This just reads like the absolute bare minimum lawyer speak said through gritted teeth. Even Monica herself says "I can't comment further for legal reasons."
Too little too late to make amends with the hurt community I'd say.
It lets Stackoverflow save face, in that they don't have to contend with the claim that their policy may have been misguided in the first place. And it introduces a bare-minimum "reinstatement" process, in case they screw up again in the future. That's all there is to it.
While it's great that Monica was able to arrive at a satisfactory agreement, it's a damn shame for the rest of the community that it apparently included an NDA clause.
That said, I could totally respect and understand a desire on Monica's part to put this whole thing in the past.
As a person who doesn't use SO much, can anyone clarify why there's such a seemingly passionate community of people still around to discuss this after this mess? In particular, why do they continue to devote even more free labor to the business rather than just exit and go contribute to something else?
It takes years to make such a community, and there doesn't exist any one alternative where all of us can move instantly.
And then there's the reputation of SE as a trustworthy network of high quality content. Such a reputation also takes time to build.
While a few replacement platforms are in development, they aren't going to take off anytime soon, and many community members (including me) just want SE to go back to what it was a couple years ago, and before Sara Chipps (a complete outsider) decided to cause all this drama.
> many community members (including me) just want SE to go back to what it was a couple years ago
So say we all.
But that's not gonna happen, though, is it? If anything, the SE staff seems onboard with the new way, actually doubling-down on it judging from the legalese they've been serving ever since.
I agree with zozbot234, it only takes years, it happens. Natural cycle of creation / destruction, or rather things changing (sadly in business, usually the more successful / corporate, the closer to the bottom we get generally but that's besides the point I guess).
It all just reminds me that "this is why we can't have nice things" (fact: it's not easy nor natural to run a corp like your local gaming club, spirits and all), and that there's a reason why "new things" will keep emerging and have that "freshness" about them, a circumstancial best-fit.
Hopefully we'll still be able to browse existing SE pages, but activity may progressively shift elsewhere. And again. And again. Oh look, it's 2035 already.
There were plenty of such communities in the past. Google Answers, experts-exchange, Quora (which is still around though maybe not what it used to be) etc. It may indeed take "years" to get a new venue established, but not much longer than that.
Too little too late to make amends with the hurt community I'd say.