Docs: explain off-site vs. OCF hosting

[matthew-mcallister]

Docs: explain off-site vs. OCF hosting

[hexecute]

free vs. proprietary software

Do we really need to do that here? I think that might just make people angry without any benefits (e.g. "We can't use X because of OCF's political views?!"). Instead, we could approach it as a requirement of the university for security purposes which is more accurate (I think?) and keeps us in good graces.

[kpengboy]

Or cut to the chase and explain that it is not physically possible for us
to host Wix etc. sites?
On Oct 5, 2015 6:13 PM, "Peter Wu" [email protected] wrote:

free vs. proprietary software

Do we really need to do that here? I think that might just make people
angry without any benefits (e.g. "We can't use X because of OCF's political
views?"). Instead, we could approach it as a requirement of the university
for security purposes which is more accurate (I think?).

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#56 (comment).

[matthew-mcallister]

I definitely don't recommend posting an entire Stallman article. It should be clear why we cannot host a Wix website. Example:

Many "website builder" style services, such as Wix and Weebly, use a proprietary software backend owned by their companies. The OCF doesn't have the right or ability to transfer any website made with those services to our servers, so we cannot host them on-site. On the other hand, we can run anything using free and open-source software, like WordPress and Rails, so make your website with those!

[nattofriends]

No. This is not about free software. Make it abundantly clear that what Wix
asks people to do is not OCF hosting a site, it is OCF pointing signs to
Wix hosting the site themselves. It is due to University rules that we
cannot do this.

Then proceed to describe the possible solutions, such as submitting an
offsite request, or using free software hosted on the OCF.

On Monday, October 5, 2015, Matthew McAllister [email protected]
wrote:

I definitely don't recommend posting an entire Stallman article. It should
be clear why we cannot host a Wix website. Example:

Many "website builder" style services, such as Wix, Weebly, use a
proprietary software backend owned by their companies. The OCF doesn't have
the right or ability to transfer any website made with those services to
our servers, so we cannot host them on-site. On the other hand, we can run
anything using free and open-source software, like WordPress and Rails, so
make your website with those!

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#56 (comment).

[matthew-mcallister]

I agree, which is why I didn't say anything about the merits/demerits of free/proprietary software. However, a user might rightly wonder "Why isn't there a way to copy my Wix website over to the OCF servers?" After all, you can move from WordPress.com to WordPress on the OCF.

It sounds like you're referring to some specific user support page on Wix which tells people to ask for DNS to point to Wix. Yes, we should explicitly warn people that we cannot do that. If it needs to say more explicitly "No, we cannot give you offsite DNS nor can we copy your Wix website to our servers", then so be it. But it deserves at least a one-sentence explanation.

[nattofriends]

Sure, that makes sense. I will add that Wordpress and Tumblr also have
CNAME handling support, so it isn't limited to just Wix.

2015-10-05 20:19 GMT-07:00 Matthew McAllister [email protected]:

I agree, which is why I didn't say anything about the merits/demerits of
free/proprietary software. However, a user might rightly wonder "Why isn't
there a way to copy my Wix website over to the OCF servers?" After all, you
can move from WordPress.com to WordPress on the OCF.

It sounds like you're referring to some specific user support page on Wix
which tells people to ask for DNS to point to Wix. Yes, we should
explicitly warn people that we cannot do that. If it needs to say more
explicitly "No, we cannot give you offsite DNS nor can we copy your Wix
website to our servers", then so be it. But it deserves at least a
one-sentence explanation.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#56 (comment).