There’s information about the source code’s open access license. That is the focal point now. Author/publisher rights will need to be addressed once Discourse sees real use. Of course, that could be in the ToS or another part of the website that I overlooked ;)

It specifically refers to Discourse as a standalone Forum system, as you said. That’s the reason it has so many features. That makes more sense, as it would be overkill to have THAT much functionality in a comment system!

Disqus is an adequately featured comment system but isn’t open source (not that I am complaining). Discourse is open source on Github, but IS a forum system. In the blog post comments, to which Jeff responds, they discuss the possibility of Discourse as a phpBB alternative. Any idea why Discourse was described here as a comment system?

Yes, the “social Web” is a decade old, but The Well will soon celebrate its 28th anniversary. “Community” is just a word to describe how to manage relationship between people inside a collective platform where they have a stable identity and where interactions are memorized: reputation and trust can only grow – or not – between people, not as a transferable quantity. The obstinate aversion of news media to recognize – and to study – how communities do it is appalling.

Oh! Sure, there is a problem: Communities work only one person at a time. It scales, but very slowly, especially at the beginning. And our publishers and marketers – and VC – are only interested in anything that can work one million at a time. Sorry folks, no shortcut. On the other hand, the first to start a real community will have a head start. :-)