Will the public Q&A network stay completely free, and remain the company's main focus?

Since the content is all under some form of CC-BY-SA, attempting to put the core Q&A behind a paywall would be a more effective impetus for creation of an open-source Stack Exchange clone than anything else I can think of.

There are already numerous people who would be interested in switching to another site, if anyone were to create one that avoided the managerial mistakes that Stack Exchange has made recently.

Personally, I would love to see an open-source Stack Exchange clone. But so long as SE keeps the core Q&A free, they probably have enough momentum to resist any newcomers (i.e. competitors), at least for a while.

I have a hard time believing that the core Q&A will ever be behind a paywall. That was the mistake Experts-Exchange made, Jeff Atwood talks about here and here. Joel Spolsky reiterated the inherent flaws in the Experts-Exchange business model in his blog post last year here. That is the antithesis of everything Stack Overflow originally stood for. It would kill the golden goose.

If "we now focus on revenue" was said two decades ago by a CEO with hardcore corporate background from the same age, that may mean putting paywalls and restricting free use. However, nowadays various free services (be it free-as-a-beer online service, open-source software with permissive license or anything else) are widely used as a way to promote paid services. This is a widely accepted approach, and I assume Stack Overflow's owners weren't living under a rock for the last 20 years, so no major changes to the Stack Exchange network of free QA websites are coming.

Just think about it: Microsoft, the epitome of money-grabbing corporation, allows pirating Windows to this day. This is what Bill Gates said back in 1998:

Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.

Stack Overflow company's way of promoting its services is Stack Overflow website being used by pretty much all developers around the world. When an IT company decides it needs a QA website, Stack Overflow company wants every developer in that company to know, use and love Stack Overflow website and to suggest to use it within the company. And this is how "free Windows" (pirated Windows) works in Russia: people may use "free Windows" at home, but when they work somewhere, they suggest using various Microsoft services because this is what they know and love. And companies pay, pay a lot.

That's the stance of the corporation which has a reputation of being one of the most evil companies in the world (to a less degree nowadays, but still). Someone working in a company built around a website with free access understands it even better.

And of course, everyone still remembers Experts-Exchange. There's no need for experiments if you know the outcome already.

On the other hand, focus on revenue probably means that less development time will be devoted to the free QA parts. But that's nothing new, we've seen the focus shifting for quite some time.

A cynical person could say that SE doesn't mind the current uproar because only a tiny fraction of users are on Meta and the vast majority of people don't actually care about them.

Instituting a paywall, would anger all the established users, but it would also disproportionally reduce access for these casual users, who would have no reason to pay to access a site they don't have any connection to. If you lose the established users and the potential new users: what do you have?

Are there plans to lead Stack Exchange down a corporate path, monetizing the Q&A with paywalls, or push the free Q&A to the backseat?

For the first and last parts of your question: Yes.

Stack Exchange gives stock options to its employees, and they have raised four rounds of funding from investors. At some point, its employees and investors are going to want to cash in through an IPO or possibly a buyout.

New CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar hinted at that eventuality in an interview when he mentioned "making [SE's] revenue more predictable". That's something that is very important to Wall Street. Also, the new CEO announcement stated that Chandrasekar has investment banking experience, and that will help him guide the company as it seeks to obtain more funding and eventually prepare for an IPO.

If the company does eventually go public, then shareholders will want the company to prioritize initiatives that increase revenue and earnings growth, and the free parts of SE would definitely take a backseat. In fact, that is probably starting to happen now, as increasing revenue/earnings growth would make the company more palatable to investors and increase the chances of a successful IPO.

Synopsis

The main focus of the company has already shifted from the Q&A.
It is unlikely that Q&A will remain completely free. However, that will depend on how SE's business strategy pans out.

Details

It seems fairly obvious that SO.com have narrowed their perspective to the commercialization of the network:

• Rolling out marketable products (Talent, Teams)
• Advertising
• Wooing prospective investors (witnessed by the cited interview)
• Re-licensing of content

• Prodding the 'community' towards corporate standards in communication and behavior
  (one obvious objective: minimizing risk of legal exposure):

  • CoC (sheer existence, enforcement rules)
  • Feelgood environment ('welcoming', 'encouraging', etc.)
  • Focus on community growth (feelgood environment expressly aiming at new users)
  • Consultation processes with the community (or the lack thereof)

• Content treatment:

  • 'Quality First' approach dropped
    (as baffling as it may appear; but this kind of priority tends to be expensive)
  • Professional appearance (Ask Question Wizard, Beta labels dropped, UI design updates)
  • Centralized content curation (3-vote closing threshold, HNQ management)
  • Pro-active alienation avoidance (Reversal/Tumbleweed retired, Lifejacket/Lifeboat introduced, no automatic downvotes on LQ autoflag)
    [Disclaimer: In the light of the current turmoil, measures to ascertain
    that particular groups of users feel safe and welcome on SE are not meant]

The degree of evidence varies between different items (notably subitems 3 and 4 of 'Content Treatment' are mostly fed by a gut feeling inspired by this breakdown of recent feature changes).  In total, however, I have no doubt about the destination of the journey.

Conclusion

As for the future of the free Q&A section, I envisage three major routes.

1. Direct commercialisation
   Raising a paywall for the Q&A section would match the commercialisation strategy seen so far. A basic monthly fee to peruse the answers, an advanced plan to actually participate (asking questions, voting) and the full-fledged subscription for all features, rebates to reward participating in onerous activities on the network. That could become a technically sophisticated experts-exchange.com V2.

2. Free playground for expert users
   The Q&A stays free as a playground for expert users which will be targeted through Talent.

3. Free demo for enterprise installations
   The Q&A stays free as a showcase platform for Teams. Revenue will mainly be generated by Teams sales with branding and customization.

Models 1 and 2 would keep the Q&A section in the prime focus, possibly limited to the most profitable sites (though all sites will benefit due to spill-over effects). Model 3 in particular would probably entail curtailed opportunities of contributions for non-experts. Model 3 would shift the focus away from Q&A.

IMHO it's likely that the company will pursue all routes. The attention devoted to Q&A will then depend on the relative revenues generated from the business models. Future investors may push the management into a re-focus on a single business model in the future.

Disclaimer

This is just my personal view based on my experiences as a halfway regular on some SE sites and my own thoughts. I think the sketch represents fairly the situation, but I cannot be sure of that. In any case, nothing written is meant to challenge the right of Stack Exchange to do as they see fit.

The honest answer is... no one knows for sure.

One might argue that the management is rational, and hence won't do things that jeopardize the stakeholders benefit. But as the recent episodes show, we wouldn't know for sure how the management thinks-- they can appear to do things that you think are irrational.

So no, we don't know. No one knows for sure.

I would welcome a "community pays" version of Stack Overflow.

Add an optional subscription product. Give some minor benefits to the subscribers. Allow free users to remain free.

No paywalls, no harm to SEO / SERP. No changes to Stack Exchange at all, except that some percentage of the community are willing to pay a nominal, coffee-or-lunch-sized monthly fee to keep the sites they love running.

Having real recurring monthly revenue would get Stack Exchange off of the Venture Capital GROWTH track and allow it to focus on things that matter to the community.

I wish Jeff and Joel had structured their company as such from the start.

This same sentiment has been well-discussed recently:

Wonderful to see more entrepreneurs waking up to the reality that venture capital is a toxic steroid for the vast majority of startups. Yes, a few unicorns emerge from the pressure – often to the detriment of us all! – but the injections kill far more businesses than it helps.

We've been beating these bongo drums for years at Basecamp. The joy of running your own business, on your own terms, on your own ethics, is something entrepreneurs had discounted for far too long over the quick'n'easy thrills of chasing venture capital.

The very exponential, devouring growth that venture capital is aiming for is the root cause of so much of the harm Big Tech is currently wrecking on our minds and our society. These consequences have never been clearer. RECONSIDER.

https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1083792989770571776

By looking at dating sites, you can kind of predict where the Stack Exchange sites are going, if the current commercial revenue is not sufficient. For example, Tinder is still free, but you are paying for several extras. For example:

1. Do you want get your question seen by more users with expertise in your question area, please pay $x.

2. You used up your free allowance of y questions. You can gain credits buy answering questions that get up votes, or you can buy credits for $x.

3. You still don't have an answer to your question. You can push it back to the top of the queue for $x.

4. You don't have enough credits to award a bounty on your question. Earn credits by answering questions or buy y credits for $x.