Old news but good news if you hadn't already heard it. :) ACL has always had relatively open publication policies; the anthology has been online for years, and even when there was a print version of CL the articles were online too (maybe with an embargo of a month or two, but you could also go to the authors' websites and grab the PDF there).
I was in for a big shock when I realised that non-NLP papers (i.e. those published through ACM) were hard to find online and often required payment---all through grad school I just looked up everything I needed online (for free). It felt like a big step into the stone age when I had to start dealing with ACM policies.
I was in for a big shock when I realised that non-NLP papers (i.e. those published through ACM) were hard to find online and often required payment---all through grad school I just looked up everything I needed online (for free). It felt like a big step into the stone age when I had to start dealing with ACM policies.