was also "completely voluntary"; sharecroppers could, and did, leave for the cities. Due to institutionalized racism, they didn't have access to the kinds of government farm support that kept their landlords solvent enough to keep from having to sell them the land. (This is a problem that still exists in the US.)
Or maybe you mean "completely volunteer", in the sense that nobody is getting paid. But it seems to me that a lot of people receive something of value from their participation in these sites, even if it's not financial in nature.
I meant the first interpretation. If you think post-Civil-War sharecropping meets the standard of "completely voluntary", you need to do some reading. You can start here:
"Though much has been made of the system of peonage that kept sharecroppers in perpetual debt, tying workers to the same plantation year after year, there is significant evidence that Georgia croppers moved rather fluidly from place to place and from one form of labor to another. Certainly the reality of life as a sharecropper was a factor in the out-migration of rural Georgians in the 1910s and after. The sociologist Arthur F. Raper found in his study of Macon and Greene counties that of those Georgians fleeing the rural part of the state in the 1920s, the greatest numbers came from the ranks of sharecroppers."
Frankly, it sounds like a system of unjustly exploiting ignorant poor people that was roughly on par with the one described in Chicago in "The Jungle" at the same time. But that's pretty much what I thought before I read your link, too.
Maybe you could describe what sense you think it fails to 'meet the standard of "completely voluntary"' in?
Good to know!